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NOTICE: This report is copyrighted 1989 by Robert Hicks and is Licensed to
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Cassandra-News a news service of the United Wiccan Church a 501(c)(3)
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California non-profit, tax-exempt religious corporation. Cassandra-News
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grants License for Non-Commercial electronic and print reproduction and
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distribution as long as no fee is charged for these reproductions other
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than the cost of reproduction and printing. The name and address of the
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United Wiccan Church, Robert Hicks and this notice must be preserved on all
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copies.
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United Wiccan Church
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P. O. Box 16025
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North Hollywood California, 91615-6025, U.S.A., NA.
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(818) 899-3687 (3/12/2400 Baud 8N1)
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FIDO 1:102/922
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Satanic Cults: A Skeptical View of the Law Enforcement Approach
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Rev. 9/89
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Adapted from a presentation given at the llth annual crime
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prevention conference of the Virginia Crime Prevention Association,
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Chesapeake, Virginia, June 23, l989
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NOTE: The views expressed herein are those of the author and do
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not necessarily reflect opinions of the Department of Criminal
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Justice Services or the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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Robert Hicks
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Criminal Justice Analyst/Law Enforcement Section
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Department of Criminal Justice Services
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805 E. Broad Street
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Richmond, Virginia 232l9
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804-786-842l
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I wish to alert you to a dangerous cult that has implanted itself not
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only in Virginia but throughout the country. This group, called the
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Tnevnoc cult, is a "communal, sectarian group affiliated with a large and
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powerful international religious organization."/1 I can communicate
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something to you of the methods and goals of the organization by describing
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the cult's recruitment and indoctrination practices. The cult aims to
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recruit young women, either teenagers or young adults, and does so openly
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at schools and colleges. Following indoctrination into the cult, young
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women eventually lose any power of will, succumbing entirely to the regimen
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of the cult.
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Cult members must abandon their former lives, even surrendering their
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outside friendships and personal possessions. Cult members' activities,
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then, involve the cult exclusively. Members must arise at 4:30 in the
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morning, wear prayer beads attached to their wrists, engage in long,
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monotonous chants and prayers, and in one of the most bizarre activities,
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members consumed food they were told represented the dead cult founder's
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body. Women must even pledge in writing absolute obedience to the cult.
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To further distance itself from worldly affairs, the cult assigns new names
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to members and designates as their birthdays the dates of their entry into
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the cult.
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After hours of performing menial tasks such as scrubbing floors
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coupled with the incessant recitation of ritualistic prayers, members might
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occasionally transgress rules which are punished harshly. For example,
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punishment might require women to go without food, having to beg on their
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knees for the crumbs from others' plates. But the most shocking ritual of
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all required members to become brides to the dead cult leader.
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I hope that I have sufficiently aroused your curiosity, if not your
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indignation and anger that such activities could happen in the United
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States. In case you haven't figured it out, Tnevnoc is Convent spelled
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backwards. I have just described the socialization of young women into
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Christian convents. But, you say, convents are harmless, in a criminal
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sense anyway, and in part comprise established religion in our society. In
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short, convents are legitimate.
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I have described the working of Christian convents in this way for a
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few reasons. First, I have used the jargon of police satanic cult seminars
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to describe a familiar phenomenon. Viewed in cult seminar terms, convents
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appear evil and pernicious. I sprinkled in the description words which are
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never defined by cult crime experts, that is, "cult" and "ritual." Cult
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crime experts, as they call themselves, by not defining such words, impart
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to them connotations of evil, the demonic, the supernaturally criminal. If
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you don't think my description of Christian convents provides a fair
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comparison to the way non-Christian religions are described at cult crime
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seminars, think again. When convents appeared in the United States during
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the last century, many citizens objected to their manipulative,
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authoritarian methods by describing the same practices in the same ways to
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arose public mortification. Similarly, one reads newspaper accounts
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nowadays of how officers investigate ceremonial sites with altars,
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pentagrams, melted candle wax in ritually significant colors, all
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frequently involving innocuous teenage antics but sometimes attributable to
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small non-Christian groups who show no criminal involvement.
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Law enforcement officals flock to training seminars about satanic
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cults and crime. The seminars offer a world view that interprets both the
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familiar and explainable--and unfamiliar and poorly understood--as
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increasing participation by Americans in satanic worship. The seminars
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further claim that satanism has spawned gruesome crimes and aberrant
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behavior that might presage violent crime. I suggest that the current
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preoccupation with satanism and cults involves nothing new: the phenomenon
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has a firm and documented historical and sociological context. I also
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suggest that the news media have largely defined the law enforcement model
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of cult activity since the evidence offered at cult seminars for cult
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mayhem is nothing more than newspaper stories. Frequently, though, the
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same news stories don't even attribute nasty incidents to cults, but the
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police have been quick to infer from them cause-effect relationships
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anyway. The law enforcement model of cult crime is ill-considered, based
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on nondocumented secondary sources or other unsubstantiated information,
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and is rife with errors of logic. Such errors include false analogies,
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faulty cause-effect relationships, and broad, unsupported generalizations.
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The cult crime model betrays an ignorance of a larger academic context of
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anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history.
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Even the law enforcement literature makes the same mistakes. For
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example, Law Enforcement News, a publication of the John Jay College of
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Criminal Justice in New York, began an article on cult crime with a
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titillating opener: "A l4-year-old Jefferson Township, N.J., boy kills his
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mother with a Boy Scout knife, sets the family home on fire, and commits
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suicide in a neighbor's backyard by slashing his wrists and throat.
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Investigators find books on the occult and Satan worship in the boy's
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room."/2 The article, then, implied some connection between reading books
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on the occult and the murder/suicide. But did the boy have a collection of
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spiders? A stack of pornographic magazines under his bed? A girlfriend
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who just jilted him? A history of psychiatric treatment for depression?
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Newspaper accounts never mention other attributes of a crime scene since
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only those touched by a nameless, faceless evil will suit the reader's
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hunger for an explanation of why good boys do terrible things. And the
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same newspaper article will be reproduced and circulated at cult seminars
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to substantiate the satanic connection.
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The cult crime model is in part driven by Fundamentalist Christianity.
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The most notable newsletter circulating among cult crime investigators, the
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File l8 Newsletter, follows a Christian world view in which police
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officers, who claim to separate their religious views from their
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professional duties, nevertheless maintain that salvation through Jesus
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Christ is the only sure antidote to satanic involvement, whether criminal
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or noncriminal, and point out that no police officer can honorably and
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properly do his or her duty without reference to Christian standards. But
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more of File l8 Newsletter in a moment. Other cult crime seminar speakers
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make a living at it: Thomas Wedge, a former deputy sheriff, maintains a
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Baptist line of thinking at his seminars by beginning with his brand of
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"Theology l0l."/3 And while cult seminar presenters caution about
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respecting First Amendment rights of citizens practicing unusual beliefs,
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the same officers can't help but inflict their bias on audiences: anything
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that is not mainstream Christianity is dubbed a "non-traditional belief."
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Cult officers distribute handouts at seminars showing symbols to identify
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at crime scenes, accompanied by their meanings. The cult cops attribute
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fixed meanings to the symbols as if satanists world-wide universally use
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the symbols in precise configurations with identical meanings. The
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handouts typically attribute no sources but many derive from Christian
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material. For example, the peace symbol of the l960's is now dubbed the
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"Cross of Nero." Someone decided that the upside-down broken cross on the
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symbol somehow mocks Christianity. In fact, common knowledge has it that
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the symbol was invented in the l950's using semaphore representations for
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the letters "n" and "d" for nuclear disarmament. But cult officers go on
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their merry way, uncritically disseminating borrowed, undocumented
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information.
