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NONE DARE CALL IT REASON:

Kids, Cults, and Common Sense







Robert Hicks/Law Enforcement Section Department of Criminal

Justice Services 805 E. Broad Street Richmond, Virginia 232l9

804-786-8421





Talk prepared for the Virginia Department for Children's l2th

Annual Legislative Forum, Roanoke, Virginia, September 22, 1989





In an article on satanic cults in Family Violence Bulletin published

by the University of Texas at Tyler, Dr. Paula Lundberg-Love writes of a

seminar she attended entitled "Ritualistic Child Abuse and Adolescent

Indoctrination." Quoting the seminar instructor, who is president of the

Cult Awareness Council in Houston, Lundberg-Love writes that "some satanic

cults are created for the expressed purposes of child prostitution or the

production of child pornography" and that "'religion' has proved to be a

good 'front' for organized child prostitution and pornography rings."

Perhaps more damning as a reflection on our collective impotence, she

points out that "in many states, ritualistic behavior is not against the

law" (l989: 9).



In recounting the amazing and startling facts she learned, Lundberg-

Love offers the following insight about how satanists ply their trade:



There are also individuals within the cult to whom

particular tasks are assigned. Transporters are the

people who take babies and ship them out-of-state.

Spotters have the task of looking for recruits or

objects. Breeders are, as their name implies, used

for the purposes of breeding. The production of

'snuff' films (films in which an individual is

actually killed) is associated with these persons.

[The seminar instructor] suggested that juveniles

may be being used to transport these films across

the border. (Ibid.)



I can only admire Houston's Cult Awareness Council for their shrewd

investigative work in uncovering the clandestine mechanics of a satanic

international conspiracy so slick and sophisticated that its members remain

faceless, having never been identified, and its murderous activities remain

covert because the satanists leave no traces of their nefarious

undertakings. Yet the Cult Awareness Council has produced a model of the

cult's activities that is specific and detailed. But, of course, we have

no evidence of satanic child prostitution, no evidence that women breed

babies for sacrifice, no one has ever found a snuff film. But Lundberg-

Love's article has credibility: the article's author is the associate

director of the Family Violence Research and Treatment Program at the

University of Texas, Tyler.



I suggest that Houston's Cult Awareness Council, intentionally or

perhaps, worse, unwittingly, has become a conduit for a farrago of half-

truths, unsupported generalizations, vague musings, hysteria, and downright

ignorance fostered in part by Fundamentalist Christian groups with the

willing collusion of police and the so-called helping professions.

Lundberg-Love, by reiterating satanic nonsense to other professionals, has

shown irresponsibility stirred by an inability to think critically. Or

drop the "critically": an inability to think underlies claims about women

who breed babies for satanic sacrifices, about children forced to witness

human sacrifice in daycare centers, about teenagers transformed into

zombies by playing Dungeons and Dragons.



More insidious from my point of view is her observation that satanic

cults operate under the guise of religion and thus deserve First Amendment

protection, therefore precluding legal retaliation against these evildoers.

This observation begs the question of necessity. In times of stress,

people seek to proscribe or criminalize behavior that they imagine

threatens the larger public good. We must curtail civil liberties, for

awhile, some say, because of an immediate necessity to do so. Threats of

immanent harm from our enemies necessitate an abrogation of certain rights.

Illicit drug use has reached such epidemic proportions that we must of

necessity unlock closed doors in the Fourth Amendment to allow police to

conduct intrusive searches otherwise prohibited by the Constitution. We

must of necessity allow the government more power to protect us from

outsiders. Satanism presents such a threat to us that we necessarily must

ban certain forms of rock music to protect our children, remove books on

witchcraft and the occult from school libraries, confiscate Dungeons and

Dragons books on school property.



I maintain that although satanic or occult symbols seem to be enjoying

popularity today among teens, their presence does not betoken a lost kid,

one in satan's thrall. Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell has observed,

"Rooted in adolescent resentment of authority, [kids use] the terms and

symbols of the occult to express cultural rebellion rather than personal

belief" (l986: 257). If today you came to hear lurid tales of children

participating in pornographic movies produced by satan's film unit or of

demons nabbing teenagers while playing Dungeons and Dragons and forced to

kill their families, I'm going to disappoint you. Most of you not only

work with children in the capacities of educators, therapists, law

enforcers, but you also assume the role of advocates for children's

welfare. I ask you not to relinquish any of those roles but I do ask that

you not relinquish your critical faculties, as Lundberg-Love has done,

whenever you hear the words "ritualisic," "satanic," "occult," or "cult."



Do not dissolve your gray matter and willingly adopt as immutable

truths such ideas as: children never lie about sexual abuse; teenagers who

are Girl or Boy Scouts, members of a church, or good students cannot do

nasty things, or if they do, someone or something made them do it. Or that

teens have so little free will that lurking satanists will deceive them

into attending sex and drug parties and thereby swear them in as card-

carrying minions of The Evil One. Or that teens have so little judgment

where fantasy is concerned that we must absolutely control all that they

read and hear.



