From: Sysgod To: All Msg #106, 08/11/91 02:41cst Subject: SATANIC 3-PARTER * Original: FROM.....Dave Mullenix (100/519) * Original: TO.......The Bard Ii (114/29) * Forwarded by.......OPUS 114/29 SATANIST SURVIVORS by Rex Springston (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 * Original: FROM.....Dave Mullenix (100/519) * Original: TO.......The Bard Ii (114/29) * Forwarded by.......OPUS 114/29 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: - poorly researched. - sensational. - highly irresponsible. "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 * Original: FROM.....Dave Mullenix (100/519) * Original: TO.......The Bard Ii (114/29) * Forwarded by.......OPUS 114/29 (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)