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Fundamentalist Christianity motivates the proponents of cult crime
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conspiracy theories in other ways. For example, arguing against their
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theory is, to them, attacking their world view. Special Agent Ken Lanning
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of the FBI understands this quite well. Lanning, an agent who specializes
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in child abuse cases, has offered skeptical observations about satanic
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crime at many seminars, only to be branded a satanist himself by Christian
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groups. Lanning has noted the irony of this, since he raises his own
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family according to Christian principles. But to some cult crime officers,
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arguing against their model denies the existence of Satan as a lurking,
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palpable entity who appears to tempt and torture us. Satan becomes the
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ultimate crime leader: the drug lord, the Mafia don, the gang leader.
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Chicago police investigator Jerry Simandl has demonstrated the cult officer
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world view in his work. He doesn't just investigate crimes, he also
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interprets cult behavior--particularly that which threatens Christians--
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according to the cult seminar world view, interpretations that were once
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the province of crusading clergy. He can tell whether a church vandalism
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was mindlessly committed by kids or purposefully by a cult group: "For
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example, an organ might be vandalized by having its keys broken. That
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means the vandals were seeking to deny a congregation the ability to
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'communicate with God' through music."/4 Simandl draws amazing inferences
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about a crime that experiences the lowest clearance rate because we are
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frequently left with no suspects and no evidence beyond the vandalism. And
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it apparently occurs to no one to link a church vandalism to, say, a bias
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crime, a term coming to the fore these days in law enforcement practice, a
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term now taking on a legal definition.* But no: the vandalism so shocks
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Christian sensibilities that the cult officer--armed with his new world
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view that cults cause crime--can only interpret the crime as satanic.
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As I noted before, cult crime officers do not define their terms: the
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words "cult," "occult," "satanic," and "ritual" find casual usage, the
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words imbued with demonic and evil associations. Evil is, indeed, the
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operative word. Law enforcers who meld cult crime theories with their
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professional world views have transformed their legal duties into a
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confrontation between good and evil. So back to the File l8
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-------------------------------------------------------------
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* "Bias crimes, or incidents of hate violence, are words or actions
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intended to intimidate or injure an individual because of his or her race,
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religion, national origin, or sexual preference. Bias crimes range from
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threatening phone calls to murder. The impact of these types of offenses
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is far more pervasive than impacts of comparable crimes that do not involve
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prejudice because the consequences frighten an entire group. The fear that
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such acts generate . . .can victimize a whole class of people." From
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Justice Research, November/December l987, p. l, published by the National
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Criminal Justice Assocation.
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--------------------------------------------------------------
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Newsletter. The publication's editor, police officer Larry Jones, believes
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that a satanic network exists in all levels of society, a network that
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maintains extreme secrecy to shroud its program of murder. Defensive about
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the lack of physical evidence of cult mayhem, Jones states:
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Those who deny, explain away, or cover up the obvious
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undeniably growing mountain of evidence often demand
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statistical evidence or positive linkages between
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operational suspect groups. At best, this demand for
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positive proof of a 'horizontal conspiracy' is naive. . .
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Consider the possibility that the reason supposedly
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unrelated groups in different localities over various
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time periods acting-out in a similar manner, is that
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consistent directives are recieved [sic] independently
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from higher levels of authority. Instead of being
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directly linked to each other, these groups may be
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linked vertically to a common source of direction and
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control. This 'vertical conspiracy model' is consistent
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with the 'authoritarian'. . .structure seen in many cult
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and occult groups.
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Those who accept this theory as a reasonable possibility need to rethink
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the meaning, scope, and effects of the term conspiracy!/5 In other
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words, if the evidence doesn't seem to fit a particular conspiracy theory,
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just create a bigger conspiracy theory. Other hints of File l8
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Newsletter's Fundamentalist bias show through in other ways. Writer Arthur
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Lyons recounted receiving a copy of the newsletter accompanied by an
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article from a Christian magazine, Passport, entitled, "America's Best Kept
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Secret."/6 The article described the "best-kept secret" as the conspiracy
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of satanists in America among all classes and races, and the article
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further noted the "Wicca Letters," a spurious document which offers a
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blueprint for takeover by satanists. Jones has apparently not decided to
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abandon Passport of late: in a recent issue of File l8 Newsletter (Volume
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IV, No. 89-4) the Passport article is once again available with an
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accompanying videotape for "an effective training combination." But Jones
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and other cult officers impose any model they can contrive on a hodge-podge
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of ideas, claims, exaggerations, or suppositions.
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For example, cult investigators would have us believe that cult
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practitioners learn skills in the vivisection of livestock and household
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pets. One investigator, retired police captain Dale Griffis, says that
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"occultists will stun the animal on his back with an electric probe. Then
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they will spray freon on the animal's throat. . .The heart's still pumping
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and they will use an embalming tool to get the blood out. It's fast and
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efficient. Hell, the farmer heard the animal whine, and he was there
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within five minutes."/7
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A sheriff's investigator, in a memorandum about cattle mutilations,
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interviewed a young woman who claimed to be an ex-satanic cult member who
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had mutilated animals. Her cult, which consisted of "doctors, lawyers,
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veterinarians" were taught by the vets how to perform the fatal surgery.
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The animal's blood and removed organs, it seems, were used for baptismal
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rites. She further related:
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When using the helicopter [the cult members] sometimes
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picked up the cow by using a homemade. . .sling. . .and
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they would move it and drop it further down from where
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the mutilations occurred. This would account for there
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not being any footprints or tire tracks. . .When using
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the van trucks they would also have a telescoping lift
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which. . .was about 200 feet long mounted outside the
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truck and would use that to extend a man out to the cow,
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and he would mutilate it from a board platform on the end
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of the boom and would never touch the ground. . .They some-
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times do three or four cows./8
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Of course, the cult members went to such lengths because they delight in baffling the police.
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The sheriff's investigator reported to his supervisor each detail of
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this story from a convincing woman, but he was obviously unacquainted with
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a principle of logic, Occam's Razor. This principle suggests that when
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faced with two hypotheses for an explanation, each of which can explain the
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phenomenon, one chooses the simpler. The investigator never considered
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here the work of a predator, or even the action of a vandal. Of course,
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news accounts of such livestock deaths, particularly if related by cult
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officers, will attribute deaths to cultists, and newspapers will use one of
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my favorite adverbs for such activities: the animal was killed and organs
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were surgically removed. Did a surgeon do the work? Can a police officer
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tell the difference between a hole in a cow's head put there by a bullet,
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scalpel, or predator's bite? But back to Occam's Razor. Imagine the
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woman's story: trucks with 200-foot booms are not plentiful and would
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appear conspicuous in rural America, particularly when the cultists call in
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helicopter air support.
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In other areas, cult crime officers simply deny facts. For example,
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one of the recent murders dubbed satanic by cult officers was that of
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Stephen Newberry, a teenager from Springfield, New Jersey, whose friends
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bashed him to death with a baseball bat. Even though Larry Jones quotes
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local investigators, a prosecutor, a psychologist, and an academic cult
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expert who claimed that no satanic sacrifice of Newberry occurred but
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instead blamed drug abuse, Jones nevertheless offers the opinion that the
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experts
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do not give credit to the strong influence of the
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tenets of the satanic belief system over its initiates.
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In some cases the subjects become involved with satanism . . .
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prior to the onset of family problems. . . [T]he only true and
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lasting solution to 'devil worship' or satanicinvolvement is a
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personal encounter with true Christianity . . ./9
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Jones's earlier guess that a "vertical conspiracy" might exist, that a
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higher authority directs groups to murder as a form of worship to Satan
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within an authoritarian cult led by a charismatic leader, is a ghost of the
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cult officer's mind: the police have identified no such groups.
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Characteristically, law enforcement cult seminars all parley the same
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model of satanic cults, circulating the same second-hand information, most
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of it without documentation or sources for quotations. The model convinces
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many because it takes phenomena familiar to the officer and imbues them
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with new meanings: officers learn a new vocabulary to describe old
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phenomena and therefore see the cult problem as a new threat to public
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order.
