Message #7 board "P_Metaphysical (Mag Articles)"
Date : 22-Jan-93 15:57
From : Simon Novali
To   : All
Subj : Lanning (4 of 11)

children in a commune or cult constitute child abuse? Does the fact 
that any acts in question were performed with parental permission 
affect the nature of the crime? Many ritualistic acts, whether 
satanic or not, are simply not crimes. To open the Pandora's box of 
labeling child abuse as "ritualistic" simply because it involves a 
spiritual belief system means to apply the definition to all acts by 
all spiritual belief systems. The day may come when many in the 
forefront of concern about ritual abuse will regret they opened the 
box. 

When a victim describes and investigation corroborates what sounds 
like ritualistic activity. several possibilities must be considered. 
The ritualistic activity may be part of the excessive religiosity of 
mentally disturbed, even psychotic offenders. It may be a 
misunderstood part of sexual ritual. The ritualistic activity may be 
incidental to any real abuse. The offender may be involved in 
ritualistic activity with a child and also may be abusing a child, 
but one may have little or nothing to do with the other.

The offender may be deliberately engaging in ritualistic activity 
with a child as part of child abuse and exploitation. The 
motivation, however, may be not to indoctrinate the child into a 
belief system, but to lower the inhibitions of, control, manipulate, 
and/or confuse the child. In all the turmoil over this issue, it 
would be very effective strategy for any child molester deliberately 
to introduce ritualistic elements into his crime in order to confuse 
the child and therefore the criminal justice system. This would, 
however, make the activity M.O. and not ritual.

The ritualistic activity and the child abuse may be integral parts 
of some spiritual belief system. In that case the greatest risk is 
to the children of the practitioners. But this is true of all cults 
and religions, not just satanic cults. A high potential of abuse 
exists for any children raised in a group isolated from the 
mainstream of society, especially if the group has a charismatic 
leader whose orders are unquestioned and blindly obeyed by the 
members. Sex, money, and power are often the main motivations of the 
leaders of such cults.

-- c. WHAT MAKES A CRIME SATANIC, OCCULT, OR RITUALISTIC?

Some would answer that it is the offender's spiritual beliefs or 
membership in a cult or church. If that is the criterion, why not
label the crimes committed by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in 
the same way? Are the atrocities of Jim Jones in Guyana Christian 
crimes?

Some would answer that it is the presence of certain symbols in the 
possession or home of the perpetrator. What does it mean then to 
find a crucifix, Bible, or rosary in the possession or home of a 
bank robber, embezzler, child molester, or murderer? If different 
criminals possess the same symbols, are they necessarily part of one 
big conspiracy?

Others would answer that it is the presence of certain symbols such 
as pentagrams, inverted crosses, and 666 at the crime scene. What 
does it mean then to find a cross spray painted on a wall or carved 
into the body of a victim? What does it mean for a perpetrator, as 
in one recent case profiled by my Unit, to leave a Bible tied to his 
murder victim? What about the possibility that an offender 
deliberately left such symbols to make it look like a "satanic" 
crime?

Some would argue that it is the bizarreness or cruelness of the 
crime: body mutilation, amputation, drinking of blood, eating of 
flesh, use of urine or feces. Does this mean that all individuals 
involved in lust murder, sadism, vampirism, cannibalism, urophilia, 
and coprophilia are satanists or occult practitioners? What does 
this say about the bizarre crimes of psychotic killers such as Ed 
Gein or Richard Trenton Chase, both of whom mutilated their victims 
as part of their psychotic delusions? Can a crime that is not 
sexually deviant, bizarre, or exceptionally violent be satanic? Can 
white collar crime be satanic?

A few might even answer that it is the fact that the crime was 
committed on a date with satanic or occult significance (Halloween, 
May Eve, etc.) or the fact that the perpetrator claims that Satan 
told him to commit the crime. What does this mean for crimes 
committed on Thanksgiving or Christmas? What does this say about 
crimes committed by perpetrators who claim that God or Jesus told 
them to do it? One note of interest is the fact that in handout and 
reference material I have collected, the number of dates with 
satanic or occult significance ranges from 8 to 110. This is 
compounded by the fact that it is sometimes stated that satanists 
can celebrate these holidays on several days on either side of the 
official date or that the birthdays of practitioners can also be 
holidays. The exact names and exact dates of the holidays and the 
meaning of symbols listed may also vary depending on who prepared 
the material The handout material is often distributed without 
identifying the author or documenting the original source of the 
information. It is then frequently photocopied by attendees and 
passed on to other police officers with no one really knowing its 
validity or origin.

Most, however, would probably answer that what makes a crime 
satanic, occult, or ritualistic is the motivation for the crime. It 
is a crime that is spiritually motivated by a religious belief 
system. How then do we label the following true crimes?

-- Parents defy a court order and send their children to an 
unlicensed Christian school.

-- Parents refuse to send their children to any school because they 
are waiting for the second coming of Christ.

-- Parents beat their child to death because he or she will not 
follow their Christian belief.

-- Parents violate child labor laws because they believe the Bible
requires such work.

-- Individuals bomb an abortion clinic or kidnap the doctor because 
their religious belief system says abortion is murder.

-- A child molester reads the Bible to his victims in order to 
justify his sex acts with them.

-- Parents refuse life-saving medical treatment for a child because 
of their religious beliefs.

-- Parents starve and beat their child to death because their 
minister said the child was possessed by demonic spirits.

Some people would argue that the Christians who committed the above 
crimes misunderstood and distorted their religion while satanists 
who commit crimes are following theirs. But who decides what 
constitutes a misinterpretation of a religious belief system? The 
individuals who committed the above-described crimes, however 
misguided, believed that they were following their religion as they 
understood it. Religion was and is used to justify such social 
behavior as the Crusades, the Inquisition, Apartheid, segregation, 
and recent violence in Northern Ireland, India, Lebanon and Nigeria.

