“The Saskatchewan man at the centre of a malicious prosecution case says he respects the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada dismissing his lawsuit but still believes the Crown lawyer acted inappropriately. Richard Klassen led a lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution after he and others were accused of incredible acts of sexual abuse against children in the early 1990s. The children told police that they had been sexually abused and forced into satanic rituals including the mutilation and killing of animals, dismemberment of babies and drinking of human blood. None of the stories were true and the children later admitted they had lied.”

The overturning of the previous judgment against Crown prosecutor Matthew Miazga is seen by some as a protective act by the Supreme Court, freeing many prosecutors of the worry that they could be liable if their “professional judgment” ends up convicting an innocent man or woman.

“Every precaution possible should be taken to prevent the prosecution of innocent people, but prosecutors must be allowed to exercise professional judgment without fear of personal liability when they are doing their jobs…”

Despite the government and courts circling their wagons to protect prosecutors with obviously poor “professional judgment”, this has ultimately been a victory for Richard Klassen and the other plaintiffs who sought to clear their names. They not only received high-profile vindication of their innocence on multiple occasions, but they did win their initial malice trial, and the Canadian government has paid out over two million dollars in settlement to Klassen and the others.

“Klassen said he was satisfied to have another set of judges re-affirm his innocence. “I didn’t lose anything here,” he said. “I’ve already won. They paid me, they gave me back my dignity.” In 2004, the Saskatchewan government negotiated a settlement with Klassen and the other plaintiffs to acknowledge the accused had suffered from the false accusations … He added that the long struggle to clear his name was worthwhile. “It was worth it for me,” he said. “I couldn’t live with this. I would have killed myself a long time ago.”"

In contrast, many of the American victims of Satanic panic are lucky to simply have their freedom, and some still don’t have that. Despite the court clearing the prosecutor of malice, the story reaffirms just how badly justice and law enforcement faltered during the moral panic that imprisoned so many. It is a reminder to those that would see this time come again, or create some new scape-goat, that not all of their potential victims will be content to hide away broken while allowing such madness to thrive. This court case involved cops, lawyers, and therapists, but we are all responsible in seeing that this sort of hysteria never rises again.

For those interested in finding out more about the Klassen SRA case Religious Tolerance has a nice time-line and overview.

“When 17-year-old Shaun Derusha informed his mother that he would be unable to return to Purvis High School until she met with his principal, Denise DeSadier thought he was joking.  She had received neither letter nor phone call indicating any sort of misbehavior from her son. Such would have been the “proper” procedure for any institution purveying the attainment of education, but DeSadier agreed to have a conference with the involved administrators at her son’s school in hopes of reinstating her son’s place. Her son explained to her that he had no idea what was going on, that he’d been called out of one of his classes by the administrators and a security guard to have his backpack rummaged through and personal questions about particular parts of his lifestyle fired at him.  He failed to realize how serious the situation was until he found himself suspended under the suspicion that he’d threatened the life of some of the students by way of demon possession.  “It was believed that he planned on summoning demons to attack select students at the high school,” his mother told me. DeSadier left the conference feeling her son had been severely wronged due to the fact that he and their family are practicing witches.”

Denise DeSadier was not allowed to read the accusations made against her son that got him suspended, and their veracity was seemingly never questioned by the principle (who assured a reporter from the local college paper that the matter was investigated fully) . Further, Shaun was forced to undergo an evaluation of his mental stability before being allowed to return to class, and this incident was placed in his permanent record, marking him as some sort of potential safety risk. Short of pursuing a lawsuit against the school, or dropping out altogether, there is no recourse for these accusations that have marred Shaun’s record.  Wishing only to finish high-school and move on to college, Shaun has jumped through the necessary hoops, and wants to move on with his life.

“Shaun just wants to graduate and move on in life. He won’t move because he feels that then they [discriminators, instigators, and those who are very close-minded] win. And he won’t give them that satisfaction.”