In particular, question glib assertions made at cult awareness

seminars. Analyze the cause-effect relationships foisted on you. Question

cult experts' credentials. As for law enforcers, you will find that most

police cult experts derive their expertise from attending other cult

seminars. I recently spoke opposite a State Police officer who gave a

slide program on satanism but admitted that he had never investigated a

putative cult crime; his work, rather, involved accounting. You could have

invited another speaker here today, one who purports that teens are in

great danger of satanic or occult influence and that, in particular,

Dungeons and Dragons damages kids' psyches. Patricia A. Pulling, though,

who heads Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons (BADD), has no clinical

background, though parents frequently haul their misbehaving children

before her for an analysis of their satanic proclivities. She recently

represented herself at a Virginia cult seminar as being "a private

investigator with the state of Virginia" and noted that she had received

"innumerable degrees and awards." As far as I know, her innumerable

degrees extend to an AA from J. Sargent Reynolds Community College,

Richmond, but the private investigator business implies some association

with state government. In truth, she holds a state license to be a private

investigator, a pursuit requiring one week of classroom training. Period.

But beyond what she says, the publisher of her recent book, The

Devil's Web, refers to her as "a police detective." Such wishful

thinking smacks of dishonesty.



Yet popular speakers like Pat Pulling assert that 95 to l50 kids have

committed suicide related to playing Dungeons and Dragons. People at her

seminars nod sagely and gasp in astonishment that our government allows

such a game to exist. What is her proof of this assertion? In her

booklet, Dungeons and Dragons, she offers a series of newspaper clippings

to prove her point. In one, with no source cited, an Arlington, Texas, boy

killed himself with a shotgun in front of his drama class. The first

paragraph of the article notes that the boy "was a devotee of the fantasy

game Dungeons and Dragons and had a lead role in this weekend's school

play," an odd parallel comment, perhaps. An observation occurs further on

in the article that the boy enjoyed the game. But where is the causal

relationship? The article quotes the boys' friends as commenting on his

character, but no one quoted even links the game to the death. Yet this

article, for all its superficiality, counts as a statistical fatality (BADD

n.d.). And no one challenges this assertion at Pulling's seminars.



In The Devil's Web, Pulling defines Dungeons and Dragons as a "fantasy

role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape,

blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality,

prostitution, satanic type rituals, . . .and many other teachings. There

have been a number of deaths nationwide where [such games] were either the

decisive factor in adolescent suicide and murder, or played a major factor.

. .Since role-playing is used typically for behavior modification, it has

become apparent nationwide . . .that there is a great need to investigate

every aspect of a youngster's environment. . ." (l989: 179). Pulling

further states that fantasy role-playing games "are representative of the

many subtle ways in which occult influences can prey upon the minds of

children" (Ibid.: l02). But the game retails in images and symbols: kids

enact imaginary adventures through imaginary means, not by translating the

action to their everyday environment.



Pulling's main scare about D&D is that the game contains some bona

fide occult material, whatever that is. She seems to think that where game

designers use demons and monsters from the writings of medieval and late

l9th century English sources, that somehow the game takes on a pernicious

magic of its own. Pulling is alarmed at the nature of the demons and

monsters invoked by the game, but the monsters, often drawn from the

encyclopedia or from game designers' imaginations, bear no evil beyond what

people impute to them. If we bridle at D&D, then we must take offense at

the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a multitude of plastic toys found at

any shopping mall, comic books, Saturday morning TV, and the like. Demons,

monsters, creatures from space populate kids' imaginations and one easily

sees why: Star Trek, Star Wars, and like films ensure that space beings

take on an omnipresent reality, coupled with "legitimate" science.

Pulling also introduces a paradox and an insight: she claims that the

students most susceptible to falling within the spiraling path to hell are

bright boys with varied interests who may lack social skills. In other

words, nerds. The insight in all this focuses on the kids' interests. A

recent anthropological study of modern witches and magic in Britain

observed that many male adherents of magic groups had computer backgrounds,

an observation made by many people about D&D players (Luhrman l989: l06).

Anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann observes that these folks also read science

fiction in abundance. She speculates on why these people gravitate to

magic:



[S]everal possible explanations present themselves.

Perhaps the most important is that both magic and

computer science involve creating a world defined by

chosen rules, and playing within their limits. Both

in magic and in computer science words and symbols have

a power which most secular, modern endeavours deny them.

Those drawn to the symbol-rich rule-governed world of

computer science may be attracted by magic. . .One

reason that the fantasy games designed for the computer

may be so appealing may be because of the complexity of

the rules. Another explanation is the sense of mastery

and power when the machine obeys your dictates, which

may feel like the mastery of magic. . .The wizard commands

the material world, breaking the laws which seem to bind

it. (Ibid.: l07).



Massachusetts Institute of Technology sociologist S. Turkle has written at

length about young men's involvement with computers and D&D. I refer you

to The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, by S. Turkle, l984,

published by the MIT Press.



