The handbook was a product of the commission's Ritual Abuse Task Force, whose job is to warn the public, therapists and the police of the signs of satanic abuse, said Myra B. Riddell, the task force chairwoman. Last year 7,500 copies were distributed in the United States and Canada. Ten thousand more were printed in March. There is a private agency in the Southern California city of Rialto called the Ritualistic Crime Task Force, an information clearinghouse. Organizations give law enforcement seminars on ritualistic crime.
Speakers discuss everything from the game Dungeons and Dragons to human sacrifice.
The privately funded Cult Crime Impact Network in Boise, Idaho, is a clearinghouse on supposed Satanic crimes. The consensus among the officers was that Satanism is responsible for one in 10 homicides and one in three teen suicides. But believers and scoffers agree that there are thousands. She said that she knows of at least 500 in Los Angeles. Sandi Bargioni, a San Francisco police officer who specializes in ritualistic crime, said that she has received scores of calls from women claiming to have been satanically abused as children.