Looking from the outside it seems obvious that hostilities against the openly Pagan family in a small predominantly Christian town ended up trickling down from the adults to their children, who staged their own personal witch-trial in miniature, complete with unquestioned spectral evidence (threatened demon-attack) the accused was not allowed to rebut. Let’s just hope that the mob has been satisfied that the Witches were sufficiently chastened, after all, it wouldn’t be hard at all for students to abuse the school’s completely anonymous online reporting tool in order to cause more troubled for the young man. Normally I would call on my readers to flood principal Ace Bryant with letters of protest, but respecting the wishes of the family who just want to get on with their lives, I’ll say instead that anyone living in Mississippi who isn’t a Christian should stay far, far, away from Purvis High, lest they fall afoul of a system that privileges the majority.

“Coakley did not prosecute the case, which was already under way when she joined the office as an assistant district attorney in 1986. But years later, after the day-care abuse hysteria had subsided and she had won the office’s top job, she worked to keep the convicted “ringleader,” Gerald Amirault, behind bars despite widespread doubts that a crime had been committed … the convictions won by the Middlesex DA in the Fells Acres case have not borne up well. By today’s standards, the prosecution of the Amirault family, who owned and operated the day-care center in Malden, Mass., looks like a master class in battling witchcraft.”

It looked like “battling witchcraft” because these “ritual abuse” (aka “Satanic abuse” or “organized abuse”) cases often hinged on rumours and false testimony of an imaginary network of underground Satanic sex and abuse-cults. Children were often prodded and coaxed into false testimony, much of which is recanted when those same children grow up, and many innocent men and women spent years, sometimes decades, of their lives behind bars. In the instance of the Fells Acres case, children were interviewed by nurse and SRA true-believer Susan J. Kelley, who elicited flatly implausible testimony about sex with bladed implements and “clowns” in “magic rooms” from children that a judge later called “improper” and “biased”.

“The evidence in this case is nothing short of overwhelming with improper interviewing techniques. The bias toward the Amiraults by investigators and interviewers from the beginning. Parental and other family influences. All of it leading to these tragic results.”

Despite the mounting evidence that this case was handled improperly, and that it was very likely the Amirault family were innocent of the charges brought against them, Coakley stubbornly refused to revisit the case. As D.A. she opposed parole for the family despite many lawyers thinking this was a “travesty” of justice, and she made strange conditions for the release of Cheryl Amirault LeFave.

“Coakley had previously allowed Gerald’s sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, to be released from prison on the curious condition that she not submit to television or film interviews. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, who championed the Amiraults’ case in a series of articles and in a book, Coakley also requested that the Amiraults’ attorney, James Sultan, who was negotiating Cheryl’s release, stop representing Gerald, which would have further crippled Gerald’s appeals for freedom.”

These conditions, and this case, has made some Democrats uneasy about her candidacy, and seems to be causing her supporters to close ranks on the issue. As for Coakley, she defends her decisions regarding the case, saying she feels the Amirault family were indeed guilty.

“Based on my own extensive experience with child abuse investigations and cases, and my thorough review of all the evidence, including that which is often taken out of context and deemed “exculpatory,” I also believe the convictions were sound, and that he received a fair trial. It is for all of the above reasons that I, as Middlesex District Attorney, opposed his commutation, and I stand by that decision to this day.”

One wonders if this is a case of not wanting to admit to a mistake, access to some sort of mysterious insider knowledge that several lawyers, reporters, judges, and parole boards don’t have, or if Coakley is (like the judge that oversaw Gerald Amirault’s trial) an SRA true-believer. I sincerely hope it isn’t the latter, because if we see a revival of “Satanic Panic” in America, the last thing we need is a Senator willing to craft laws that will throw even more innocent people in jail based almost solely on improperly gathered testimony and hysteria.

“…despite the fact that there has been not a shred of credible, physical, forensic evidence to substantiate the existence of Satanic ritual abuse, anywhere in the world, there is still an international network of zealots hell-bent on reviving and spreading the myth. For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s the believers quietly went to ground. There was a backlash here and in the US … Believers stopped talking about Satanic or ritual abuse and instead started using the terms organised or extreme abuse … there is now a growing and dangerous fight back in the form of books and conferences featuring speakers defiantly and proudly proclaiming the existence of “ritual abuse” and how to treat “survivors”.”

