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Lecture 4
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This is part one of a two part lecture investigating media depictions of
various forms of criminal or deviant activity. This week's lecture will focus on two types
which received consider attention in the 1980s and 1990s, satanic crimes and hate crimes.
Next week, we will discuss juvenile delinquency plus drug/alcohol abuse. From there
we will move to a consideration of police and the media.
SATANIC CRIME
While satanic forces have been frequently blamed in Western history for the misfortunes of
humankind, criminal justice officials in the U.S. have paid satanism little mind until the
mid-1980s. At that point the country was swept by an epidemic of allegations that murders,
sexual or ritual abuse of children,
and ritual sacrifice of animals were commonplace activities among satanists. By this time,
you should have finished reading Satan's Silence, an investigation
co-authored by a journalist and an attorney, into the panic which swept the country
regarding ritualistic abuse at daycare centers. However, as the authors suggest, fears of
contemporary childhood victimization were part of a much larger satanic panic which swept
the nation in the 1980s. In this section, we will look at who spread these beliefs, what
was claimed, why they were believed, the problems with these accounts, and the continuing
legacy of such beliefs. It is my opinion that the satanic panic represents the greatest
crime hoax of this century, but one that continues to impact negatively on many people's
lives.
Media Involvement
The media helped to create a climate favorable to the belief that satanism had become a
real life menace. Gothic
literature spawned horror comic books (banned in the 1950s), while Hollywood films
featuring satanic themes have long been popular. Early on sympathetic news reports spread
belief in satanic crime, but as skepticism increased the news media turned on those who
claimed satanism was rampant in the country and asked for proof.
For this type of crime it was not newspapers or TV news, but TV talk shows which were the major media provider
of information. TV talk shows like Geraldo and Sally
featured this topic for a number of years and almost always uncritically presented the
claims of widespread satanic abuse. Talk shows became the new medium for retelling "urban legends." Those like Nathan who have
done a systematic investigation of the backgrounds of major writers and speakers on
satanism, have found that many had questionable backgrounds or histories of mental
illness. Such facts ought to have been discussed before anyone accepted at face value what
these satanic story tellers were saying. However, Geraldo and other talk show hosts who
had such speakers on their shows rarely if ever mentioned their backgrounds.
Anti-satanists went unchallenged for the most part. This was not responsible journalism.
On Geraldo, Geraldo ceased being a journalist, despite his claim
that many of shows represented "special investigative reports." The opposition
point of view, when presented at all, was typically given to leaders of established Satanic churches like
Acquino or LeVay rather than to nay-saying journalists or scholars. The "organized
satanists," who claimed they had never murdered or tortured anyone, often were
dismissed by audiences and opposition guests alike as obvious liars. Of course, everyone
knows "satanists are liars." Talk shows do not present facts and validated
information. They represent a new breed of TV, "info-tainment," presenting
information as entertainment. They never should be assumed to have the same credibility as
nightly news casts or newspaper reports.
Victims and
Victimizers
Those claiming to have been victimized or victimizers (and sometimes both) in satanic
groups included the following:
1. Children at daycare
centers. Children told hundreds of horrific tales; e.g. of being forced to commit sexual
acts with robed, chanting adults; of being made to drink blood or eat feces; and to
witness animal and human sacrifices. Satan's Silence does an
excellent job of discussing how these accounts were produced, so I will not cover the same
ground.
2. Teens who said they
were satanists. There is evidence that some teens spray paint satanic graffiti on walls
and even sadistically kill small animals in haphazardly concocted satanic rituals. But,
even reports of these incidents far outnumber their reality. A "self-styled
satanist" is typically an isolated adolescent male who turns to the black arts.
Some teenagers (particularly boys) are attracted to satanism. It offers an easy way to get
the things teens want (power, money, sex). For this same reason boys form rock bands.
Teens who feel alienated from their classmates may dabble in Satanism, but most leave it
rather quickly. However, a few do take the "theological" messages of Satanism
seriously. 17-year-old Sean Sellers
claimed he was a satanist when he committed two murders in Oklahoma, but had a number of
personal and family problems which might better explain his actions. Sellers acted on his
own and was not doing the bidding of an organized satanic group.
