(From Jan 1990 BASIS magazine. Info on BBS at (415) 648-8944)
(The following is a June 1988 excerpted article from the Richmond,
Virginia "News Leader".)
Cassandra Hoyer said she was being thrown to the ground by 30
Satanists when a woman drove by and stopped her car to help. "They
dragged her into the woods, hung her on a cross and sacrificed her
by fire," Ms. Hoyer alleged. Another time, Ms. Hoyer and a teenager
were harassed and dipped into vats of blood, she said. She claimed
that both rituals occurred in the summer of 1987 in a rural part
of Goochland County, Virginia, she said.
At the time, investigating Police found nothing -- no car, no
missing person report, not even a drop of blood from the vats, said
chief deputy Leslie Parrish. Does he believe the stories? "I'm a
little iffy on it," he said. Sue Bane says she has witnessed 50 to
70 human sacrifices by Satanists in the Richmond area. The most
recent occurred about six months ago in Henrico County when a baby
was sacrificed on an altar, then cut up into pieces, she said. The
police have found nothing.
Hoyer, 42, and Bane, 28, call themselves survivors of Satanic
cults. They are representative of hundreds of such "survivors"
across the country. Both have had intensive psychotherapy, and both
suffer from multiple-personality disorders, their psychiatrists
say. Neither has physical evidence to support her contentions.
"Survivors" across the country have told extremely similar stories
of torture and sacrifice without corroboration by physical
evidence, experts say. The stories -- given great play on talk
shows and in the mainstream press -- help feed the notion that
Satanic cults are conducting sacrifices with regularity across the
country. Many experts say that notion is a myth.
Two outspoken local advocates of the Satanic-conspiracy theory,
Richmond police Lt. Lawrence Haake and Hanover County private
investigator Patricia Pulling, say "survivors" are key sources of
their information. "People are saying the same thing all over the
country, and those people are totally unrelated to one another, but
what they say is consistent -- to me that is a degree of
credibility," said Haake.
Some mental health professionals say the survivor accounts are
simply delusions suffered by mentally disturbed people and passed
to the public as fact by unskeptical therapists, police officers
and news reporters. The delusions may be reactions to genuine, but
non-Satanic, abuse they received as children, experts say. "The
true cult is the people who believe in this," said Dr. Park Dietz,
a Newport Beach, CA forensic psychiatrist.
Ms. Hoyer, a toy-store cashier who was brought up in New England
and has lived in Richmond since 1980, has spoken in public meetings
and in news stories of being chased by a Satanic cult, being
repeatedly raped and being forced to witness two local sacrifices.
Her story was the basis for a January 1988 feature article in
"Style Weekly", a weekend newspaper insert. Mrs. Bane has spoken
about Satanism to Richmond police training groups, according to her
and Parrish. She is writing a book, "Freedom from Satan's Horror".
She revealed she had 17 personalities, and some of them wanted to
be in the cult. She said therapy and faith in God fused her 17
personalities into one. "I prayed, and through a miracle, I was
completely integrated," she said. Her husband, Nathan, a 35-year-
old plumber, said the whole thing had been a "nightmare." He said
he never saw the rituals; his wife would slip out at night to go
to them. Ms. Hoyer and Mrs. Bane said they began to realize they
were Satanic cult victims while undergoing psychotherapy in recent
years.
Adults are not the only ones to describe Satanic rituals. According
to officials, a dozen or more children in the Richmond area have
described them, as logged by various Virginia state and local
departments. The children reported -- or indicated through play and
passing comments -- seeing sacrifices, dismemberment and other
bloody rituals.
"They are not saying they witnessed it. They are talking about it
as if they know about it, and that's what makes us suspicious,"
said Bettie Kienast, a Social Service director. She said her
department had dealt with four such children in about four years.
The stories are consistent with unconfirmed reports from children
across the country. Many experts say the children may have picked
up the stories from adults or other children or even from movies
and other popular culture. The stories also may be fantasies or
false reports induced by leading questions, experts say. In some
cases, the children may have been victims of real but non-Satanic
abuse, or of abuse by pedophiles who use the trappings of Satanism
as a means of control, some experts say.
Kenneth Lanning, the FBI's chief expert on sex crimes against
children, has been consulted in more than 299 case involving
Satanic themes. He would not discuss specific cases but he said he
was aware of claims of sacrifice in the Richmond area. He said he
knows of no bona fide Satanic cult sacrifice -- not only in Central
Virginia, but nationwide. Regarding Mrs. Bane's story, Lanning
said, "It's unlikely that a group of individuals could come
together, commit 50 to 70 human sacrifices, and no one ever finds
any evidence, no mother of a (sacrificed) child ever has second
thought . . . nobody ever makes a mistake."
[Note the great similarity in reports of Satanic ritual and UFO
abduction reports.]