A quick look at Amazon reveals that SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) “survivors” are still writing memoirs, and two books seemingly aimed at mental health and law enforcement professionals interested in SRA cases (“Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century” and  “Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder”) were published in 2008. If the Satanic panics are making a come-back we all know what could happen next, a moral panic that will see innocent men and women jailed, sometimes for decades. Creating a situation where Pagans and occultists will have to watch their backs.

“In the United States, Canada, and Europe, people have reported being ritually abused under the banner of satanism, Christianity, various pagan and pantheistic belief systems, white supremacy movements, nazism, Santeria, voodoo, etc. At the present time, satanism is either the most common ideology under which ritual abuse is practiced or it is receiving the most attention.”

Remember, the last time this exploded into the mainstream even Oprah jumped on the Satanic Panic bandwagon (something I don’t think she ever apologized for). How do these Satan panic peddlers stay afloat when the inevitable backlashes happen and the light of truth and reason shines on their money-making schemes? One has only to look the extensive underground network of conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals who are still convinced that Satan is not only a spiritual adversary, a personification of evil, but has “troops on the ground” as it were.

“A month ago I was with my wife and two other ladies in the car, including one who was formerly a witch but now a full on born-again Christian. In fact I have personally cast out many demonic spirits out of her. She told us that one of her friend’s (who also was a witch) father was a high priest in the coven. When she was a small girl, he told her that he had a surprise for her birthday. He blind folded her and told her to cut the cake. After cutting, her blind fold was removed and she was horrified to see that she had cut through the neck of a baby. Could this be happening in Australia?? Yes, it is.”

The non-stop culture of “spiritual warfare” against imaginary Satanic “witches” and “warlocks” inevitably leads to spiritual (and sometimes physical) action against real-live Witches and ultimately the horrors of false accusation for owning the wrong books, listening to the wrong kind of music, or practicing the wrong religion. You may think it would never happen to you, but if the police ever search your home after a false accusation of “Satanic abuse”, what will they find on your bookshelf?

“If they came for you tomorrow, innocent or not, what would your bookshelf tell the world about you? Go and have a glance now, and ponder whether those volumes you’ve accumulated really are the possessions of an innocent person…”

The best way to combat this hysteria ever reaching the mainstream again is to be as out and open as possible. To be visible, outspoken, and unafraid of the “mainstream”. This doesn’t mean we have to lose the mysteries central to some of our faiths, but that  we must constantly dispel the shadows of rumor and gossip so we can combat the lies with reason. To engage with the media and press on our own terms so that never again will another innocent man or woman be jailed or put on trial by a “spiritual warrior”, unscrupulous therapist, “occult expert”, or child (grown or not) who’s imagination has been warped and led astray.

“Sword killer Morne Harmse may not have been a practising satanist, but he was dabbling in the occult.  This was according to satanism expert Dr Kobus Jonker, who testified this morning in the pre-sentencing hearing of the teenager who went on the rampage with a ninja sword at his school last year, killing a fellow pupil.  He took the stand as the expert witness called by the court.  Jonker, a retired policeman, said he had established the police’s occult-related crimes unit after being told to look into the issue by former minister of law and order Adriaan Vlok.  Between 1981 and 2000, Jonker investigated hundreds of occult-related crimes and testified in 30 to 40 murder cases. This earned him several nicknames, including “Donker Jonker”, “The Hound of God” and “God’s Detective”. His unit was disbanded after human rights groups claimed that it was not constitutional in a country that guaranteed religious freedom.”

If that names seems familiar, it’s because Jonker was essentially the face of “Satanic Panic” in South Africa. Jonker and his now-disbanded “Occult Related Crimes Unit” essentially spread Christian propaganda regarding the “occult” and “Satanism” under the auspices of law enforcement. Jonker and his group  were also profiled by Kerr Cuhulain, who pointed out the many troubling aspects to the (mis)information this unit was spreading. So what did this “expert” have to say about Harmse? That he wasn’t a Satanic murderer because he didn’t fit his almost comical list of stereotypes.

