Another caused scores of Jamestown, New York citizens to arm themselves with clubs and scour the forests for a chimerical band of Satanists. Illinois, Louisiana, Idaho, and Texas have outlawed violence committed during a religious ritual. 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, task force chairman. Last year 7,500 copies were distributed in the United States and Canada. Ten thousand more were printed last month.
Organizations give law-enforcement seminars on ritualistic crime.
The privately-funded Cult Crime Impact Network in Boise, Idaho is a clearinghouse on supposed Satanic crimes. It publishes a newsletter with 2,000 subscribers - mostly, it says, police officers. The consensus among officers was that Satanism is responsible for one in ten homicides and one in three suicides by teen-agers. Believers and scoffers agree that their numbers reach into the thousands. Balodis said a support group she started hears from at least 40 new survivors a month.