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The self-proclaimed cult experts who teach the seminars advise
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officers not to interfere with constitutionally-protected civil liberties,
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yet proceed to do just that. Investigator Bill Lightfoot, Richmond,
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Virginia, Bureau of Police, recommends confiscating books on the occult
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whenever law enforcers find them during investigations (ritual crime in-
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service seminar, Petersburg, VA, September l3, l988); other cult experts
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such as Dale Griffis have advised officers to ask public libraries to turn
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over to police lists of patrons who have borrowed books on the occult./10
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The same self-proclaimed experts take the bigoted stand that because a
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person commits a vile crime and identifies himself as a satanist, then by
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extension all satanists must have condoned the crime; the crime must be
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sanctioned by the satanic order or church. That relationship between the
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person and the belief, then, justifies police surveillance of non-Christian
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groups. By contrast, we don't follow the same reasoning when Christians or
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Jews commit crimes. In Richmond recently, police arrested a man who had
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years ago murdered his family. He had since been living under a new
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identity with a new wife. The fact that the murderer was a conservative
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churchgoing Christian did not lead anyone to label his acts as Christian
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crime, but if the man had professed a belief in Satan, or in any other so-
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called "non-traditional belief," such as Yoruba, voodoo or hoodoo, cult
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cops would be quick to label the crime as evidence of cult activity in
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America.
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Larry Jones provides an example. In his File l8 Newsletter, he
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discusses some "non-traditional" beliefs and ends up finding fault even
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where he can't connect crime with the belief. In a discourse on Wicca
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witchcraft, he posits, for example, that any belief system must set
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absolute standards of conduct. Relative ones won't do because they "open
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the door to excesses."/11 So in a treatment of Wicca he can only find
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fault by abstracting this standard of absolute conduct that measures
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somehow the legitimacy of belief systems. While concluding nevertheless
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that Wicca is benign and that its practitioners claim no connection with
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satanism, Jones lumps Wicca in with "Luciferian" Aleister Crowley with his
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ties to Black Magic organizations. Larry Jones forgets that if a belief
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system "opens its door to excesses," the history of Christianity provides
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no small example of excesses committed for holy purposes.
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One doesn't condemn Christianity because Jim Jones and his group--all
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Christians--committed mass suicide or because the Pope spurred a murderous
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crusade in the Middle East some centuries ago. Whether or not people can
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get criminal ideas from belief systems--whether from Buddhism,
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Christianity, voodoo, Islam, or anything else--has little to do with the
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belief system but rather with a person's own psychological make-up. And in
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this realm the police have no jurisdiction. It is not a law enforcement
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responsibility to guess at what might prompt a citizen to commit a crime.
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Police arrest people who commit crimes under the influence of alcohol, but
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we don't blame the alcohol. People who have domestic disputes live in
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homes with guns and knives, but we don't take away such weapons to prevent
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a crime.
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In the cult crime seminars, cult officers give a disjointed history of
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satanism and witchcraft and usually peg two contemporary satanists who have
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molded the philosophy of their movement: Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey.
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Crowley, described in police seminars as an "influential satanist,"
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although indulging in pagan shenanigans during the early part of the
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century, promoted the Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi
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Orientis, "the largest practicing satanic cult operating today," according
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to Griffis (advanced ritualistic crime seminar, Richmond, VA, September 22,
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l989). Further, say the police, the main belief fostered by groups
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deriving from Crowley's legacy involves "sexual perversion."
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LaVey, on the other hand, a former police photographer and circus
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performer, founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco in l966 at the
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zenith of Haight Ashbury hippiedom. Police officers teach that LaVey's two
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books, The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals Book, can be dangerous.
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In particular, cult officers cite LaVey's nine principles of the Church of
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Satan which include:
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l. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!
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5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the
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other cheek!
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8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they
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lead to physical or mental gratification!/12
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Cult officers maintain that LaVey's dicta foster in his followers the
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attitude, "If it feels good, do it," thus justifying criminal acts.
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Aleister Crowley, apparently, added a more wicked dimension to this
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philosophy for in his Book of the Law he states, "Do what thou wilt shall
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be the whole of the law."/13 Taken in context, however, the book consists
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of a metaphorical jaunt through the ancient Egyptian pantheon full of
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erotic and Masonic allusions. What Crowley said was not meant to be taken
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literally, but figuratively.
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|
|
|
A reading of Crowley's text reveals that the damning statement refers
|
|
to people inevitably moving through their lives according to their
|
|
destinies, that people will act according to experience, impulse, and the
|
|
"law of growth." In other words, people are going to do what people are
|
|
going to do. Put another way, people are what they are. But Crowley did
|
|
not worship Satan nor spur his followers to worship Satan.
|
|
|
|
I heard Investigator Lightfoot (noted earlier) give a cult crime
|
|
seminar (September l3, l988, Petersburg, VA) in which he held up a copy of
|
|
Crowley's book and said that short of obtaining one from a member of the
|
|
highly secretive Ordo Templi Orientis, one can only obtain a copy from an
|
|
obscure Pennsylvania occult bookstore. He said that he could not reveal
|
|
how he obtained his copy. I happened to examine the officer's copy, noted
|
|
the reprinting publisher's name and address, and called their customer
|
|
service representative. The company, Samuel Weiser, publishes quite a few
|
|
books under the New Age category. I asked how to obtain a copy of Crowley:
|
|
she replied that I need only send a check for $5.50 and I would soon
|
|
receive one. When I told her what Lightfoot had said about the difficulty
|
|
of obtaining a copy, she exclaimed, "But we'll sell it to anyone who asks!"
|
|
She apologized, though, because the book was only available in soft cover,
|
|
not hardback.
|
|
|
|
LaVey, on the other hand, operates without mysticism or even a deity.
|
|
To the Church of Satan, the Evil One is no deity but rather a symbolic
|
|
adversary. The Church of Satan pulls a clever trick:
|
|
|
|
'What are the Seven Deadly Sins?' LaVey is fond of asking.
|
|
"Gluttony, avarice, lust, sloth--they are urges every
|
|
man feels at least once a day. How could you set your-
|
|
self up as the most powerful institution on earth? You
|
|
first find out what every man feels at least once a day,
|
|
establish that as a sin, and set yourself up as the only
|
|
institution capable of pardoning that sin./14
|
|
|
|
|
|
LaVey, then, tries to subvert Christianity by offering what Christian
|
|
churches forbid. Since people's guilt, apprehension, and anxiety make them
|
|
ill rather than the urges themselves, the Church of Satan offers people a
|
|
release: indulge yourselves, says the Church, as long as you abide by the
|
|
law and harm no one. Some members have even found the Church of Satan
|
|
therapeutic: the Church engineered, for example, a psychodrama in which a
|
|
woman afraid of her domineering husband role-plays him to help reduce his
|
|
menacing effect on her. An anthropologist confirmed the therapeutic value
|
|
of Church of Satan membership for some people years ago in an academic
|
|
study based on months' long participant observation./15
|
|
|
|
Church of Satan deities even invoke fictional sources, such as H.P.
|
|
Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, and Ursula LeGuin. Writer Arthur Lyons observed,
|
|
"In joining the Church of Satan, these people not only managed to inject a
|
|
little mastery and exoticism into their otherwise banal lives, they
|
|
achieved a mastery of their own fates by the practice of ritual magic."/l6
|
|
|
|
If LaVey's ideology is contrived of fiction, symbolism, and a
|
|
deliberate antidote to Establishment Christianity, and Crowley retailed in
|
|
what we now call New Age thinking, why the law enforcement interest? Cult
|
|
officers focus on these two because they have published, because their
|
|
philosophies are within easy reach. They make easy targets. One article
|
|
in a law enforcement journal even pointed out that LaVey uses a symbolic
|
|
Satan and noted in context that the Church of Satan condemns sex crimes
|
|
including bestiality, but nevertheless stated, "It seems contradictory for
|
|
a group to encourage all forms of sexual expression, and at the same time
|
|
place parameters on that activity."/l7
|
|
|
|
Again, in the fashion of Larry Jones, law enforcers can't resist
|
|
criticizing others' beliefs. Consider, for a moment, law enforcers
|
|
teaching cult seminars by parading books by LaVey, Crowley, and others,
|
|
noting the dangerous ideas these books represent. But what is this? Is
|
|
this crime prevention? Is crime prevention served by providing officers
|
|
with lists of dangerous books? If we wanted to alert officers to books
|
|
that might incite people to slug it out, we'd also have to list The
|
|
Autobiography of Malcolm X, Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, the Bible, the
|
|
Koran, to name a few.