“Dr Kobus Jonker, testified that although Harmse had been experimenting with Satanism and witchcraft, his involvement in such practices was superficial … Jonker said certain items and rituals typically present in a Satanic murder were absent in Harmse’s case … the bedding and curtains in Harmse’s bedroom were coloured, whereas a practising Satanist would have had only black or red. There were also no blood smears or animal parts found in his bedroom … candle wax found on the ouija board under his bed was white, pink and yellow, whereas a Satanist would have used only black and red candles … Jonker said that on the day of the murder, Harmse had not spoken in any demonic language…”

What demonic language exactly? Backwards Latin? What? That Jonker was allowed to peddle this nonsense at a high-profile murder trial mocks the entire proceeding. The family of the murdered boy and the family of Harmse have to sit and listen while this man prates on about black and red candles? He and the judge that allowed this should be ashamed. A judgement on sentencing is expected by September 10th, let’s hope that decision is aided by real expert/clinical analysis and not the imagination of a born-again Satan-hunter.

“The incident came just days after the Guardian received an anonymous email claiming Satanists were worshiping in Knutsford … Deer are said to be used in satanic rituals as sacrificial animals. It is also believed their skins are used as cloaks and headdresses during devil worship rituals.”

Naturally, actual Satanists objected to being portrayed as maniac deer-beheaders. In that same article, tucked away at the very end, the most likely scenario is reported.

“However, last week it emerged the killing could have been a failed attempt at poaching. A man who attended the scene, but would not be named, said the criminals appeared to have gutted the young stag to prepare it for sale.”

But you see, “bungling poachers” doesn’t have the same zing to it as some mythical occult underground in Knutsford. Some moron trying to make some money by poaching just doesn’t excite the audience. It’s a farce disguised as journalism, a scary puppet-show that can lead to “Satanic Panics” and ruin people’s lives.

The Aquarian Tabernacle Church (a Wiccan tradition/church) has sent out a press release concerning new developments regarding the Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary. The online school is getting a makeover, and gaining a new vice-president and administrator.

“The Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary, given degree granting authority by Washington state in 1999, is having a face lift this spring … In addition, WSTS proudly announces the appointment of Kirk White as interim Vice President and Administrator of the Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary. White, a well known Wiccan author and respected High Priest, is co-founder of the National Association of Pagan Schools and Seminaries, a past co-National First Officer of Covenant of the Goddess, North America’s oldest and largest association of Witches and Wiccans. White also founded and served for 10 years as President of Cherry Hill Seminary. In 2006, Wildhunt.org named him one of the “25 most influential modern living Pagans today”. Since 2007 he has served as a consultant to new and established Pagan seminaries across the United States and we are pleased to have him working with us.”

Bringing Kirk White onboard seems like a move for WSTS to gain some more credibility as a Pagan seminary, though that might be hampered by the fact that the school’s dean is Belladonna “Wife Swap” Thompson. It should also be noted that “degree granting authority” isn’t the same thing as accreditation. So always check to see who exactly your teachers are, and what qualifications they have to be teaching you the subject at hand. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am on the BOD of Cherry Hill Seminary, but I have no particular animus or rivalry with WSTS.

When is “witchcraft” our “Witchcraft”? By that I mean, what do journalists and authors like Bob Morgan mean when they say a young woman was kidnapped and initiated by a “a coven of witches”? A South Alabama paper reports on the e-publication of a book by one of their reporters concerning a young woman who claims to have been held hostage for years by a Californian “coven” called “The Brotherhood”.

“At the age of 15, Nikki Russo checked into a California hospital for treatment of an eating disorder. It was in this hospital that she was eventually abducted by a nurse, initiated into a coven of witches and thrown into a dark world filled with drugs, alcohol, abuse and intimidation. Nikki Russo hopes The Pomegranate Seed will be a warning to readers not to take anything for granted where cherished institutions are concerned. Today, Russo’s story and struggle to recovery is chronicled in the new book The Pomegranate Seed — Nikki Russo’s Sojourn Through Institutional Failure and the World of the Occult.”

Morgan is apparently sensitive to accusations of “Satanic Panic” since he first reported on Nikki Russo, and claims that the book is filled with legal documents and depositions. However, neither the initial 2007 report by Morgan, or the 2009 piece on his subsequent book, goes into any detail as to what exactly this “Brotherhood” was practicing, and how they are linked with California’s occult community. This lack of detail is all explained as a way to honor the victim, but it also denies us any clear notion as to what this group was. I have no doubt that Russo was abused if she says she was, I’m just skeptical concerning how “witchy” these “witches” were.

