From: David.Rice@ofa123.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Religion & Crime / "Satanic Conspiracy"
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Sep 21 1992
Date: 26 Sep 92  18:03:08

<part 2 of 4>
*  The  handbook  was  a  product of the commission's Ritual Abuse Task
Force, whose job is to warn the public, therapists and  police  of  the
signs of  Satanic  abuse,  said Myra B. Riddell, taskforce chair.  Last
year, 7,500 copies were distributed in the United  States  and  Canada.
10,000 more were printed last month.
 
*  In  October,  the  Ritualistic  Crime  Task  Force,  an  information
clearinghouse in Rialto [CA] held a news conference  in  L.A.  to  warn
parents  that  devil-worshippers  were plotting to kidnap and sacrifice
trick-or-treaters on Hallowe'en.  None did.
 
* In 1988, when Geraldo Rivera devoted a program to  "Exposing  Satan's
Underground," 19.8  Million  homes  tuned in.  It was the highest-rated
documentary ever aired on NBC.
 
*  Organizations  give  law  enforcement  seminars  on  ritual   crime.
Speakers discuss everything from the game Dungeons and Dragons to human
sacrifice.   The privately funded Cult Crime Impact Network in Boise ID
(Recognize them?    They're  the  mo-fos  responsible  for  File  18!!!
--.\\<-H--) is   a  clearinghouse  on  supposed  Satanic  crimes.    It
publishes a newsletter with 2,000 subscribers --mostly, it says, police
officers.
 
* Two researchers at Texas A&M sampled  the  attitudes  of  153  police
officers  who  had  attended  a  seminar  on  cult  crime or subscribed
to...[File 18].  The consensus among those officers was  that  Satanism
is responsible for 1 out of 10 homicides and 1 in 3 teenage suicides.
 
No-one  has comprehensive statistics on the self-proclaimed "survivors"
of ritual abuse.  Believers and scoffers agree that their numbers reach
into the thousands.  Balodis said a support  group  she  started  hears
from at least 40 survivors a month.  She said she knows of at least 500
in L.A.
 
Sandi Bargioni  (nee  Gallant?    Anyone  know?) a San Francisco police
officer who specializes in ritual crime, said she has  received  scores
of  calls from women claiming to have been abused in Satanic rituals as
children.  Not one of the stories could be proved, she said, and she is
among the skeptics.
 
So is Kenneth Lanning, who works in the FBI's Behavioral  Science  unit
in  Quantico,  VA.  Considered  an expert in cult crime, he has advised
police departments on more than  300  cases,  many  involving  survivor
tales.
 
"In  the  early '80s, the first few times my phone rang, I was inclined
to believe it." he said.
 
Then the cases began piling up.  There were lots of reports  of  cults,
but no  bodies.    Lanning  said  airplanes with heat-seeking equipment
sought out mass graves on the theory that decomposing bodies would give
off heat.  No bodies were found.  Lanning stopped believing.
 
"What are the probabilities of this?" he asked. "Two or three people in
Southern CA may be able to do this a couple of times and get away  with
it."   But  when  all the claims of Satanic sacrifice were added up, it
amounted to thousands of people murdering thousands more. "It  was  the
totality of it that caused me concern."
 
The  stories  have  caught  the  attention  of  scholars  in mainstream
academic and medical circles.
 
Papers and workshops on claims of Satanic  abuse  have  been  given  at
conferences sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association and other
professional groups.
 
In  August,  a  session  of the APA convention in San Francisco will be
devoted to Satanic-cult claims.  The panel's chairman,  Philip  Shaver,
psychology professor at SUNY-Buffalo, said he does not know whether any
of the  claims  are  true.    He  adds: "I know it's being blown out of
proportion."  With a research grant, he  plans  to  study  100  Satanic
stories.
 
A  professional  organization  called the International Society for the
Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation has established  a  task
force on cult claims.
 
One member, George Ganaway, who teaches psychiatry at Emory University,
is  highly skeptical. "The likelihood is that this is going to turn out
to be urban legend, but I can't  say  for  sure.    I  certainly  don't
believe there is a Satanic cult conspiracy."
 
The  stories of survivors began appearing in the wake of the 1980 book,
"Michelle Remembers."  Written  by  self-proclaimed  survivor  Michelle
Smith  and  her  therapist,  it  describes  life in a Satanic cult that
supposedly operated in the 1950s.
 
One of the better known "survivors" is Lauren Stratford, a  middle-aged
San  Fernando  Valley [CA] woman who claims to have been turned over to
pornographers and Satanists by her parents.  She became a sensation  on
local  radio  and  television  talk shows after her 1988 book, "Satan's
Underground," described her experiences as a "breeder"  impregnated  by
Satanists to produce children for sacrifice. (Satan, being purely evil,
is said to prefer innocent victims.)
 
<continues next post. this was 2 of 4>

--- Maximus 2.00