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: CfC Chicago * (708) 362-7875 [HST] (7000/11)
*** There is a reply. See #109.
From: Sysgod
To: All Msg #107, 08/11/91 03:47cst
Subject: CSER ON SATANISM I
CSER REPORTS ON SATANISM by Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.
(From Dec 89 BASIS - Downloaded from Skeptics BBS 415 648-8944)
For the last three years, I and several colleagues investigated
monstrous allegations of Satanic crime. What we found are pillars
of nonsense built on sand. Murderous cults of Devil worshipers are
modern folk legends and a few opportunists, bereaved parents and
religious fanatics have preyed on the public's imagination to
create a lucrative cottage industry of fear. What follows is a
press release describing our research. Copies of the 200-page
report are available for $10 plus $1.50 P&H from me at Box 466, El
Cerrito, CA, 94530.
Those who worry about a rising tide of Satanic crime in America are
giving the Devil much more than his due according to a report
issued today by the Committee for Scientific Examination of
Religion (CSER), a group of scientists and scholars dedicated to
the critical evaluation of religious claims.
"SATANISM IN AMERICA", compiled after three years of investigation,
finds some evidence of Satanic or "occult- related" criminal
activity in the United States, but cautions that its prevalence has
been grossly exaggerated by self-styled experts who have wasted
millions of tax dollars and countless thousands of police hours in
search of a conspiracy that isn't there.
In fact, according to CSER's study, a phalanx of Christian
fundamentalists, political extremists, bereaved parents,
opportunists, and several mentally unstable persons have combined
to form a lucrative "information industry" on occult-related crime.
The report asserts that public monies have been used to fund police
and law enforcement training seminars (often costing hundreds, and
sometimes thousands, of dollars), and the publication of dozens of
books and manuals, offering little more than "evangelism posing as
criminology." And all of this has happened despite the fact that
a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to be the
victim of a Satanic crime.
THE DEVIL WITH GERALDO
CSER decided to begin its investigation in 1986, shortly after its
widely publicized expose of fraudulent TV faith healers. Alarmed
by the nationwide Satanism scare, which had been fueled by
outrageous claims and sensational media coverage, the Committee
later focused much of its attention on an analysis of Geraldo
Rivera's special television presentation, "Devil Worship: Exposing
Satan's Underground," aired on the night of Oct. 25, 1988.
The report is sharply critical of the Rivera special, charging that
it was:
"SATANISM IN AMERICA" tells that "The Rivera report was misleading,
much of the information presented was inaccurate, and key facts
were omitted." And these facts, CSER contends, would have left the
viewing audience considerably less alarmed about the "threat" of
Satanism.
Says Dr. Shawn Carlson, the report's principal author, "Had Rivera
been a bit more even-handed in his treatment of the subject matter,
perhaps some of the hysteria could have been averted or avoided
altogether."
Carlson, a physicist and software engineer, points out that there
was at least one confirmed case of homicide associated with the
program. "Timothy Hughes of Altus, Oklahoma murdered his wife
immediately after watching Rivera's special," Carlson says,
"because he believed her to be part of the conspiracy."
"20/20" IN THE ACT
Carlson contends that since the airing of a special report on
Devil-worship on ABC's newsmagazine "20/20" in 1985, and the
continuing fascination of TV talk-shows and the press with
allegations of a Satanic conspiracy, numerous acts of violence have
been committed by vigilantes and arsonists across the country
against those suspected of Devil-worship. "A number of small
churches, including several Black churches, have been vandalized
and burned because of rumor-panics," says Carlson. "After the
Matamoros incident -- which had nothing to do with Satanism --
people in Pharr, Texas began to hear rumors that blond-haired,
blue-eyed children were to be ritually murdered in a little church
called the Church of Fire.
The church was destroyed in a mysterious blaze, and several of the
members were threatened with similar fates.
The same thing happened to a Black church in Illinois last winter."
Carlson points to a similar incident involving the producer of the
"20/20" segment on Devil-worship, Kenneth Wooden. "Wooden addressed
an audience of 200 people in Olean, New York last April on the
topic of Satanic crime, and told them that 25% of all unsolved
homicides were ritualistic in nature. That's one in four -- an
unbelievable number! There had been a rumor about Satanism
spreading in Jamestown, a nearby town. Asked about it, Wooden said,
`It doesn't surprise me . . . it can happen here.'"
"Two weeks later, the police had to stop a mob armed with knives
and clubs in Jamestown from converging on a wooded area. And a
local warehouse, used for punk rock concerts, sustained $4000 worth
of damage because several townspeople believed that a ritual
sacrifice was to occur there.
"Wooden's report for `20/20', as well as his comments in that
public meeting, were simply irresponsible," according to Carlson.