|
|
|
|
But some officers claim that books on the occult have some inherent
|
|
force of evil, that weak-minded people may pluck criminal ideas from them.
|
|
One law enforcement book went so far as to state, "[The authors] urge you
|
|
to continue your education in [satanism] by reading as widely as possible
|
|
on the subject. But note: intense study of resource books and materials by
|
|
occult sources or practitioners is hazardous. Preferred is studying
|
|
overviews and synopses. . .Study and/or experimentation are to be
|
|
avoided."/l8 I have tried to show with Crowley and LaVey that their own
|
|
purported guides to the occult hold no particular power or force other than
|
|
what readers may impart to them. The satanic or occult books that cult
|
|
officers use for show-and-tell either derive from scholarly sources or
|
|
represent modern invention. Few can be traced to some remote, pre-
|
|
Christian occult mysticism.
|
|
|
|
Cult officers not only cite LaVey and Crowley as some compendia of
|
|
occult knowledge rising from the dim horizon of ancient history, but also
|
|
cite as dangerous the occult symbols on rock music albums, the songs'
|
|
lyrics, and the fantasy characters that appear in the popular game,
|
|
Dungeons and Dragons. Yet as the game's designers take pains to point out,
|
|
the D&D gods derive largely from the imaginations of game designers and the
|
|
encyclopedia./19
|
|
|
|
Cult investigators have constructed four general levels of satanic or
|
|
cult involvement. The outer, or fourth level, finds the "dabblers," mostly
|
|
children, teenagers, or young adults who might play with satanic bits and
|
|
pieces. Supposedly Dungeons and Dragons, heavy metal rock music, Ouija
|
|
boards and the like rope kids into the occult. Investigator Lightfoot,
|
|
like many other cult cops, maintains that satanic messages are present in
|
|
rock lyrics when the music is played backwards. But cult officers don't
|
|
distinguish between the presence of messages and their efficacy; they do
|
|
not critically discuss what effect the messages have nor agree on their
|
|
actual wording, and never describe how kids' brains are supposed to
|
|
assimilate the messages anyway. No studies prove the efficacy of
|
|
subliminal messages, satanic or otherwise.
|
|
|
|
Cult officers strike at Dungeons and Dragons as the essential evil
|
|
where kids are concerned, estimating that anywhere from 95 to l50
|
|
documented deaths of children exist that can be attributed to the game.
|
|
While similar figures appear in the press, the fact is that outside of
|
|
reporters' suggestions, no documented killing or suicide exists directly
|
|
attributable to playing the game. No reputable authority has ever detected
|
|
a causal link between playing D&D and anything but a healthy adventure in
|
|
the creative imagination.
|
|
|
|
The next level of involvement includes self-styled satanists, the
|
|
killers such as John Wayne Gacey or Henry Lee Lucas. These men, social
|
|
isolates and psychopaths, invented or borrowed satanic trappings to justify
|
|
their crimes. This idea is the single most plausible component of the cult
|
|
crime model: sociopaths or psychopaths may choose an ideology that helps
|
|
them reconcile their crimes with their conscience.
|
|
|
|
The second level of satanists we have already discussed, the
|
|
organized, public groups such as the Church of Satan or the Temple of Set.
|
|
While cult officers are forced to admit that such groups have small, fluid
|
|
memberships with doctrines that oppose violence and crime, the same
|
|
officers recommend placing them under surveillance because they may harbor
|
|
criminals or breed psychopaths. By this logic,then, we will have to do the
|
|
same for most Christian churches. What's more, no one even knows how many
|
|
cults exist in the United States. Estimates vary from 500 groups on up,
|
|
with total memberships from l50,000 to over ten million. Which brings us
|
|
back to the word "cult" and its lack of definition.
|
|
|
|
What and who are cults? Notoriously lacking from cult seminars is the
|
|
voice of the "non-traditional belief." Law enforcers declare themselves
|
|
experts in and give seminars on groups whose members they've never met.
|
|
They interpret signs and symbols of groups that may not even exist. The
|
|
scholar of comparative religion Gordon Melton has noted that, "The term
|
|
'cult' is a pejorative label used to describe certain religious groups
|
|
outside of the mainstream of Western religion."/20 Melton's approach to
|
|
surveying cults, which he has published in The Encyclopedia of American
|
|
Religions and Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America, prefers to remove
|
|
bias and terms other beliefs as "alternative religions." I refer you to
|
|
Melton for further discussion of cults, sects, churches, their definitions
|
|
and attributes.
|
|
|
|
Finally we reach the last level of satanic involvement, the real evil
|
|
meanies, the traditional satanists. These folks belong not to different
|
|
denominations of the same thing but rather to an international megacult
|
|
tightly organized in a clandestine hierarchy. Dale Griffis has been
|
|
selling law enforcers on the model of these people as driven by mind
|
|
control methods, slavishly participating in cult ceremonies including
|
|
sexual assault, mutilation, murder, to name the most important activities.
|
|
These satanists' belief in magic propels them to sacrifice people: they
|
|
release some primal energy force through killing which enriches the
|
|
participants. The abuse of children itself is a form of worship. While
|
|
these satanists use their own children for sacrifice, satanists sometimes
|
|
collect their lambs for slaughter at daycare centers. For example,
|
|
Lightfoot noted one daycare center at which parents dropped off their kids
|
|
at the start of the day, whereupon the daycare staff herded the kids onto
|
|
busses, took them to an airfield, flew them to a ceremonial site, used them
|
|
for rituals, sexually assaulted them and so on, then returned them to the
|
|
daycare center by the end of the day. The parents picked up their kids,
|
|
none the wiser.
|
|
|
|
Supposedly, then, we have much to fear from these satanists. Ex-
|
|
deputy sheriff Thomas Wedge, who makes a living giving cult seminars, says,
|
|
"It doesn't matter what you and I believe. It's what they believe that
|
|
makes them dangerous . . .For the first time, we in law enforcement are
|
|
dealing with something we can't shout at. . .can't handcuff."/21 Larry
|
|
Jones has echoed the same sentiment, even pointing out that Christian
|
|
police officers are particularly well qualified to confront the menace.
|
|
Cult officers say that the ranks of secret satanists boast the
|
|
intelligentsia of our society, hence the moneyed power behind the rituals.
|
|
Patricia Pulling, a mother whose son committed suicide which she attributes
|
|
to playing Dungeons and Dragons and who founded Bothered About Dungeons and
|
|
Dragons (BADD), maintains that satanic ranks include "doctors, lawyers,
|
|
clergymen, even police."/22
|
|
|
|
Despite this large-scale conspiracy, police still have uncovered no
|
|
evidence of cults' murderous activities. Police say that the lack of
|
|
evidence owes to the cults' success: cultists eat bodies or dispose of
|
|
them without a trace. FBI's Ken Lanning has pointed out many times that
|
|
human history cannot produce a single example of any large scale organized
|
|
murder (on the order of 50,000 human sacrifices a year, as some cult
|
|
officers claim) without someone breaking ranks sooner or later. No such
|
|
enterprise has ever existed, one that can commandeer so many people to
|
|
carry out for so long thousands and thousands of violent crimes. People in
|
|
any group change their minds, get jealous, build empires, develop
|
|
rivalries, disagree, ally themselves in factions. Why should satanists be
|
|
any different?