Who decides exactly what "satanists" believe? In this country, we 
cannot even agree on what Christians believe. At many law 
enforcement conferences The _Satanic Bible_ is used for this, and it 
is often contrasted or compared with the Judeo-Christian Bible. The 
_Satanic Bible_ is, in essence, a short paperback book written by 
one man, Anton LaVey, in 1969. To compare it to a book written by 
multiple authors over a period of thousands of years is ridiculous, 
even ignoring the possibility of Divine revelation in the Bible. 
What satanists believe certainly isn't limited to other people's 
interpretation of a few books. More importantly it is subject to 
some degree of interpretation by individual believers just as 
Christianity is. Many admitted "satanists" claim they do not even 
believe in God, the devil, or any supreme deity. The criminal 
behavior of one person claiming belief in a religion does not 
necessarily imply guilt or blame to others sharing that belief. In 
addition, simply claiming membership in a religion does not 
necessarily make you a member.

The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed 
by zealots in the name of God, Jesus, Mohammed, and other mainstream 
religion than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many 
people, including myself, don't like that statement, but the truth 
of it is undeniable. 

Although defining a crime as satanic, occult, or ritualistic would 
probably involve a combination of the criteria set forth above, I 
have been unable to clearly define such a crime. Each potential 
definition presents a different set of problems when measured 
against an objective, rational, and constitutional perspective. In a 
crime with multiple subjects, each offender may have a different 
motivation for the same crime. Whose motivation determines the label 
for the crime? It is difficult to count or track something you 
cannot even define.

I have discovered, however, that the facts of so-called "satanic 
crimes" are often significantly different from what is described st 
training conferences or in the media. The actual involvement of 
satanism or the occult in these cases usually turns out to be 
secondary, insignificant, or nonexistent. Occult or ritual crime 
surveys done by the states of Michigan (1990) and Virginia (1991) 
have only confirmed this "discovery". Some law enforcement officers, 
unable to find serious "satanic" crime in their communities, assume
they are just lucky or vigilant and the serious problems must be in 
other jurisdictions. The officers in the other jurisdictions, also 
unable find it, assume the same. 

5. MULTlDlMENSlONAL CHILD SEX RINGS

Sometime in early 1983 I was first contacted by a law enforcement 
agency for guidance in what was then thought to be an unusual case. 
The exact date of the contact is unknown because its significance 
was not recognized at the time. In the months and years that 
followed, I received more and more inquiries about "these kinds of 
cases". The requests for assistance came (and continue to come) from 
all over the United States. Many of the aspects of these cases 
varied, but there were also some commonalties. Early on, however, 
one particularly difficult and potentially significant issue began 
to emerge.

These cases involved and continue to involve unsubstantiated 
allegations of bizarre activity that are difficult either to prove 
or disprove. Many of the unsubstantiated allegations, however, do 
not seem to have occurred or even be possible. These cases seem to 
call into question the credibility of victims of child sexual abuse 
and exploitation. These are the most polarizing, frustrating, and 
baffling cases I have encountered in more than 18 years of studying 
the criminal aspects of deviant sexual behavior. I privately sought 
answers, but said nothing publicly about those cases until 1985.

In October 1984 the problems in investigating and prosecuting one of 
these cases in Jordan, Minnesota became publicly known. In February 
1985, at the FBI Academy, the FBI sponsored and I coordinated the 
first national seminar held to study "these kinds of cases". Later 
in 1985, similar conferences sponsored by other organizations were 
held in Washington, D.C.; Sacramento, California; and Chicago, 
Illinois. These cases have also been discussed at many recent 
regional and national conferences dealing with the sexual 
victimization of children and Multiple Personality Disorder. Few 
answers have come from these conferences. I continue to be contacted 
on these cases on a regular basis. Inquiries have been received from 
law enforcement officers, prosecutors, therapists, victims, families 
of victims, and the media from all over the United States and now 
foreign countries. I do not claim to understand completely all the 
dynamics of these cases. I continue to keep an open mind and to 
search for answers to the questions and solutions to the problems 
they pose. This discussion is based on my analysis of the several 
hundred of "these kinds of cases" on which I have consulted since 
1983.

-- a. DYNAMICS OF CASES.

What are "these kinds of cases"? They were and continue to be 
difficult to define. They all involve allegations of what sounds 
like child sexual abuse, but with a combination of some atypical 
dynamics. These cases seem to have the following four dynamics in 
common: (1) multiple young victims, (2) multiple offenders, (3) fear 
as the controlling tactic, and (4) bizarre or ritualistic activity.

---- (1) MULTIPLE YOUNG VICTIMS.

In almost all the cases the sexual abuse was alleged to have taken 
place or at least begun when the victims were between the ages of 
birth and six. This very young age may be an important key to 
understanding these cases. In addition the victims all described 
multiple children being abused. The numbers ranged from three or 
four to as many as several hundred victims.

---- (2) MULTIPLE OFFENDERS.

In almost all the cases the victims reported numerous offenders. The 
numbers ranged from two or three all the way up to dozens of 
offenders. In one recent case the victims alleged 400-500 offenders 
were involved. Interestingly many of the offenders (perhaps as many 
as 40-50 percent) were reported to be females. The multiple 
offenders were often family members and were described as being part 
of a cult, occult, or satanic group.

---- (3) FEAR AS CONTROLLING TACTIC.

Child molesters in general are able to maintain control and ensure 
the secrecy of their victims in a variety of ways. These include 


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 * Origin: The Northern Lights 916-729-0304 (1:203/444)
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