Satan's Overrated

"People who worry about a rising tide of Satanic crime in Ameri- ca are giving the Devil much more than his due." So says a re- port issued today by the Committee for Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER).

The results of a 2-year investigation into Satanism in America, the report finds some evidence of Satanic crime, but cautions that its prevalence has been vastly overstated.

"A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to be the victim of Satanic crime."

Alarmed by wide public acceptance of outrageous and unsupported claims of international Satanic conspiracies, CSER, a group of scientists and scholars dedicated to critical evaluation of religious claims, decided to investigate. Fresh from its ex- pose of fraudulent TV faith healers, CSER began its investiga- tion into Satanism in 1986. The report, originally scheduled to be released in April of 1989, was moved up to Halloween because of the recent Geraldo Rivera special "Devil Worship, Exposing Satan's Underground", which aired on NBC last Tuesday night.

The report sharply criticizes Rivera's special, charging that the program was "poorly researched", "sensational", and "highly irresponsible". "The Rivera report was misleading, much of the information presented was inaccurate, and key facts were omit- ted", facts that, CSER contends, would have left the audience considerably less alarmed about the threat of Satanism.

According to Shawn Carlson, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the report's principal author, the Geraldo Rivera special was typical of the sensational treatment given to this topic. Carlson contends that there is a growing myth of a national Satanic conspiracy, which has been fueled by so-called experts with a religious axe to grind, misinformed police offic- ers, and a gullible media easily lured into sensationalism. "The supposed experts tend to believe the allegations first and ask questions later. We've tried to systematically research what's happening in America to get a clear understanding of the problem. We want to stand out as a voice of reason in a field muddled by so much emotion and so many misconceptions", he said.

The report claims that many authors have exaggerated allega- tions of Satanic activity beyond reason. It is particularly true of allegations made by people who claim to have been deep- ly involved in Satanic cults, and who now tell their stories in books and on television. "These people claim to know who the cultists are, where they meet, how they dispose of the bodies of victims, but, unlike undercover police officers and Mafia informants, they are unable to provide names, dates, places, or any other tangible evidence."

The report addresses a whole slew of Satanic allegations: child abductions, ritual child abuse, ritual murder, animal mutilations, women who purportedly sacrifice their babies to Satan, and the relationship between Satanism and Heavy Metal rock music. It concludes that most of these allegations are baseless. The report states that in the few instances where crimes with undeniably Satanic elements have occurred, "there is no evidence to show that Satanism per se was responsible for the act. Nearly every Satanic criminal had a history of anti-social behavior long before he/she took up Satanic trap- pings. Satanism appears as an expression of one's mental ill- ness, not as the motivation for anti-social behavior. Satanism is a symptom, not the cause.

"I'm proud of the work we've done, especially in the area of child abuse" says Gerald Larue, Emeritus Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California and coauthor of the report. "The hysteria mongers would have us spend our resourc- es going after non-existent nation-wide cults of Satanic child abusers. We must concentrate our efforts on finding the real abusers and taking them off the streets, and getting abused kids the help they need. We owe it to our children not to indulge ourselves in hysteria in their name."

Carlson adds "We now know that the hysterical claims that thou- sands of children are being stolen off the streets and ritually murdered by these Satanists just aren't true. The FBI states that they have fewer than 80 open files on children abducted by strangers. At most, the Satanists could be responsible for only some fraction of these abductions. Your child is twenty times more likely to drown in a backyard pool. If you're real- ly concerned about your child's safety, buy a pool cover before you start going after Satanists."

CSER states that its investigation is still ongoing. It is still examining allegations of networks of Satanic groups, but claims that it can rule out any of the large-scale conspiracies postulated by other authors. "Some of these groups may communi- cate with each other, but the allegations of organizations and coordinated activity on a large scale just don't stand up", according to Larue.

In the past five years, there have been over one million violent crimes committed in the U.S. The report states that, according to police, only about 60 of these have involved Satanism.

Says Larue, "The worship of Satan does not appear to be a significant source of crime."