So Pulling scares parents by isolating from context specific rules

concerning particular demons, overlooking the game's intellectual

challenge: after all, since the game involves no board, players must rely

on imagery and imagination. If one removes the aura of a supernatural

netherworld from the game, and if one questions the shoddy evidence for the

game's links to teen murder and suicide, what is one left with? Just a

game. I make no apologies for ruining anyone's scapegoat for the world's

ills, if you do find the game scary. Quite possibly some people find the

game a mental accessory to a criminal propensity: but question closely any

convicted murderer who claims that D&D made him do it. Sociopaths need no

such justification, but when confined to prison cells contemplating a bleak

future, why not blame one's behavior on a game?



But back to Pulling's model of the D&D player. Those kids who are

intelligent with poor social skills simply defines the process of growing

up. By imbuing games with some supernatural taint, we deny kids their own

intelligence and ability to make choices. When the Pasadena, Texas, school

board decided to ban the l960's peace symbol from school property, they did

so because a cult seminar advised teachers that the symbol is satanic:

that interpretation derives from Christian publications that describe the

upside-down cross as a mockery of Christianity. How do the kids react?

One twelve-year-old said, "If they ban peace symbols, they'll have to ban

basic geometry because of all its lines and circles" (Time, July 3, l989).

These kids ain't fools: they usually separate faddish symbols from serious

evildoing. But if they know that the symbol offends some adults, what do

you suppose they'll do? A counselor at the Bon Air detention facility in

Richmond told me that rooms for kids come equipped with a Bible. One

teenager took one look at the Bible and challenged the counselor: he

demanded The Satanic Bible, the one published by Anton LaVey, founder of

the Church of Satan, in l969. Now, the counselor has been challenged: who

might win this little power struggle? If the counselor leaps back, makes

the sign of a cross, and in an hysterical voice cries out, "Get thee behind

me, Satan," guess who wins? In this case, the counselor blandly replied,

"Sure. I'll see what I can do. Tell me where I can find a copy." For

those of you who are worried about that response, I can only attribute your

worry to not having read The Satanic Bible. Read it and you'll agree with

religious scholar Gordon Melton who has referred to it as "assertiveness

training with a twist." The book does not even praise a supernatural devil

and instead relies on Satan's symbolic history in our culture. Further,

unlike parts of the Christian Bible, The Satanic Bible very explicitly

warns readers not to physically harm children nor anyone else.



I noted the influence of Fundamentalist Christianity on not only the

D&D ideology but on other aspects of the satanic cult bruhaha. Much of

what Pulling and cult cops and other self-proclaimed experts parley to

audiences comes from Christian sources. For example, the earliest

denigration of D&D I could come up with, from l980, says this:



Some endeavors offer a greater temptation for ego to

manifest itself in us, however. The next thing to

actual defeat of others and self-exaltation as rulers

over the vanquished is the voluntary, imaginary role-

playing that is offered by such games as Dungeons and

Dragons. . .It is not without knowledge that Dungeons

and Dragons was devised. But it is the knowledge of

an evil that mingled the Babylonian mystery religions

with a luke-warm 'Christianity.' (Dager l980)



The same thoughts have been conveyed to cult awareness audiences again

and again and again. I asked you earlier to sift such information,

question it, analyze it, and ask the credentials of these experts. Among

the books prominently displayed at cult seminars are two by Rebecca Brown,

MD, He Came to Set the Captives Free and Prepare for War. Ken Lanning, FBI

special agent who specializes in child sexual abuse investigations, raises

the issue of cult seminars not defining terms, using the "words satanic,

occult, and ritualistic" interchangeably (l989:4). Lanning particularly

cites Brown's contributions to this confusion as her "doorways" to demonic

infestation (to use Lanning's term) include horoscopes, vegetarianism,

yoga, biofeedback, homosexuality, fraternity oaths, along with the standard

fantasy role-playing games, Church of Satan, the Hare Krishna movement, and

so on. So who is Rebecca Brown and why does she wield authority? Her

title gets attention: she has appeared at seminars and on television, no

less. What's her background?



In l984, she was known as Ruth Bailey, MD, and she practiced medicine

in Indiana. That year, she lost her license. Medical examiners concluded

that she knowingly misdiagnosed such ailments as leukemia, various blood

diseases, and even brain tumors in patients who were not in fact suffering

from these problems. Bailey said that she had been "chosen by God" as the

only physician who could diagnose such maladies which were caused by

demons. And, further, other doctors could not diagnose these problems

because the doctors themselves were demons. As a result of these

diagnoses, she prescribed her patients with massive doses of Demerol and

the addicted patients had to undergo detoxification. Besides administering

drugs to patients, Bailey had another novel method up her sleeve: she

would "share" the patient's disease by injecting herself with "non-

therapeutic amounts" of Demerol, taking three cubic centimeters of the

stuff hourly, injecting it in the back of her hands or inside her thighs.

The psychiatrist who examined her said that she suffered from "acute

personality disorders including demonic delusions and/or paranoid

schizophrenia" (Medical Licensing Board of Indiana l984). She later moved

to California, changing her name to Rebecca Brown through a change-of-name

petition entered into the Superior Court, County of San Bernardino, in

l986. There are a few lessons here. Be careful not to accept facile

explanations of misbehavior at face value. Don't uncritically accept a

source because it has a Christian message.