World of Wonder shares with us some “homo history” in the form of ancient examples of same-sex marriage.

As Africa was the birthplace of civilization it should come as no surprise to find that the earliest known reference to same-sex marriage in history can also be found there. Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were royal manicurists in the court of Pharaoh Niuserre during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty. The artwork in their tomb leaves no doubt that they were viewed as a couple. The men are depicted in near constant embrace. They are shown with their noses touching (the most intimate embrace permitted in Egyptian art of the time, a form of kissing). Even their names speak to the intensity of their bond. When the names Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are put together, it translates into “joined in life and joined in death.”

Just goes to show you that there is nothing new under the sun, and that different cultures and times had different reactions to same-sex relations. To claim a singular constant for legal and social public bonds is myopic at best and revisionist at worst.

I understand that some people don’t like Barack Obama, but the intense white-hot loony anger he invokes in some people is just plain amusing (when it isn’t frightening). A recent letter published in a Virginia newspaper now compares our “Marxist” president with Pagan hero Julian the Apostate!

“God has given America her very own 21st century ‘Julian the Apostate’, better known as the Marxist, Barack Obama. Now before any of Obama’s supporters hastily come to his defense, consider the fact that his ideologies are blatantly Marxist, yet, he is not alone in his Marxist tendencies … If the reports of Obama’s Marxist passion were not enough to wake up the Christian community to the fearful danger of a ‘Julian Administration’, the issues of abortion and homosexuality should have made it crystal clear that professing Christians should not accept such an individual as the leader of America. The community of Christendom should have rejected such a blasphemer out of hand. Yet, for the sake of party, race, historical precedence or simply a hatred for the prior administration, those Christians professing allegiance to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe have grossly erred in their judgment, and along with hypocrites, heathens and traitors are responsible for destroying the roots of traditional American Christianity … At the outset of the Obama administration, a vicious war was declared against both Christ and all those that call themselves by His Name. Even now many of those Christians who supported him initially are finding themselves the target of his wrath. His goal is, and always was, the eradication of Christianity through government policies aimed at solidifying a Marxist, Totalitarian, immoral Statist order. This is nothing short of fascism.”

Ah! I love the smell of paranoid conspiracy theories in the morning, it smells like victory. Somehow I doubt Obama is going to “eradicate” Christianity, but if paranoid pastors keep invoking Flavius Claudius Julianus, they may not like what his spirit (once called) will do. This is the fellow who wrote “Against the Gallileans” after all.

In a final note, since yesterday was Earth Day plenty of reporters were out looking for a religious angle. These ranged from those who interviewed Pagans about their connection to the Earth, to snarky bloggers mocking right-wing hysteria that Earth Day was a conspiracy to get red-blooded Christian Americans to start worshipping Gaia.

“Earth Day, Green Week, Global Warming, Cap and Trade, Radical Environmentalism, Gaiaism. These and similar beliefs are rapidly becoming a state sponsored religion. This is a worldwide religion, not just an American movement. The end goal of this religion is to halt the industrial and economic advance of man, and to make man subserviant to Gaia, the earth as a living super-organism: Earth as God.”

I can’t believe our super-secret conspiracy to slowly re-paganize the Earth has been discovered! Curses! Foiled again! How will we ever spread our plans for a worldwide religion based on a living super-organism now!

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

“Yet this doesn’t explain why witch hunting keeps taking the same form every time, with only mild variations. Why, in particular, is it almost always targeted at women? … Demos [author of "The Enemy Within"] believes there is a primal reason for this. “A mother—a woman—is the primal Other, the nonself from which the self is progressively distinguished; further, she disposes a kind of absolute power to meet, or reject, infantile need,” he writes. “As such, she retains forever afterward an aura of what a discerning psychologist has called ‘magically formidable’ qualities.” So when we begin to suspect all-powerful dark forces, we suspect women first—because our mothers once held all-encompassing powers over us.”