|
|
|
|
Cult officers cite two prime examples of the work of traditional
|
|
satanists: cult survivors' stories and child abuse cases. Cult survivors
|
|
are the offspring of satanic parents bred to a life of abuse and witnessed
|
|
murders. The prototype survivor is Michelle Smith who, with her
|
|
psychiatrist husband, Lawrence Pazder, wrote Michelle Remembers (l980). By
|
|
her own admission, Smith endured a rough, unhappy childhood with a violent,
|
|
alcoholic father. After years of psychotherapy with Pazder, a new story
|
|
emerged. Without prompting, Smith entered a trance in which she regressed
|
|
to a childhood persona. In that persona, she told of ceremonies she had
|
|
witnessed replete with black candles, black drapes, goblets, dismembered
|
|
bodies, sexual abuse, having dismembered baby limbs rubbed on her,
|
|
imprisonment in a snake-infested cage, confrontations with red spiders, and
|
|
watching satanists rend kittens with their teeth. And all of this through
|
|
the introduction of Michelle to satanism by her mother. Some curious loose
|
|
ends remain, though. Smith's father denied the incidents, Smith loved her
|
|
mother very much, as did her two sisters, not mentioned in the book, who
|
|
never witnessed any satanic involvement. One sister has been deeply
|
|
distressed at Smith's representation of her mother. Not mentioned either
|
|
was the Catholic Pazder's divorce, Smith's conversion as a Catholic and her
|
|
own divorce in order to marry Pazder, practices frowned upon by the
|
|
Catholic Church, yet the book extols Catholic ceremonies and ritual as a
|
|
way to combat Smith's terror./23
|
|
|
|
Nevertheless, Pazder reacts to the lurid stories of his patient thus:
|
|
"'I happen to believe you. . .for many reasons . . .but mostly for what I
|
|
feel with you. It feels real. . .I think the way you are expressing the
|
|
experience is very touching. It is authentic as an experience."/24
|
|
Remember, this is a psychiatrist's talk, not a police officer's. Feeling
|
|
the authenticity of Smith's experience may aid a physician's clinical work.
|
|
Police officers must approach such stories differently. Smith is cited as a
|
|
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) sufferer, a complex phenomenon that
|
|
afflicts some genuinely abused people, but not others. For a fuller
|
|
clinical description consult the DSM-IIIR, or Diagnostic and Statistical
|
|
Manual of Mental Disorders, third edition, revised, l987. Recent research
|
|
even reveals that distinct physiological changes accompany personality
|
|
changes in MPD sufferers. Such changes include rapidly appearing and
|
|
disappearing rashes, welts, scars, switches in handwriting and handedness,
|
|
allergies, vision changes and even color blindness. Such symptoms might
|
|
easily confuse and alarm an investigator.
|
|
|
|
The preoccupation of cult officers with MPD sufferers presents police
|
|
with some contradictions. On the one hand, police cite the growing number
|
|
of cult survivor stories and their sameness as evidence of the satanic
|
|
underground (that is, people who have never met telling identical tales).
|
|
Yet most MPD sufferers, usually young women, do not present verifiable
|
|
stories. None has yielded physical evidence of crime other than
|
|
physiological symptoms which are part and parcel of MPD anyway. Hypnosis
|
|
for police purposes produces no results. MPD sufferers can take years to
|
|
interview to ascertain even a few facts.
|
|
|
|
But another interpretation of cult survivors' claims can be offered.
|
|
As Ken Lanning has noted, he has been unable to find accounts by cult
|
|
survivors of Smith-like tales before the publication of her book. The mass
|
|
media have fanned Smith's experience through the tabloids and TV sets of
|
|
the world, supplemented by the slasher films and television shows that
|
|
produce quite creative and believable monsters. Some MPD sufferers
|
|
describe ceremonies and rituals that can only be traced to fiction since
|
|
many of them have no historic derivation.
|
|
|
|
Stories of ritual abuse (that is, abuse committed incidental to a
|
|
ritual as a form of propitiation, as cult officers use the term) present no
|
|
new phenomena, as folkorist Jan Harold Brunvand has described in his
|
|
popular books about urban legends, The Choking Doberman (l984) and The
|
|
Mexican Pet (l986). Stories of abduction and mutilation of children, plus
|
|
regular appearances of Satan pervade European and American history.
|
|
Brunvand describes urban legends as "believed oral narratives," though not
|
|
necessarily believed wholely by their narrators all of the time. Some
|
|
stories are rumor, or "plotless unverified reports" as opposed to the
|
|
legend, or the "traditional believed story." Most importantly, "urban
|
|
legends. . .often appear to be 'new' when they begin to spread, but even
|
|
the newest-sounding stories may have gone the rounds before. A 'new urban
|
|
legend,' then, may be merely a modern story told in a plausible manner by a
|
|
credible narrator to someone who hasn't heard the story before, at least
|
|
not recently enough to remember it."/25
|
|
|
|
One can find abundant folklore literature--particularly the
|
|
dictionaries of folkore motifs--which contain all the satanic stories that
|
|
appear in the cult seminars, folklore with a very long history. I'll give
|
|
an example of a recurring urban myth the spreading of which takes place
|
|
every few years. A spurious police circular found its way through South
|
|
Carolina a few years ago telling of an LSD-impregnated Mickey Mouse
|
|
transfer, thus endangering children./26 Without verifying the circular,
|
|
the Pendleton, South Carolina, Police Department warned the community about
|
|
the transfers. After the public sufficiently worried itself, someone
|
|
checked out the source and found it was bogus. The same story, with the
|
|
same anonymous police circular, recently traveled throughout New Jersey
|
|
alarming citizens and police./27
|
|
|
|
In some cases, police have tried to keep citizens from believing
|
|
macabre stories about garden variety violence. In Eloy, Arizona, a
|
|
murdered man turned up in a trash bin, having died of head injuries, his
|
|
throat slashed. Nevertheless, the police had been powerless to stem local
|
|
rumors which persisted in creating the story that the victim had his chest
|
|
opened up, his heart ripped out, his blood sucked./28 In Roanoke, high
|
|
school faculty and some law enforcers have perplexedly tried to locate a
|
|
gang of violent youths, The Posse, to whom students attribute much violence
|
|
and disruption, but the local police have begun to suspect that the gang
|
|
doesn't exist. The Roanoke County Sheriff said, "All you have to do is get
|
|
two kids talking at a table in the cafeteria. Two other kids at the next
|
|
table hear half the conversation, and a rumor is spread."/29
|
|
|
|
Sociologist David Bromley of Virginia Commonwealth University
|
|
classifies such tales into three categories, one of which is the subversion
|
|
myth where many satanic tales fit. These myths are "cautionary tales,"
|
|
stories that reveal tensions which "emanate most directly from pervasive
|
|
anxieties about dangers to children."/30 Another sociologist, Jeffrey
|
|
Victor, tracked down satanic rumors in western New York, stories which
|
|
became widespread and publically accepted, stories Victor likened to a
|
|
"collective nightmare." Throughout the region, rumors of cult meetings,
|
|
animal killings, ritual drinking of blood, and an impending sacrifice of a
|
|
"blond, blue-eyed virgin" reached a peak of hysteria on Friday the
|
|
thirteenth of May, l988./31 In this case, the Jamestown, New York, Police
|
|
Department acted with remarkable restraint and insight and even forestalled
|
|
a mob bent on vengeance. The police headed off a group of armed and angry
|
|
citizens that showed up at a rumored cult site. But another site, a
|
|
warehouse rumored to harbor cult meetings, received thousands of dollars in
|
|
damage.
|
|
|
|
I'll give you another example of the police response to myth and
|
|
hysteria. The Allenstown, New Hampshire, Police Department received
|
|
reports a few months ago that six cats had been found hanging from a tree,
|
|
a decapitated dog turned up nearby, and the sound of drums could be heard
|
|
in a state park at night. A woman walking her dog came upon what was
|
|
described as a makeshift altar supporting a carcass of a mutilated beaver.