By refusing to define "satanism," "occult," and "ritualistic," cult

experts can unleash these words to fit any social dilemma, misbehavior, or

human failing they wish. And they do. The lack of definition aids and

abets the conspiracy theory fanned by Pulling and the cult cops. These

cult cops take as evidence of a conspiracy the presence of like symbols

across the country. They further surmise that the presence of a spray-

painted inverted pentagram underside a bridge in San Francisco not only

means the same thing as one on a bridge in Norfolk but that some satanic

supramind, the international conspiracy has organized people to wreak havoc

on us all. This conspiracy, of course, supposedly recruits children, teens

especially. Pulling and the cult cops would have us suspend heaps of

disbelief to accept that the D&D player who peers into the occult through

game playing gets yanked by some mind-control cult into an abrupt

personality change characterized by violence and hate. No one wants to

consider other, more mundane explanations for personality changes and mood

swings, apparently. But in the face of a complete absence of evidence for

a conspiracy, some cult cops can find only feeble argument.



Take Idaho police officer Larry Jones, who authors the Cult Crime

Impact Network newsletter, a Fundamentalist-biased periodical widely read

by cult cops. In defense of the lack of evidence, Jones tosses the

question back: "'To people who say, prove to me these secret cults exist, I

say, prove they don't'" (Springston l989). To this inanity, I find the

reply easy: since my orientation to the cult scare concerns law

enforcement, a perspective Jones should share, I say that police officers

have no obligation to prove that the satanic mastercult doesn't exist.

Police officers operate under well-founded reasonable suspicion to look

into suspected wrongdoing, and they make arrests based on probable cause.

Both reasonable suspicion and probable cause have fairly precise

definitions supported by reams of case law. I can't prove that UFO's

exist, but just prove to me that they don't. I can't prove that termites

built the Great Pyramid, but just prove to me that they didn't. When

Richmond Bureau of Police Lieutenant Lawrence Haake was asked whether he

had any evidence of satanic sacrifices of people, he admitted he didn't but

added, "'No evidence can be evidence'" (Ibid.) Sure, perhaps, but no

evidence can also mean that none exists. Many cult cops have indeed

asserted that the lack of any evidence testifies to the satanic cult's

success at covering their tracks. Well, if you're backed into a corner, try

tossing skepticism back into the lap of the skeptic. Pulling maintains

that many unsolved homicides might be sacrificial victims and says, "'They

certainly have found a number of unsolved murders with no motive, haven't

they?'" (Ibid.) Some have gone unsolved, yes, but one cannot logically

conclude that satanists did them. But I almost forgot: these shifty

satanists, says Pulling, include the intelligentsia and power brokers of

our society, so we might as well cave in than resist (Briggs l988). Better

devil red than dead.



Which brings us back to definitions for a moment. A satanic

ritualistic killing, to the cult cops, ought to be defined as a killing

performed in propitiation of satan. We certainly have plenty of killers

around who claim a satanic motivation, but killers simply adopt an ideology

that justifies or explains what they would do in any case. The argument

that a true satanic killing would therefore implicate those mild, middle-

class, suburban engineers and doctors and lawyers simply vanishes upon

scrutiny: such folks haven't yet been arrested for these sacrifices. So

much for satanic crime. On to "occult." As Lanning points out, "Occult

means simply 'hidden,'" a term unconnected with crime, but used by cult

cops to refer "to the action or influence of supernatural powers. . .or an

interest in paranormal phenomena" (l989:5). But Lanning rails against the

use of "ritualistic," since folks who point fingers and yell "ritualistic!"

forget that ritual governs our lives in benign fashion. Again, Lanning:

"During law enforcement training conferences on this topic, ritualistic

almost always comes to mean satanic or at least spiritual. Ritual can

refer to a prescribed religious ceremony, but in its broader meaning refers

to any customarily repeated act or series of acts. The need to repeat

these acts can be cultural, sexual, or psychological as well as spiritual"

(Ibid.: 7). He concludes: "The most important point for the criminal

investigator is to realize that most ritualistic criminal behavior is not

motivated simply by satanic or religious ceremonies" (Ibid. 9). I refer

you to Lanning for an extended discussion of the word.



