Is ritual abuse prevalent in Australia?

According to ASCA, ritual abuse is virtually part of the landscape.
It claims that "...Satanic cults, in which members worship Satan, are only one of the types of cults that torture and abuse children..."
And that "...Many survivors are born and raised by parents who are in cults (multi-generational)..."
ASCA uses a definition taken from a 1989 report by the Ritual Abuse Task Force of Los Angeles County Commission for Women:

"...Ritual abuse usually involves repeated abuse over an extended period of time. The physical abuse is severe, sometimes including killing and torture. The sexual abuse is usually painful, sadistic, and humiliating, and intended as a means of gaining dominance over the victim.
The psychological abuse is devastating and involves the use of ritual indoctrination. It includes mind control techniques, which convey to the victim a profound terror of the cult members and of the evil spirits they believe cult members can command.
Both during and after the abuse, most victims are in a state of terror, mind control and dissociation..."

The organisation also recommends several books on the subject; all of which are more than 10 years old.
Part of the problem is that most of the information about ritual abuse comes from overseas.
We can only assume that it can be applied to Australia.
And ASCA's view does appear to be based on information that is somewhat out of date.
It contrasts with the fairly balanced Introduction to All Points of View to be found at ReligiousTolerence.Org:

"...There is a truly enormous amount of soft evidence...
Many books have been written since 1980 by women alleging to be abuse survivors and by at least one man alleging to have once been a Satanist and engaged in ritual abuse: Michelle Remembers, Satan's Underground, Satan Seller and He Came to Set the Captives Free..."
The soft evidence tends to disappear like a mouthful of floss candy, when it is further investigated...
One wonders why no survivor came forward prior to 1980 when the first of the 'survivor books' (Michelle Remembers) was published. The survivor books mentioned above have all been exposed as hoaxes.
Many believe that children's memories of ritual abuse were implanted during incompetent questioning by police officers, social workers or child psychologists during intensive investigations into abuse at day care centers.
Many therapists and memory researchers believe that therapeutically recovered memories are usually of events that never happened. They were created as an unexpected byproduct of questionable techniques during therapy (hypnotism, guided imagery, age regression, etc.).
One wonders why the events described by the children are so different from the memories described by adults who believe they are survivors of child abuse.
There are many indicators that ritual abuse by underground, evil groups does not exist in North America...
There is growing evidence that most therapeutically recovered memories from adults: of abuses during 'previous lifetimes', of medical experiments on board UFO's, sexual abuse and incest during childhood, and ritual abuse during childhood, are false memories...
False memories feel very real; however, they are of events that never happened...
In the early 1990s, we analyzed reports on SRA from both believers and skeptics. We tentatively concluded that the skeptics are correct; there is no international Satanic conspiracy ritually abusing and murdering children.
We have been tracking the SRA movement ever since, and have not seen any hard evidence to change our conclusions..."

For additional up-to-date information about ritual abuse, see also: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_Ritual_Abuse