So perhaps the two sides arguing over who exactly were killed during the European witch-hunts are both (to differing extents) right. There most likely wasn’t a surviving witch-cult dating to before the advent of Christianity, but perhaps women were especially targeted because on some level they became representatives of the primal mother. A communal subconscious rebellion against a dark Creatrix who they blamed for their suffering and torment. So the Mother (and her young offspring) must be cleansed and destroyed. Of course Hari points out a far simpler reason for why women were targeted, they were easy prey.

“I think this misses a starker and simpler explanation. Women are generally weaker than men. They are less able to defend themselves from braying mobs. They are easier to pin down and turn into a screaming, denying receptacle of evil. The mobs usually choose the weakest women of all—old women and little girls.”

Hari’s article ends with the “Satanic Panic” and “Satanic Ritual Abuse” madness of the 1980s (a madness we are still feeling the ramifications of) as proof that it can still happen in advanced and “rational” America. Indeed, Hari references former VP candidate Sarah Palin’s interactions with self-proclaimed “witch-hunter” Thomas Muthee as proof that this madness never fully goes away (it can be of little coincidence that Palin’s Third-Wave pals, with their anti-goddess rhetoric get along so well with a man who lies/brags about terrorizing women). That example, and the (so-far) isolated cases of witch-related abuse here on our own shores, should keep us ever vigilant (especially when it is very dangerous to be a “witch” in a recession). We must, as Hari writes, in times of hysteria and panic demand hard evidence and settle for nothing less.

“…the hysteria will happen again. We don’t know yet who the victims are, but they are out there, oblivious. There is an enemy within—dormant in our own fragile minds and emerging with paranoid intensity at times of stress. Our only antidote is to insist on evidence. Whenever there are charges against a person or group, we must ask insistently: How do we know? Show me the proof. Show me three times. Show me 10.”

A reoccurring question at The Wild Hunt has been: “why should Pagans care about witch-hunts in Africa or the Middle-East”? While I have argued (somewhat pragmatically) that as modern Pagans and Witches spread around the globe, we will have no choice but become a factor in places that are persecuting “witches” (as is already happening in India and South Africa), there is another possible answer emerging. That all witch-hunts are connected by a common thread of fear and hatred, and if they aren’t addressed and stopped by the forces of tolerance and rationality, they become like a virus spreading beyond the “host” community.

I certainly don’t agree with everything Starhawk says, but she does have a point that modern Pagan Witches have chosen to reclaim the label “witch” for themselves. It is folly to think the African or Middle-East witch-hunts will forever stay safely away from the “real” Witches in America, Europe, or Australia, or that when it is exported it will be forever contained in immigrant communities. Someday, if we continue to insist that women and children being killed as “witches” if faraway lands isn’t a “Pagan” problem, we might wake up to find our own communities poisoned by a need to find “the other” within their own ranks. What better place for the panicked and hysterical to look than the increasingly public and “out” community of self-proclaimed “Witches”?

“Fran and Danny Keller were each convicted of sexually assaulting Christina Chaviers, and each was sentenced to 48 years in prison. For the Kellers, now 58 and 68, respectively, it was effectively a life sentence. They’ve since come up for parole, but neither will acknowledge the remorse that is a requirement of release – after 17 years, the Kellers still fiercely maintain their innocence. And in fact, the Chronicle’s reinvestigation of the Fran’s Day Care case has revealed serious problems with the state’s case against the Kellers – including questions about the quality and reliability of the state’s medical evidence and forensic interviews. Moreover, the sensational nature of the charges themselves, in a period of hysterical national rumors about supposed “satanic ritual abuse” at day care centers, made it virtually impossible for the Kellers to receive a fair or even rational trial.”

In addition to examining the sad lack of real justice for the Kellers, the paper has also published companion pieces on the history of the Satanic abuse scare, and issues concerning children and testimony. People like the Kellers, and the West Memphis 3, are still wasting away in jails thanks in part to a moral panic dreamt up by Christian fundamentalists, unscrupulous “therapists”, various “cult experts”, and media-fueled folk legends (supported in the past by talk-show hosts like Donahue, Geraldo Rivera, Oprah Winfrey, and Sally Jesse Raphael). Sadder still, there remains a hard-core contingent of “survivors” and true belivers who are simply waiting for the cultural winds to shift again so they can peddle their fear and spectral evidence once more. So long as people are prosecuted or remain jailed due to rumors, unfounded beliefs, or misinformation concerning new religious movements the “Satanic Panic” era will never truly end.

