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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 "ritualistic," "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 endeavors 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 brouhaha.
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
personality changes or mood swings; kids who drop friends and favorite
activities in exchange for other activities and friends; who keep
secrets, particularly about new friends; receive erratic grades;
misbehave; wear satanic symbols on jewelry, T-shirts, and the like.
Now, if one removes the cult from all of this, one is left with teens
growing up, dealing with social pressures, handling puberty, running
at full tilt on massive doses of pizza and hormones. But what's a
parent to do? Woman's Day suggests not to panic; observe the child;
if the teen listens to rock music with offensive lyrics, listen to
what the child listens to. "If [the lyrics] disturb you, talk to him
or her about it. Ask what the 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.
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
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Dager, Albert J. A Media Spotlight Special Report: Dungeons and
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Finkelhor, David; Williams, Linda M., Burns, Nanci. Nursery
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Jenkins, Philip, and Katkin, Daniel. Protecting Victims of Child
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Medical Licensing Board of Indiana. Findings of Fact,
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Melton, J. G. Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America. l986.
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Pulling, Patricia A. The Devil's Web. l989. Lafayette, LA:
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Springston, Rex. Experts say tales are bunk. (Two-part
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