3. Middle aged women who
in therapy (and often under hypnosis) stated they had recovered repressed memories of
childhood satanic abuse. They told stories of being "breeders" of babies born
without official birth certificates so they could be ritually sacrificed to Satan; of how
bodies were disposed of in such a way that no trace of their existence could ever be
uncovered (corpses were burned and the bones ground into powder); and gruesome tales of
cannibalism and blood drinking. Even though they had allegedly witnessed crimes, victims
rarely reported them to the police after having recovered their memories. There has been
considerable discussion of repressed memories since these reports surfaced and
psychological experts on memory have found no evidence to support the
phenomenon described by therapists. Also, those who study hypnosis warn of the dangers of
trying to reintegrate victims diagnosed as suffering from multiple personality disorder or
disassociative disorder. The newly integrated personality may end up believing that they
experienced many things which never happened in all likelihood.
4. Ex-members of satanic
covens who since had been converted to evangelical Christianity. The most notable of these
was Mike Warnke, who made an excellent living off telling already convinced Christian
audiences that he was an ex-satanic high priest and participated in ritual victimizations.
He was later exposed as a fraud. The
only thing people who knew him as a teen agreed upon was that he had always had the
ability to tell stories and make others believe them.
5. Members of organized
satanic churches like The Church of Satan
or Temple of Set. These orgainzations are small in numbers and claim never to have
murdered or tortured anyone. In terms of their life philosophy they are probably most
similar to EST or any other self-awareness group which advocates putting ones own needs
and desires first.
Those claiming to have uncovered satanic crimes included:
1. Cult cops. Cops and
ex-police officers charge fees to lecture audiences of other cops on what they
"know" of satanic crime. In Pursuit of Satan by Robert
Hicks debunks the cult cop phenomenon.
2. Child interviewers,
social workers and psychologists. Treatment personnel lectured other child welfare workers
on the dangers of Satanic involvement. In November 1992, I attended a workshop sponsored
by the Pinellas County Juvenile Welfare Board on "Treatment Approaches: Adolescents
and Cults." The workshop featured all the satanic hysteria one could ever want to
endure.
3. Psychiatrists
interviewing middle-aged women. A 1996 episode of Frontline
documented how deeply psychiatry has been involved in the satanic panic. Women suffering
from disassociative disorders who were referred to psychiatrists who believed in satanism
were placed in very expensive treatment centers. They were informed they had been abused
by satanic cults and had "secret codes" embedded in their memories which if
activated would cause them to kill their husbands and children. Needless to say, husbands
who believed this left their wives. Children were also alleged to be already initiated
into a satanic cult and placed in therapy as well. To date none of the doctors involved
has been sued or had their licenses revoked.
4. Parents of allegedly
abused children. This is discussed in Satan's Silence as well.
The Claims
Claims that were made stretched from tales of the use of the mass media to convert kids
to satanism, to wholesale torture and murder, a massive cover-up, and a universal
conspiracy. Rock music (particularly Heavy Metal), children's cartoons, and role-playing
games were identified as gateways to satanism (similar to the way marijuana is singled
out as a "gateway drug"). Music such as Ozzy Ozbourne's
contained lyrics that overtly paid homage to the devil. An even more serious problem was
"back masking." Alleged satanic messages were recorded backwards onto a record.
The album didn't even have to be played backwards for the message to have its subliminal
effect. It sunk into the subconscious and later resulted in negative behavior. The band
Judas Priest was unsuccessfully sued by a parent who claimed the phrase "Do it"
back masked onto an album had led her son to attempt suicide. No evidence for subliminal
suggestion has been uncovered by psychologists. Children's cartoon's such as "He-
Man" and "Thundercats" tapped into supernatural forces that detractors of
the shows label satanic. Children who watched a steady diet of these cartoons were being
set up to accept occult practices later as teens. The Internet may soon be recognized as
the latest "doorway to hell"
If satanism were as prevalent as anti-Satan experts claimed it was, bodies would have been
unearthed everywhere. Cult experts claimed there are anywhere from 50,000 to 2 million
children ritually sacrificed to the devil each year. In comparison, only around 25,000
murders are reported in the U.S. each year. Almost all the alleged "missing"
children can be accounted for as "kidnap" victims of one of the parents in a
custody dispute. The FBI documents only about 100 stranger kidnappings of children each
year.