|
|
The beaver had been skinned. Another beaver turned up, found upright
|
|
surrounded by stakes. The police decided to turn to cult officer Sandi
|
|
Gallant, San Francisco Police, for help, who--though in San Francisco and
|
|
unable to inspect the animals--interpreted the findings as indicative of
|
|
satanic rituals. Since the carcasses were found near May l, the cult
|
|
officer said that the recent Walpurgis Night, a satanic holiday, probably
|
|
stimulated the sacrifices. The sergeant in charge of the investigation
|
|
worried about these events, linking those who sacrificed animals to drug-
|
|
taking, listening to heavy metal music, a view confirmed by a local Baptist
|
|
minister who believed the devil responsible. The sergeant wanted to find
|
|
the satanic group behind this. Characteristically, he said, "Their freedom
|
|
of worship is protected. . .but we want to monitor them."/32 The next day,
|
|
the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader ran an editorial which stated,
|
|
"We have reached a sorry state of affairs when following the Devil is
|
|
defined as 'worship'. . ."/33
|
|
|
|
Within a few days, the mystery unravelled. In fact, no dead cats were
|
|
found in trees. The beavers were legally trapped in the state park. Other
|
|
dead animals reported by local residents were ones killed on the road and
|
|
stacked off the road for later pick-up./34 But even though the phenomena
|
|
turned out to be mundane, other law enforcers didn't remember the follow-up
|
|
news story but only the original news report. After the whole incident
|
|
passed from the headlines, the mayor of Manchester tried to ban the
|
|
appearance of a heavy metal band in town because they would stimulate more
|
|
incidents similar to what occurred in Allenstown, forgetting that the
|
|
Allenstown events had non-satanic explanations./35
|
|
|
|
In another incident, a few years back in Brown County, Indiana, a New
|
|
Age group called the Elf Lore Family (ELF) arranged to have a public
|
|
gathering at a public park. ELF posters around town mentioned camping,
|
|
feasts, dancing, "New Age workshops," "bardic tales and tunes," and other
|
|
similar events. Many of the organizers described themselves as witches and
|
|
even distributed "witchcraft fact sheets" to explain their beliefs./36 So
|
|
far, no problem. But by the ELF weekend gathering, a local church group
|
|
had planned a strategy to proselytize the ELFers, and the local sheriff's
|
|
department became involved through a deputy who had attended a cult seminar
|
|
given by two Indiana state police officers, self-proclaimed experts, who
|
|
had in turn received their information from cult consultant Dale Griffis.
|
|
Following the weekend, the local newspaper reported the event under the
|
|
title, "Satanic rites held at Yellowwood Forest," the article discussing
|
|
animal sacrifice, drinking blood in rituals, nude dancing, or dancing by
|
|
people in "devil-like costumes." Finally, the ELFers were seen eating "raw
|
|
flesh." The news reporter used one source for the article: the deputy
|
|
sheriff. Neither a local Baptist minister nor the park conservation
|
|
professionals nor the ELFers at all could corroborate the sacrifices, blood
|
|
drinking, nude dancing, or any of the other sensationalistic claims of the
|
|
local sheriff's department. The article dutifully noted, though, that
|
|
"[the sheriff's department] could not stop the satanic rites because of the
|
|
Constitutional right to freedom of religion that protected the
|
|
worshippers." But the ELFers are not satanic. The satanism was created by
|
|
the seminar-trained police who spent much time and effort watching the
|
|
ELFers simply because they were not Christians celebrating in a
|
|
conventional way. The sheriff's department, by feeding information to a
|
|
gullible journalist, created a new myth: the news article then becomes a
|
|
cult seminar handout proving that satanic activity is rampant in the USA.
|
|
An Indiana University folklorist who documented the event noted, "The
|
|
influence of second-hand opinions proved especially strong among the law
|
|
enforcement element." The preconceptions of the law enforcers colored
|
|
their perceptions of an innocuous camp-out, and thereby created a legend.
|
|
|
|
Thus far I have mentioned cult expert Dale Griffis in several
|
|
contexts. Although Griffis appears to act out of concern for improving law
|
|
enforcement's handling of bizarre crimes, and although he certainly earns
|
|
no big bucks on the lecture circuit, his effort misleads and confuses.
|
|
Griffis, a retired police captain, used the title, "Ph.D." and other cult
|
|
cops refer to him as "Doctor Griffis." In truth, Griffis holds a doctorate
|
|
from Columbia Pacific University in California, a non-accredited non-
|
|
resident campus that offers low-cost degrees with only several months of
|
|
effort (according to the CPU brochure and detailed by John Bear in How to
|
|
Get the Degree You Want, Ten Speed Press, l982, and by William J.
|
|
Halterman, The Complete Guide to Nontraditional Education, Facts on File,
|
|
New York, l983). Primarily, CPU offers credit for life experiences, the
|
|
type of institution currently under scrutiny by Senate Bill l90 in
|
|
California which aims to tighten licensing standards for such "diploma
|
|
mills" (detailed in Community Crime Prevention Digest for May, l989, p. 8).
|
|
Griffis's degree is in law enforcement, based on a doctoral thesis, Mind
|
|
Control Groups and Their Effects on the Objective of Law Enforcement, which
|
|
carries no date and is even signed by Griffis with his title, "Ph.D."
|
|
|
|
The dissertation reveals Griffis's cult pitch: almost a fourth of it
|
|
contains an ad misericordium argument that his message is grounded in
|
|
sincerity, fidelity to the police brother-and sisterhood, and concern for
|
|
our posterity. The following statement is typical: "I am a veteran member
|
|
of the 'Thin Blue Line'. that which lies between chaos and democracy" (p.
|
|
88). Griffis relies heavily on the work of Robert Jay Lifton (Thought
|
|
Reform and the Psychology of Totalism) to argue a priori that cults,
|
|
nebulously defined, deceptively recruit members, place them under control
|
|
of a charismatic leader, and direct members to commit crimes. To Griffis,
|
|
the link between the existence of cults and crime is also a priori.
|
|
Griffis even takes excursions into psychology with odd results: "Let it be
|
|
noted that a common factor among recruits is that a high percentage suffer
|
|
from sub-clinical depression" (p. 52). Griffis does not substantiate this
|
|
assertion, but as proof he offers that "recruiters carry out their
|
|
assignments with trained skills and precise detail. One only has to travel
|
|
through O'Hare Airport to see this in operation" (p. 53). Of the estimated
|
|
3000 cults in the USA (Griffis's estimate, not substantiated), he asserts
|
|
that "the interest, purpose, magnitude and ultimate goals differ from cult
|
|
to cult; however, all demand in common devotion, obedience, and ultimately,
|
|
submission" (p. 5l). Again, Griffis offers such statements repeatedly but
|
|
without substantiation, no critical review of pertinent literature on
|
|
cults, nor with any professional correspondence with academic experts. And
|
|
his dissertation has become his cult seminar platform. While the CPU
|
|
degree might academic standing somewhere, officers attending cult seminars
|
|
point to Griffis as the man with credentials in both worlds--the police
|
|
front line and the academy--to justify his role as cult ideologue.
|
|
|
|
I can't discuss myths and legends without referring to the Matamoros
|
|
drug killings. When the news accounts first appeared in early April
|
|
concerning the discovery of bodies on a Mexican ranch near the Texas
|
|
border, the Associated Press dubbed the killings "satanic." That adjective
|
|
graced many newspaper headlines for weeks. Now, information concerning the
|
|
murders continues to be ambiguous because we have depended on second- and
|
|
third-hand information about them. The Mexican police promptly placed
|
|
their suspects before cameras to tell gruesome tales. We do not know much
|
|
of the backgrounds of the murderers in the drug gang, but recent evidence
|
|
suggests that the drug leader, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, hobnobbed with
|
|
the Mexican city elite, providing drugs and limpias, or folk "cleansing
|
|
rites," recruited assistants from the northern Mexican prosperous families,
|
|
mostly young adults./37 Apparently, Constanzo did not employ the semi-
|
|
literate impoverished Mexicans from the northern part of their country, the
|
|
same type recruited for other criminal activities: gun and stolen vehicle
|
|
running and herding illegal aliens into the USA.