(Cont next message)
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: CfC Chicago * (708) 362-7875 [HST] (7000/11)
From: Sysgod
To: All Msg #108, 08/11/91 03:51cst
Subject: CSER ON SATANISM II
(Continued from last message)
(From Dec 89 BASIS - Downloaded from Skeptics B 415 648-8944)
MORE EXAGGERATION
The report claims that many of those making public allegations
about Satanic crime have exaggerated the extent of the problem
beyond reason. According to Carlson, "These people claim to know
who the cultist are, where they meet, and how they dispose of the
bodies of their victims. But unlike undercover police officers and
informants on organized crime, they are unable -- or unwilling --
to provide names, dates, places, or any other tangible evidence."
Carlson's charges are supported by many law enforcement officers
and criminologists, among them Kenneth Lanning of the FBI's
Behavioral Research Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Lanning, a
specialist on crimes involving children, has recently published an
article critical of the current Satanism scare in the October issue
of "Police Chief" magazine, and reprinted as an appendix in CSER's
report.
"SATANISM IN AMERICA" addresses the entire spectrum of claims
surrounding Satanism and occult crime -- child-abductions, ritual
abuse, human and animal sacrifices, women who purportedly offered
their own infants up for sacrifice, animal mutilations, the link
between Devil-worship and Heavy Metal music, and the phenomenon of
"backward masking." It concludes that most of the allegations made
over the last several years are baseless.
The report states that in the few instances where crimes with
undeniable Satanic overtones have occurred, "there is no evidence
to show that Satanism, per se, was responsible for the act. Nearly
every Satanic criminal had a history of anti-social behavior long
before he/she took up the trappings of Satanism. Satanism, in these
cases, appears as an expression of one's mental illness, and not
as the sole motivation for anti-social behavior. Satanism is a
symptom, not the cause."
According to Carlson, "Some of the people who are most public about
this issue make the silliest claims -- insisting that between
50,000 and two million children are ritually murdered each year by
Satanists. We know that this just isn't true. The FBI states that
they have fewer than 80 open files on children abducted by
strangers in any given year. And there were a total of 23,000
homicides in the U.S. last year, making the lowest sacrifice number
often offered by the conspiracy theorists TWICE the national murder
average for children and adults combined. The numbers offered by
the so-called experts simply don't add up."
"Far more children drown in our backyard pools than are killed by
cultists," Carlson argues. "In fact, last year 2,100 children were
murdered in the U.S. by their own parents! This means that children
are far more likely to be killed by their own father than by a
Devil-worshiper. If we want to help children, we should cover our
swimming pools and do something about child abuse, not waste
limited resources chasing after non-existent Devil-worshiping
conspiracies." According to the report, there have been over a
million violent crimes committed in the U.S. in the past five
years, fewer than one hundred of them involving Satanism or the
occult.
CHILD ABUSE
"I'm proud of the work we've done, especially in the area of child
abuse," says Gerald Larue, Emeritus professor of Religion at the
University of Southern California and co-author of "SATANISM IN
AMERICA". "The hysteria-mongers would have us exhaust our resources
going after a non-existent, nation-wide cult of Satanic child-
abusers. We must concentrate our efforts on finding the real
abusers and taking them off the streets, as well as providing help
for abused kids. We owe it to our children not to indulge ourselves
in hysteria in their names."
"Our investigation has shown that, in child-abuse cases,
allegations of Devil-worshiping conspiracies are phantoms of the
prosecutors' imagination and that juries tend not to convict when
such allegations are raised. I can't help but think that real
child-abusers may have been released from jails because some
prosecutors failed to concentrate on the abuse by getting carried
away with meager evidence of Satanic murders allegedly committed
during black masses and the like," adds Larue. "This panic is
hurting kids a lot more than its helping them."
--- TBBS v2.1/NM
* Origin: CfC Chicago * (708) 362-7875 [HST] (7000/11)
From: Vitriol
To: Sysgod, and All Msg #109, 15/11/91 20:11cst
Subject: Re: SATANIC 3-PARTER
-=> Sysgod sent a message to All on 11-08-91 02:41 <=-
-=> Re: SATANIC 3-PARTER <=-
S> SATANIST SURVIVORS by Rex Springston
Let's face it, folks, the time is ripe for a new WitchHunt. The
fundamentalist
opportunists are in a quandary: their way is on the way out, and they are
get-
ing desparate. Their former target, the "Godless Commies" are now our govern-
ment's allies, and they need a new scapegoat. At the same time, many of the
TV
preachers and their emulators see that money can be made by stirring up the
emotions of their followers.
So that means they need a new target. And that target must be one that they
feel is small enough to be (they think) no real threat to their power. So
guess who that ends up being?
A couple hundred years ago, all one had to do to ruin someone was to label
them
a witch or a devil-worshipper. A few decades ago, the epithet was "Commie".
Not long after that, it was expanded to include anti-war protestors and
"drug-
gies". Now it's "Satanist."
"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."
.. QUIF!
--- Blue Wave/QBBS v2.01 [NR]
* Origin: * ABySS BBS * Washington DC * (1:109/134.0)