Anti-satanists claimed that there was a vast organized network of devil worshippers in the
U.S. that has infiltrated all levels of local, state, and federal government (including
the criminal justice system.) Police officers refused to arrest and hid evidence;
prosecutors would not indict; while judges who were part of the conspiracy refused to
convict. Conspiracy theories of this nature are rarely if ever true. Other examples
include the belief that gun control was a communist plot to have the American citizenry
disarmed when the Russians would invade and house to house combat ensued; air pollution
laws were generated by socialists who hope to speed up America's economic collapse, or
that drugs are being used systematically by white elites to destroy black communities in
America.
Why do people believe conspiracy theories? Hans Toch in The Social Psychology
of Social Movements analyzed the psychological gratifications that conspiracy
theories offer, whether of the left-wing or right-wing variety. They allow individuals who
believe in them to have one all-encompassing answer to a myriad of social problems. A
conspiracy theory also allows those who believe it to "know" the future before
it happens. Such knowledge allows them to feel secure while others struggle to understand
what is going on around them. Critics have argued that the satanism phenomenon was largely
the result of ultra-right-wing fundamentalist and evangelical Christians spreading their
ideas concerning the "end times." If Satan's power is growing, the Judgement Day
is near. But, as we have seen it was also supported by the welfare establishment and some
branches of psychiatry.
While at first law enforcement agencies took the reports of murdered infants seriously,
they gradually realized there was no evidence of these events. Kenneth Lanning of
the FBI wrote a series of articles concluding that no such murders had occurred. However,
true believers still exist. A TV program on Satan broadcast on a religious channel in
January 1996, repeated many of the same accusations that law enforcement investigators and
scholars have been unable to validate for 10 years. These claims put investigators in the
unenviable position of trying to disprove a negative. How would one prove earth has never
been visited by UFOs?
While satanic crime may be largely mythical, the consequences of the satanic panic have
been all too real. As Nathan and
Snedeker documented hundreds of adults were falsely convicted, many children suffered
months of excruciating interviews in which they were "forced" to confess to
things which never occurred and then put into unnecessary treatment programs, and the
lives of thousands of families were needlessly disrupted.
HATE CRIMES
While satanic crime may be a giant hoax, the same certainly can not be said of hate
crimes. The United States has had a long history of racially-motivated assaults and
murders, lynchings, etc.
Similarly, at one time or another in our history various immigrant ethnic groups,
political dissidents and labor rabble-rousers, women, and homosexuals have withstood
systematic victimization by those who opposed them or their ideas and lifestyles. However,
the attempt to label crimes by their political or ideological motivation is a rather new
phenomenon.
Photo by Steve Rapport
Hate crime as a concept appeared in the mid-1980s. But, what constitutes a race bias
crime or hate crime? Does one occur every time a member of one race is involved in a
criminal incident with a member of another race? Or, does there have to be a racial motive
to the incident? In many cases, a racial motive may be very difficult to prove in court;
in others it may be obviously present. While broad enough to include attacks on
homosexuals by teenage boys out to prove their real masculinity, hate crime is most often
used to refer to an attack by white(s) on blacks/other racial minorities or vise versa in
which the motivation is racial hatred. It is also used to refer to the activities of hate groups.
Race and Crime
However, an adequate discussion of hate crimes can not be undertaken without investigating
the broader issue of race and crime and looking at generalized victimization patterns.