|
|
|
|
Where does the satanic label come from? Rex Springston, a reporter
|
|
for the Richmond News Leader, decided to trace the label. In talking to
|
|
the American investigators cited in the news releases, he learned that none
|
|
of them classified the murders as satanic. Only the Texas attorney
|
|
general's assistant responded that the attorney general might have used the
|
|
label early on. So officials don't view the killings as satanic. Officials
|
|
now think that most of the murders victimized rival drug dealers, not
|
|
innocent people snatched off the street. The drug gang leader, Constanzo,
|
|
according to current thinking, was a Charles Manson who gathered whatever
|
|
symbolism and ritual he could to intimidate rivals and his own lackeys. So
|
|
he invented his own symbology (not a belief system, which he did not
|
|
invent) to justify his behavior, to offer his workers protection which he
|
|
was in fact powerless to provide, to convince people to risk their lives to
|
|
become involved with drug dealing where the monetary rewards for most are
|
|
meager. Matamoros represents violence associated with the drug trade with
|
|
a hint of borrowed religious ritual, nothing more. No evidence exists--
|
|
insofar as details of the incident have been made public--of any
|
|
participation by Constanzo and his group in satanic activities, involvement
|
|
with a satanic organization, or human sacrifice to propitiate the devil.
|
|
By April l7, even the mass media had begun to focus on the incident as
|
|
drug-related, not satanic, almost one week after the first reports of the
|
|
killings./38
|
|
|
|
But although the Matamoros story is far from over, at least one local
|
|
police investigator still misrepresents the events, thus creating urban
|
|
myth. Detective Don Rimer, Virginia Beach Police, recently gave a seminar
|
|
citing the Matamoros killings as satanic. Rimer was quoted in the
|
|
newspapers as saying that the Matamoros killings "prove that human
|
|
sacrifices by Satanists are not simply 'urban myths.'"/39 "'Now, those
|
|
people who talked about the 'urban myth' and asked, 'Where are the bodies?'
|
|
are silent," the officer said to a citizens' group. Well, the Matamoros
|
|
business displaces nothing about urban myth, proves nothing about satanism,
|
|
and should be properly viewed in the context of Mexican border drug running
|
|
and its associated violence.
|
|
|
|
The central aspect of satanic crime which has seared the American
|
|
conscience is child abuse. Beginning with a daycare center in Manhattan
|
|
Beach, California and another in Jordan, Minnesota, in l983, stories of
|
|
ritual abuse of children in daycare centers has spread to over l00 American
|
|
cities. At the core of such stories, one finds stories by children. The
|
|
same stories, uncorroborated by physical evidence or adult testimony, have
|
|
resulted in indictments of innocent people, their careers forfeited to the
|
|
publicity. In the most comprehensive and critical examination of such
|
|
investigations to date (conducted by the Memphis, Tennessee, Commercial
|
|
Appeal), investigative journalists found that the system of prosecution
|
|
fostered the spread of unfounded allegations. One social worker observed,
|
|
"During the course of the investigation, virtually every name that was ever
|
|
mentioned became a suspect." Alarmed at the manner in which parents and
|
|
therapists prompted and rewarded children's testimony, a psychiatrist
|
|
commented, "If [the investigator] got a child to the point where they
|
|
believe [the child] helped kill a baby or eaten flesh, I want to know
|
|
whether you're a child abuser."/40
|
|
|
|
The Jordan case, for example, began with a single child's allegation
|
|
of molestation and quickly thereafter 60 children began to claim the same
|
|
abuse. The phenomena reported by the children included being bussed to
|
|
ceremonial sites, digging up coffins, dismembering bodies, being thrown
|
|
into shark pits, cooking and eating babies, nude photography, and having
|
|
foreign objects inserted into a rectum or vagina, performing oral sex on
|
|
daycare staff, and sacrificing animals. In the end, though, after heated
|
|
accusations, the FBI concluded that the children made up the stories of
|
|
murders and noted that the investigations had been so flawed that people
|
|
truly guilty of child molesting may have gone free.
|
|
|
|
So what has happened? Many states conduct trials unhampered by rules
|
|
of evidence that apply to adults: all states have dropped the requirement
|
|
that children's stories be corroborated by evidence or adults' testimony.
|
|
Therefore an opportunity develops to suggest the story to the child: their
|
|
stories evolve through coaxing until a coherent narrative emerges.
|
|
Psychiatrist and child therapist Dr. Lee Coleman has noted that
|
|
|
|
[i]n all too many cases, the interviews with the
|
|
children are horribly biased. The interviewers assume,
|
|
before talking with the child, that molestation has
|
|
taken place. The accused persons are assumed to be
|
|
guilty, and the thinly disguised purpose of the inter-
|
|
view is to get something out of the child to confirm
|
|
these suspicions. It is all too easy, with repeated
|
|
and leading and suggestive questions, to get a young
|
|
child so confused that he or she can't tell the
|
|
difference between fact and fantasy./41
|
|
Dr. Coleman provided the Commercial Appeal with the
|
|
|
|
|
|
following interview between a social worker and a four-year-old:
|
|
Interviewer: What's Miss Frances doing while children are in the other
|
|
room?
|
|
|
|
Child: I don't know.
|
|
|
|
Interviewer: Come here. . .I want to talk to you a second. (Boy's name),
|
|
you do know. Look at me. Look at me. You know about the secret. But
|
|
see, it's not a secret any more, because (another child) told us about it
|
|
and (another child) told us about it, and your parents want you to tell us.
|
|
. .You can be a very good boy and tell us about it. . .
|
|
|
|
Child: I don't know.
|
|
|
|
Interviewer: Yes, you do. [Later, near the end of the interview, the
|
|
social worker asks if the same things happened to the boy that were
|
|
reported by other children.)
|
|
|
|
Interviewer: She did it to you, too.
|
|
|
|
Child: No. She didn't do it to me.
|
|
|
|
Interviewer: It's not your fault, OK?
|
|
|
|
Child: She didn't do it to me.
|
|
|
|
Interviewer: Yes, she did; yes, she did (stroking the child's head).
|
|
|
|
Some therapists and counselors--and police officers--inject into these
|
|
cases an ideology that presumes that children don't lie about abuse. We
|
|
have even created aids to encourage and facilitate children's stories.
|
|
Anatomically-correct dolls have proven useful, but not exclusively so: the
|
|
dolls themselves can constitute leading questions by suggesting abuse, or
|
|
the dolls themselves may have bodies so disproportionate and bizarre that
|
|
children can't use them. And recently two psychologists have estimated
|
|
that "for every person correctly identified as a child sexual abuser
|
|
through such techniques, four to nine are incorrectly identified."/42 In
|
|
abuse cases, children may undergo up to fifty interviews, most by parents
|
|
and therapists even before the police become involved. Again, the same
|
|
parents or therapists feel that the children must be believed because they
|
|
have neither the experience nor vocabulary to talk about sexual
|
|
molestation. But the parents and therapists ask leading questions, offer
|
|
rewards, and refuse to accept children's denials that molestation occurred:
|
|
the kids are called "dumb" for not admitting to abuse.
|
|
|
|
Law enforcers must remember that they themselves and the therapists
|
|
pursue different goals in these investigations. Therapy overcomes trauma;
|
|
police investigate offenses for prosecution. Of danger to law enforcement,
|
|
one criminal justice academic noted that if in interviews, "children denied
|
|
victimization, then it was assumed they were concealing the truth, which
|
|
must be drawn out by some inducement or reinforcement. The therapeutic
|
|
process thus became an infallible generating mechanism for criminal
|
|
charges. . ."/43 Police must not simply believe the children; rather, as
|
|
FBI's Lanning urges, police must listen. Don't ignore the possibility of
|
|
bona fide molestation by losing a case in the pursuit of Satan.