We've attached some meaning to "ritual," "occult," and "satanic

crime," so we're left with "cult." Definitions of the word depend on the

scholarly purposes they serve. But I have not been so concerned with the

academic treatment of the word, but rather its current connotation in cult

awareness seminars. I agree with Gordon Melton that "[t]he term 'cult' is

a pejorative label used to describe certain religious groups outside of the

mainstream of Western religion" (l986:3) The pejorative quality of the

label is borne out by the attributes heaped on cults by cult experts: that

cult members must swear obedience to the all-powerful leader, that cults

pursue ends that justify the means, that cults retain members through mind

control methods. This language has been pretty consistently applied to

nonconformists for a few centuries now. Rather, I agree with Melton that

"Cults represent a force of religious innovation within a culture" (Ibid.),

but Melton's social science approach to categorizing and studying cults

doesn't mesh with the cult seminar use of the term. In a very broad sense,

cults don't even have to be religious. Cult cops assume that two or more

kids who hang out together and wear upside down crosses, pentagrams, and

Ozzy Osborne buttons might be cult members. This kind of cult in former

days we called a clique. Now, we are to assume that such kids have gotten

sucked into a black hole of mind control, manipulation by satanic

recruiters, all unwarranted assumptions. But some cults we know to promote

violence. Let me name a few: The Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord;

The Christian Conservative Church of America; The Church of Christ of

Christian Aryan Nations (all described in Melton l986). Sorry, though: I

couldn't come up with any satanic groups which promote the militarism of

these Christian organizations.



More directly, when we allow cult seminar presenters to rant away

without defining their terms or by being explicit about what they know and

don't know, we play a dangerous game. Gordon Melton observes that when

people speak of "them" as satanic, or as an enemy, or as a criminal cult,

we thereby "express [our] contempt of others and . . .assign them a status

outside the realm of God's chosen, and hence of lesser worth, [which] is

the religious equivalent of secular terms such as 'nigger,' 'kike,' or

'wop'" (Ibid. 259). When the Matamoros murders hit the headlines, the

newspapers dubbed them "satanic," a term that disappeared within a week as

it became obvious to investigators that the murders had nothing to do with

satanic cults. But the labels that stuck involved foreign experiences such

as Palo Mayombe and Santeria, words most Americans heard for the first

time. But to dub the killings as Santeria or Palo Mayombe, drawn as

perverse cults by the press, amounts to impure and simple racism. What I

cannot understand is the Fundamentalist Christian diatribe against

nonChristian beliefs that have been tagged as cultic. As I have pointed

out, cult cops freely label groups as cults and therefore imply a threat to

one's free will. But as the historian Jeffrey Burton Russell has pointed

out, such people "claim that a belief in the Devil erodes human

responsibility, but Christianity has always insisted that the Devil has no

power to coerce or compel the human will" (l986: 300).



I hope I have forced your attention to the importance of developing

solid definitions for social problems. Precise definition provides the

best map through which to explore the phenomena of children's behavior.

But, of course, you know this. Simply don't forget it when cults enter the

fray. Imprecision and casual name-calling by cult awareness seminars has

led to severe consequences for both children and adult child advocates. I

would like to cite one example, one, unfortunately, which I stress is not

unique. But my example illustrates how the helping professions may ignore

suggestions of actual physical or mental abuse and instead pursue claims of

satanic goings on in daycare centers and in the process the counselors,

therapists, and police end up abusing children.



Since l983, the country witnessed the first of many cases of purported

satanic abuse of children in daycare centers, beginning with the McMartin

case in California, followed quickly by the Jordan, Minnesota case, and

they continue to happen. The best and most critical examination of such

cases appeared in a series of investigative reports published in a Memphis

newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, last year. Journalists Tom Charlier and

Shirley Downing found that these cases were "not really about ritual child

abuse at all. [They] are about the dangers of popular justice, a less-

than-skeptical press and the presumption of guilt" (l988). Over a hundred

cities have witnessed the same pattern: a single incident of alleged abuse

by a single child mushroomed into mass accusations of parents, daycare

center workers, and even prosecutors and police. The children's stories

which launched the cases were usually uncorroborated by physical evidence

or even adult testimony. Further, the nature of the prosecutory system

itself fanned the flames of accusation. By the time such cases entered

court, the news media greedily reported children's stories of devil

worship, nude dancing with daycare staff, varieties of sexual assault,

human and animal sacrifice, nude photography, bondage, drowning, cooking

and eating babies' limbs, and so on. And the investigators, who pursued

evidence of crime, acted as advocates by removing kids from their homes

before their parents had even been investigated, much less charged with

crimes.



Unfortunately, these stories reveal that prosecutors, allied with

parents, adopted as an unqualified truth the assertion that children don't

lie about abuse. Yet investigators asked children leading questions,

interviewed them as many as 50 times in some cases, refused to accept kids'

denials that satanic abuse took place, offered rewards or exerted pressure

to obtain correct testimony from them. One case, in Bakersfield,

California a few years ago, produced prison terms totalling 26l9 years for

seven defendants, which set a record (Mathews l989).



The Bakersfield case began in l984 when a girl reported to her mother

that two men had "touched" her in a peculiar way. Within a year's time,

the one allegation evolved into a sex abuse ring, satanic rituals, and

infanticide (what follows derives from a report of the Office of the

Attorney General, California, l986). Twenty-one children had been placed in

protective custody away from their homes. How did this happen?