Don Rimer

“I believe that Rimer is sincere … I think that he is making some effort to properly define Wicca to selected audiences. I think that he is doing this because he knows that people like me are watching and he is concerned about liability. I don’t believe for a minute that he knows the difference between Neo-Pagan religions and Satanism. Rimer has said that he is willing to listen and learn and I will endeavor to educate him.”

After my post Rimer appeared to defend his reputation in the comments section.

“I teach parents the warning signs. If that is fear, yes I teach fear … I teach law enforcement about the rituals. If that is fear, yes I teach fear … I will continue to teach, consult, and investigate Ritual Crime as long as those crimes are committed. I provide that service to local, state, and federal agencies across the United States and Canada.”

Since then he has popped up now and then to take issue with how I report on a story.

“You have written about me before, accusing me of hating Wiccans. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Well here we go again. WAVY in Virginia reports on the “vampires” in our midst, and guess who pops up as an “expert” in all things evil and vampiric? You guessed it!

“With the advent of Twilight and TrueBlood, we’re seeing people, not just children, not just teenagers, but people are starting to take on that kind of a lifestyle,” says [Don] Rimer. “Very reminiscent of what people did when Ann Rice wrote Interview with a Vampire . Now people are playing games.  New games are coming out. There’s new merchandising that is associated with this and as long as they play their games and conduct their behavior lawfully, no one has a problem with that, but we’re having crimes associated with it.”

The text really doesn’t do justice to the sensationalistic television segment, complete with strange camera angles, spooky lighting, fog, and sound effects. Rimer goes on to depict a couple high-profile crimes as connected to the vampire craze, and inserts only the barest whisp of a disclaimer regarding the millions of people who enjoy vampire-themed media or participate in the vampire subculture/lifestyle and don’t commit horrendous crimes.

“Like in any society, we have good and evil. There are people involved in that that have no intention of committing crimes and then those who do.”

After that CYA (cover your assets) moment, he quickly veers back into how dangerous the vampire life is.

“There are people in that culture (who) believe they have the right to take human blood by whatever means necessary.  Then others are just playing a game. It’s just a game. It’s a movie, it’s a book and we just want to look that way. We’re just going to go to a club, but there’s all kinds and children getting involved in that don’t know the difference.”

Oh, and like all occult “experts”, Rimer gives the vague checklist of “warning signs”. Wearing black, writing backwards, strange new friends, “dark” make-up, and the number “7″ (which he claims is the vampiric number). The kind of list that gives parents the excuse they need to ship their children off to boarding schools, and not face that the problem could be with them, not their kids. I’m not saying that the occasional occultist loon-bat doesn’t occasionally pop a gasket and do something horrible, but these “trends” of occultic crimes are all correlation without causation (and very often have very mundane motivations behind them). In fact, many “occult” crimes could have just as easily been “crazy Christian” crimes if the troubled souls in question had picked up a Bible instead of “Twilight”. Yet you don’t see retired police officers traveling the country informing people of the hazardous effects of improper Bible-reading, giving lists of Christian “warning signs” (prays a lot, starts quoting the Bible randomly, sees demons), and intoning darkly about the dangers of unsupervised Bible study.

By linking troubled teens and isolated crimes with any vague occult angle they cand find, ritual crime experts create a comforting fantasy world of a pervasive directed evil that can be fought. It is a narrative that says “if only we can prevent our children from reading/watching media concerning vampires/werewolves/the occult then we will be safe”. But like all fantasies it isn’t true. Horrible things still happen. They happen even when you remove all troubling literature and occult-laced media from the public eye. It is a fact that the remaining “ritual crime experts” fear to engage with, because they’d be out of a job if all of this was believed to be truly random and had more to do with isolated cases of mental illness than with what movies these people watch. No doubt Don Rimer will be along in the comments shortly to tell me how wrong I am…