|
|
|
|
So where do we stand? Child abuse does exist. Some people commit
|
|
violent crimes while invoking the power of Satan. Such people may act with
|
|
others. But law enforcers cannot demonstrate the existence of a widespread
|
|
satanic conspiracy: the evidence doesn't exist. No evidence links fantasy
|
|
role-playing games to teen suicides. No evidence supports the idea that
|
|
daycare workers subject children to abuse in propitiation of Satan. No
|
|
evidence exists supporting the literal truth of cult survivors' claims.
|
|
Officers can and should stick to the Constitutional basics: they
|
|
investigate irregular behavior based on a well-founded and legally-defined
|
|
reasonable suspicion; they arrest based on probable cause. No one expects
|
|
police to ignore pentagrams drawn in blood at a homicide scene: complete
|
|
documentation of crime scenes has always been the rule. But we have no
|
|
justification for carrying on unwarranted explorations of the beliefs of
|
|
the unpopular few, or from waving books at seminars and pronouncing them
|
|
dangerous.
|
|
|
|
Law enforcers have taken on the role of religious theorists. As
|
|
Gordon Melton observed sadly:
|
|
|
|
The Satanic literature has been carried almost
|
|
totally by the imaginative literature of non-
|
|
Satanists--primarily conservative Christians who
|
|
describe the practices in vivid detail in the
|
|
process of denouncing them./44
|
|
|
|
Law enforcers do have tools adequate to do their jobs, if not always the
|
|
money to buy them. Advances in criminal investigation from the Automated
|
|
Fingerprint Identification System or from DNA typing promise to
|
|
revolutionize the business. The FBI's serial crime psychological profiling
|
|
model incorporates, without the satanic bias, the proper questions to ask
|
|
to correlate a possible criminal ideology to ritualized (that is, committed
|
|
similarly on multiple occasions) violent crimes.
|
|
|
|
In short, law enforcers must remove the "cult" from cult crime and do
|
|
their jobs accordingly. Thank you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
References Cited
|
|
|
|
1/Bromley, David G., and Shupe, Anson D., Jr. The Tnevnoc Cult.
|
|
Sociological Analysis, 40(4): 36l-366. l979
|
|
|
|
2/Clark, J.R. The macabre faces of occult-related crime. Law Enforcement
|
|
News, XIV (279, 280). October 3l, November l5, l988.
|
|
|
|
3/Hyer, M. Blue Knights and the Black Art. The Washington Post, April l8,
|
|
l989.
|
|
|
|
4/Clark, op. cit. 5/File l8 Newsletter, IV (89-l), l989. 6/Lyons, Arthur.
|
|
Satan Wants You. The Mysterious Press, New York, l988, p. l49. 7/Kahaner,
|
|
Larry. Cults That Kill. Warner Books, New York, l988, p. l46.
|
|
|
|
8/Ibid., p. l48.
|
|
|
|
9/File l8 Newsletter, op cit.
|
|
|
|
10/ American Library Association, Office of Intellectual Freedom,
|
|
Memorandum, January/February, l988. 11/File l8 Newsletter, III (88-3),
|
|
l988, p. 7.
|
|
|
|
l2/LaVey, Anton. The Satanic Bible. Avon Books, New York, l969, p. 26.
|
|
|
|
l3/Crowley, Aleister. The Book of the Law. Samuel Weiser, Inc., York
|
|
Beach, Maine, l976 (reprint), p. 9.
|
|
l4/Lyons, p. lll.
|
|
|
|
l5/Moody, E.J. Magic therapy: an anthropological investigation of
|
|
contemporary Satanism. In I.I. Zaretsky and M.P. Leone (eds.), Religious
|
|
Movements in Contemporary America. Princeton University Press, New Jersey,
|
|
l974.
|
|
|
|
l6/Lyons, p. ll6.
|
|
|
|
l7/Barry, R. J. Satanism: The Law Enforcement Response. The National
|
|
Sheriff, XXXVIII (l): 39, l987.
|
|
|
|
l8/Smith, Lindsay E. and Walstad, Bruce A. Sting Shift. Street-Smart
|
|
Communications, Littleton, Colorado, l989, p. l04.
|
|
|
|
l9/Stackpole, Michael. Game Manufacturers' Association. Personal
|
|
communication, l988.
|
|
|
|
20/Melton, J. Gordon. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. Garland
|
|
Publishing Company, New York, l986, p.3.
|
|
|
|
21/Hyer, op. cit.
|
|
|
|
22/Briggs, E. Satanic cults said to entice teens with sex, drugs.
|
|
Richmond Times Dispatch, March 5, l988.
|
|
|
|
23/Things that go bump in Victoria. Maclean's, October 27, l980.
|
|
|
|
24/Smith, M. and L. Pazder. Michelle Remembers, Congdon and Lattes, Inc.,
|
|
New York, l980, p. l93-4.
|
|
|
|
25/Brunvand, Jan H. The Choking Doberman and Other "New Urban Legends" W.
|
|
W. Norton, New York, l984, p. 4-5.
|
|
|
|
26/Ibid., p. l62.
|
|
|
|
27/Kolata, G. Rumor of LSD-Tainted Tattoos Called Hoax, The New
|
|
York Times, December 9, l988.
|
|
|
|
28/Satanism reports mostly rumor, detectives say. Tucson Citizen
|
|
(Arizona), December l9, l988.
|
|
|
|
29/Hammack, L. Fears grow as rumors spread. Times and World News (Roanoke,
|
|
Virginia), November 25, l988.
|
|
|
|
30/Bromley, David. Folk Narratives and Deviance Construction: Cautionary
|
|
Tales as a Response to Structural Tensions in the Social Order. In C.
|
|
Sanders (ed.), Deviance and Popular Culture, in press, p. ll.
|
|
|
|
31/Victor, Jeffrey S. A Rumor-Panic About a Dangerous Satanic Cult in
|
|
Western New York. New York Folklore, XV (l-2): 23-49, l989.
|
|
|
|
32/Recounted in Noonan, Veronica. Satanic Cult Killed Animals in
|
|
Allenstown, Police Say, Union Leader (New Hampshire), May 3, l989.
|
|
|
|
33/Satanism in NH. Editorial in the Manchester Union Leader, May 4, l989.
|
|
|
|
34/Zitner, Aaron. N.H. police chief discounts alleged signs of cult
|
|
activity, The Boston Globe, May 5, l989.
|
|
|
|
35/Zitner, Aaron. Cult scare seen as overrated, The Boston Globe, May 28,
|
|
l989.
|
|
|
|
36/Guinee, William. Satanism in Yellowwood Forest: The Interdependence of
|
|
Antagonistic World Views. Indiana Folklore and Oral History, l6(l): l-30,
|
|
l987.
|
|
|
|
|
|
37/Miller, Marjorie, and Kennedy, J. Michael. Potent Mix of Ritual and
|
|
Charisma. Los Angeles Times, May l6. Also, Debbie Nathan, investigative
|
|
reporter, El Paso, l989.
|
|
|
|
38/Applebone, Peter. On North-South Line, Violence Grows, The New York
|
|
Times, April l7, l989.
|
|
|
|
39/Crocker, Bonnie. Detective warns of Satanism, Daily Press (Newport News,
|
|
Virginia), June l0, l989.
|
|
|
|
40/Charlier, T., and S. Downing. Justice Abused: A l980s Witch--Hunt, The
|
|
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee). Six-part series printed in
|
|
January, l988.
|
|
|
|
41/Coleman, L. Therapists are the real culprits in many child abuse cases,
|
|
Augustus, IX(6): 7-9, l986.
|
|
|
|
42/Moss, D.C. "Real" Dolls Too Suggestive. American Bar Association
|
|
Journal, December l, l988, p. 24-26.
|
|
|
|
43/Jenkins, P. Protecting Victims of Child Sexual Abuse: A Case for
|
|
Caution, The Prison Journal, Fall/Winter l988: 25-35.
|
|
|
|
44/Melton, p. 76.
|
|
|
|
- 3 0 -
|
|
|