Once removed from their homes, the children endured repeated

questioning by police, therapists, and welfare workers. Further, the

sheriff's department interviewed children in isolation while in protective

custody. Parents were arbitrarily arrested and released with no charges

filed. The deputies, most of whom had virtually no training in child abuse

matters (and had not even attended mandatory California inservice training

in the subject, although they found time to attend a satanic cult seminar),

simply deferred their questioning of children to a child protective

services worker, described as zealous for her unqualified belief that the

children maintained the truth under questioning. Yet the questioning

occurred repeatedly, even after the sheriff's deputies discussed the case

before church groups and evolved their own beliefs about what was

occurring. The deputies received virtually no supervision and no one

coordinated the efforts of the three agencies trying to investigate the

case. In all, l9 victims were interviewed l34 times. Searches yielded no

evidence of sexual abuse or satanic crime, yet the deputies did not follow

cues which required physical evidence gathering. For example, many kids

claimed to have been drugged during cult rituals, yet no one tested them

for drugs. Efforts to obtain any corroborative physical evidence were

feeble or nonexistent. Further, deputies did not even furnish verbatim

interviews with the children, instead simply paraphrasing the interviews

and offering in the transcripts unsupported conclusions.



Once in custody, kids mingled and had many opportunities to "cross

germinate" their stories. Very significantly, the child witnesses first

denied that their parents were involved in the satanic molestations, but

after repeated questioning under the direction of the zealous therapist,

children not only implicated their parents but also many investigators in

the case. The sheriff's deputies and the social worker conducted their

inquisition based on the premise that "children do not lie." This meant

that investigators took children's statements at face value and neglected

to do further corroborative work. The following interview took place

between a suspected parent-abuser and the social worker:



Social worker: Okay, ah. . .you know when children, when

children tell law enforcement or Child Protective Services. . .

Suspect: Uh huh.

SW: About somebody we believe children, okay.

S: Uh huh.

SW: Especially little, ah, would involve children but these are

just, you know, four, four, five and six-year olds. . .

S: Uh huh.

SW: Okay, and they don't have, they shouldn't have knowledge of

this stuff, they have a lot of knowledge, a lot of explicit

details, knowledge, they say cream was being used. . .lotion.

S: Have you seen, you know, TV nowadays though, the parents let

their kids watch.

SW: Okay, people often do accuse TV, but still children don't

fantasize about sexual abuse and they don't implicate their own

father.

S: Uh huh.

SW: Okay?

S: Uh huh.

Deputy: Let alone themselves.

SW: Yeah, let alone themselves, especially when they're, when

they are feeling so badly about and they know it's wrong.

S: Uh huh.

SW: Okay, it's just they, some you know, if they aren't gonna,

if they're mad at their dad and that's when they may say physical

abuse.

S: Uh huh.

SW: But, ah, they're not gonna say sexual.

S: Uh huh.

SW: It just doesn't happen.

S: Uh huh.

SW: So we, we do believe the children.

S: Uh huh.

SW: Okay, that you are involved.

S: Then no matter what I, what I say doesn't even matter then?

SW: Well, yeah of course it matters, but, but our stand is that

we believe the children.

S: Uh huh.

SW: At all cost, cause that's our job and that's, that's what

our belief is.



Quoting further from the California Attorney General's report of the

matter, "This dependence upon and deferment to staff of Child Protective

Services--who perform functions quite different from police officers in a

child abuse investigation--focused the interviews primarily on protecting

the child at the expense of investigating and determining the facts in the

case. While protecting the child was certainly critical, once that had

been assured the criminal investigation should have been the Sheriff's

deputies' primary concern."



Let's talk about the interviews with children for a moment. The

California Attorney general found that deputies departed from standard

interview practice and virtually ignored the complexities that obtain when

the person interviewed is a child. "Deputies generally did not question

the children's statements, and they responded positively or said something

to reinforce their previous allegations. . . They applied pressure on the

children to name additional suspects and victims, and questioned them with

inappropriate suggestions that produced the answers they were looking for."

Interviewers, both police and social workers, used leading and suggestive

questions, gave quite overt positive reinforcement when they received

answers they sought, rather than giving neutral responses. In some cases,

interviewers demanded answers; sometimes they threatened the children; in

other cases they confused them. A sample:



Interviewer: Okay, you said that they touched the privates before they

stabbed the baby? Did they take the clothes off the baby before they

stabbed the baby? Did they take the clothes off the baby when they touched

the privates? And then they had you go up and stab the baby? So, did the

baby--was the baby's clothes still off after they'd taken them off and you

had to stab the baby?



Answer: No.



And in a flagrant abuse of investigative technique, a deputy had wanted to

use an anatomically-detailed doll in an interview, but although deputies

had them on hand, they had no training in their use. So one deputy told a

child, "I forgot my dolly then you could point. You want to point on me?"



Let me point out that deputies did pursue the satanic claims, but

found alleged homicide victims alive; they searched lakes where bodies

supposedly were deposited and found none; in fact, they uncovered no

evidence to prove any satanic assertions. The satanic connection, by the

way, didn't even emerge in the case until after nine months of interviews

with the kids. One psychiatrist in another daycare center case observed of

the repeated interviews, "If [the investigator] get[s] a child to the point

where they believe they've helped kill a baby or eaten flesh, I want to

know whether you're a child abuser" (Charlier and Downing l988).



As two Pennsylvania State University criminal justice professors have

pointed out, "If children denied victimization, then it was assumed they

were concealing the truth, which must be drawn out by some inducement or

reinforcement. The therapeutic process thus became an infallible

generating mechanism for criminal charges," a remark made about the

McMartin case that applies to Bakersfield also. (Jenkins and Katkin l988:

30). Psychiatrist Lee Coleman, who with journalist Debbie Nathan is writing

a book about the daycare cases, adds that



The interviewers assume, before talking with the child,

that molestation has taken place. The accused persons

are assumed to be guilty, and the thinly disguised purpose

of the interview is to get something out of the child to

confirm these suspicions. It is all too easy, with

repeated and leading and suggestive questions, to get a

young child so confused that he or she can't tell the

difference between fact and fantasy. (l986: 8).



There are three great tragedies in all this: one, that real physical

or sexual abuse of a child will pass uninvestigated; two, that children are

abused by the criminal justice process, children who are victims of nothing

except not telling stories that investigators want to hear; third, that

innocent adults will have their lives ruined. One young imprisoned mother

in the Bakersfield case, whose children have been placed in foster care,

looks forward to freedom one day, but she does not want to be united with

her kids. She says, "'I'm scared of kids. I'm scared to death of kids. . .

I'm glad I can't have any more" (Mathews l989).



One might place the burden of blame for a shoddy investigation on the

sheriffs' deputies, since the law enforcers were charged with detecting

lawbreaking and arresting offenders. And, of course, seven women still

languish in prison. But what of therapists, psychiatrists, and

psychologists? Although the satanic nature of the daycare allegaions has

only recently begun to appear in professional literature, purportedly

scholarly studies have taken the satanic abuse claims quite uncritically.

The uncritical treatment of the subject is bound to influence other

professionals more prone to be convinced by tables of data with chi-square

tests than to question the data in the tables.



For example, Susan J. Kelly, R.N., Ph.D, Boston School of Nursing,

even elaborated a typology of ritual abuse (building on the work of family

violence expert David Finkelhor, of whom more in a moment) and discussed

satanic philosophy by noting its "fundamental tenet that followers have a

right to abundant and guilt-free sex of every description. Moreover,

because Christianity believes that children are special to God, satanism,

which negates Christianity, considers the desecration of children to be a

way of gaining victory over God" (l988: 229). This description of satanic

ideology amounts to pure dogma, perpetuated and elaborated by the cult

awareness seminars and the press. Like other therapists, Kelly imputes the

the cult presence surrounding child abuse to the usual mind control methods

employed against members and so on. No one, apparently, wants to consider

the proposition that some child abusers, who may go to elaborate and

imaginative lengths to intimidate children into not revealing the abuse,

may employ satanic trappings to do just that. Therapists such as Kelly

have also ignored the inquisitorial process that produces arrests and

convictions, as in the Bakersfield case, preferring not to confront the

issue of leading children to contrive satanic scenarios to please eager

investigators.



I find that David Finkelhor's latest book, Nursery Crimes: Sexual

Abuse in Daycare, not only perpetuates the satanic dogma but using

mathematical analyses of bad data, it emerges with a new class of offender.

The study examined cases in 270 daycare centers, but the cases had to be

"substantiated" before inclusion in the data. In order to be

substantiated, the study team had to find only one professional agency

associated with a case who believed that abuse occurred. And this study

swept up all of the much-publicized daycare center abuse cases such as

McMartin and even Bakersfield. So the study takes as a working assumption

that the allegations in the satanic ritual abuse cases are true. While the

study makes insightful remarks about child abuse and attempts a

comprehensive look at abuse, the victims, and the abusers, the inclusion of

the satanic cases renders the study yet more dogma masquerading as science.

I said that the skewed data created a new class of offenders. Every study

of child sexual abuse portrays offenders as almost exclusively men, usually

acting alone. The rare cases involving women usually find them complicit

as the consequence of involvement with a man: a boyfriend or husband, for

example. Yet the satanic ritual cases involving daycare centers have

almost entirely focused on the women running the centers. And the

allegations hold that women, entire daycare center staffs, ran satanic

parties replete with mass sex abuse, child pornography, and the like. I

should hope that the Bakersfield case suggests to you that other dynamics,

to use the social work term, govern the sensationalistic cases.

Nonetheless, Finkelhor and his colleagues pronounce that "Female

perpetrators were significantly more likely than men to have forced

children to sexually abuse others and to have participated in ritualistic,

mass abuse" (l988: 45).



In rather limp fashion, Finkelhor notes that the satanic allegations

have emerged in some daycare cases months after abuse investigations have

begun under some other pretext. Unlike some investigators who find the

delay evidence that children have been coached to tell such stories, he

holds that children may need months of therapy before finding the strength

to tell the satanic tales. But Finkelhor's conclusions present a mixed

bag. On the one hand, he singles out the marauding women, "We recommend

that parents, licensing, and law-enforcement officials be educated to view

females as potential sexual abusers" (Ibid.: 257) Yet he advises that we

"avoid a disproportionate focus on day-care abuse" because abuse in the

daycare setting amounts to a relatively small percentage of abuse overall.



The idea of pervasive satanic cults which influence and intimidate

children should not supplant a reasonable, cautious inquiry, for law

enforcers and therapists alike. Ironically, despite the cult seminars

which contrive images of the faceless, tenebrous evil that grips us from

the bowels of hell, the tentacles of demons wrapped around kids' necks, the

cult experts who teach the seminars often conclude with common-sense

advice. For example, Woman's Day magazine printed "A Parent's Primer on

Satanism" recently (l988). The primer noted that bright, bored,

underachieving, talented and even gifted teens are susceptible to cults.

Watch for kids exhibiting persone words mean to your child" (Ibid.). No matter what ill we
believe threatens our children--whether communists, satanists, The Beatles
or Twisted Sister--the advice is the same: don't panic; observe; listen; talk. Don't ignore satanic symbols or paraphernalia, but don't imbue them with cosmic significance, either. Rely on your professional experience and training to guide your rational inquiry about satan in teens' lives. Don't panic, and trust children, teens particularly, to behave responsibly most
of the time, and don't leap to satanic excuses to explain misbehavior.
Thank you.
.pa
Addendum: Investigation of Child Sexual Abuse Resources

Cult seminars sometimes suggest that women breed babies for sacrifice, that runaway or throwaway kids become sacrificial fodder. For a perspective on missing kids, consult "First Comprehensive Study of Missing Children in Progress," OJJDP Update on Research, April, l988. A related study is "Stranger Abduction Homicides of Children, OJJDP Juvenile Justice Bulletin, January, l989. Suggestions on new professional thinking for handling child sexual abuse cases can be found in "Prosecuting child sexual abuse--new approaches," by Debra Witcomb, Research in Action, National Institute of Justice, May l986 (reprinted from NIJ Reports/SNI l97. A related article, "Prosecution of Child Sexual Abuse: Innovations in Practice," appeared in
the NIJ Research in Brief, November, l985, also by Debra Witcomb. Perhaps
the best overall investigative guide is the l987 manual, Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse published by the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse. Some discussion of the problems associated
with anatomically-detailed dolls in child abuse investigations can be found
in "Using dolls to interview child victims: Legal concerns and interview procedures," NIJ Research in Action, by Kenneth R. Freeman and Terry Estrada-Mullaney, reprinted from NIJ Reports/SNI 207, January/February
l988. A review of the dolls' legal issues can be found in "'Real' Dolls
Too Suggestive," by Debra Cassens Moss, American Bar Association Journal, December l, l988. The ABA Journal also carried another article by Moss in
its May l, l987 issue, "Are the Children Lying?" which discussed the sensationalist daycare center cases.

References Cited

Antiwar or Antichrist? Time, July 3, l989.

B.A.D.D., Dungeons and Dragons, no date, Richmond, VA.

Briggs, E. Satanic cults said to entice teens with sex, drugs.
Richmond Times Dispatch, March 5, l988.

Charlier, Tom, and Downing. Shirley. Justice Abused: A l980s
Witch-Hunt. The Commercial Appeal, January, l988, Memphis. (six-
part series)

Coleman, Lee. Therapists are the real culprits in many child
sexual abuse cases. Augustus, l4 (6): 7-9, l986.

Dager, Albert J. A Media Spotlight Special Report: Dungeons and
Dragons. l980. Santa Ana, California.

Finkelhor, David; Williams, Linda M., Burns, Nanci. Nursery
Crimes: Sexual Abuse in Day Care. l988. Beverly Hills: Sage
Publications.

Jenkins, Philip, and Katkin, Daniel. Protecting Victims of Child
Sexual Abuse: A Case for Caution. The Prison Journal,
Fall/Winter l988: 25-35.

Kelley, Susan J. Ritualistic Abuse of Children: Dynamics and
Impact. Cultic Studies Journal 5(2): 228-236, l988.

Lanning, Kenneth V. Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law
Enforcement Perspective. Unpublished ms., l989. FBI Academy.

Luhrmann, T. M. Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic
in Contemporary England. l989. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.

Lundberg-Love, P. Update on Cults Part I: Satanic Cults.
Family Violence Bulletin 5(2): 9-l0, l989.

Mathews, Jay. In California, a Question of Abuse. The
Washington Post, May 3l, l989.

Medical Licensing Board of Indiana. Findings of Fact,
Conclusions of Law and Order, Cause #83MLD038 in the Matter of
Ruth Bailey, MD. Filed October 2, l984.

Melton, J. G. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. l986.
New York: Garland Publishing Company.

Office of the Attorney General. Report on the Kern County Child
Abuse Investigation. Sacramento, l986.

Pulling, Patricia A. The Devil's Web. l989. Lafayette, LA:
Huntington House, Inc.

Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the
Modern World. l986. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Springston, Rex. Experts say tales are bunk. (Two-part
article). The Richmond News Leader, April 6-7, l989.

A Parent's Primer on Satanism. Woman's Day, November 22, l988.

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