What is the true extent of interracial crime? Statistics show that almost all crime is
intraracial: both criminal and victim are members of the same racial group. In comparison,
interracial crimes are rare occurrences. Black on white crimes occur more frequently than
white on black. In a 1996 report, the Council on Crime reported confirmed this. In 1993,
there were an estimated 1.54 million violent crimes against whites committed by blacks and
186,000 violent crimes committed by whites against blacks. In comparison, there were 6
million white on white incidents.
Media Coverage
Nevertheless, hate crimes which involve white perpetrators and black victims are much more
likely to receive significant media coverage than the latter. No one has suggested a
campaign to eliminate black against white violence (the criminal justice system has long
treated black on white violence more seriously, particularly if blacks murder white
victims), while campaigns to stem white on black violence and black on black violence
appear periodically. Some of the major crime stories of the last 10 years have involved hate crimes or cases in which blacks were
falsely accused of crime. These include Bernard Goetz, Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, Rodney
King, the Mark Fuhrman tapes, the burning of Craig Wilson in Tampa, the Charles Stuart
case in Boston, and Susan
Smith. In the latter two incidents, white perpetrators informed police that "a
black man did it" leading to false arrests and considerable animosity from the black
community. LAPD has been tainted with accusations of racial violence stemming from the
Rodney King and Mark Fuhrman incidents. In both Howard Beach and Bensonhurst, blacks were
attacked by whites simply because they strayed into a white neighborhood. Bernard Goetz
(discussed in depth below) shot four black teens on a New York City subway. The stories of
black on white crime which became national news were the Central Park "wilding"
incident and the Long Island Rail Road Massacre, although the 1988 Bush campaign used its Willie Horton (not
the ex-Detroit Tiger) ad to its
advantage.
Shelby Steele, in
his Frontline analysis of the Bensonhurst killing of Yusaf Hawkins, discussed the
political usages of such incidents and demonstrated that both black and white
constituencies draw political strength from media coverage of hate crimes. Hawkins'
funeral was attended by a number of black leaders including Jessie Jackson. Rev. Al
Sharpton led a number of marches through Bensonhurst, resulting in verbal and physical
attacks by the largely Italian-American Bensonhurst natives. Steele's comments focused on
the fact that black leaders use incidents like this one to maintain their political power.
Yusaf's death became the latest in a litany of racially-motivated killings, stretching
back to the civil rights movement, Jim Crow, and slavery. Similarly, white politicians and
non-ethnic whites used the event to distance themselves from the Bensonhurst natives by
labeling them as racists. While those Italian-Americans may be racist, "we" are
beyond that. For these reasons white on black crime is likely to continue to be
highlighted by the media.
Black/Asian Violence
A number of crime stories over the past 10 years have dealt with violence that has emerged
between blacks and Asian Americans. The major source of friction appears to be the
existence of Asian (Korean) groceries in all black neighborhoods. Korean green grocers
appeared in New York, Los Angeles, and other large cities starting in the 1970s. They
replaced "mom and pop" stores and delis which previously existed in poorer
neighborhoods. Many black customers mistakenly believed the Koreans got special government
assistance to open their shops, money unavailable to black entrepreneurs. A number of
other cultural misunderstandings seemed to perpetuate distrust and ultimately violence.
Black community leaders charged that Asians practice racism against them by showing
disrespect for their black customers by not making eye contact, while more vigilantly
watching black customers for shoplifting. The Korean grocers disagreed, stating that
cultural differences have been mistaken for avoidance reactions. However, the grocers
admitted they did watch their customers to try and spot shoplifters. A 1990 incident in NY
in which a Korean grocer allegedly knocked down a female black patron led to a long
boycott of the store by blacks. Also, several Vietnamese were attacked by blacks in NYC in
1991, when they were mistaken for Korean. During the LA Riot, Korean store owners defended
their businesses with guns to avoid being looted or burned out. Shootings of store owners
by robbers and vice versa occurred in LA Korean-owned groceries before and after the riot.
Bernhard Goetz
This lecture closes with a discussion of the Bernhard Goetz incident because it
demonstrates the continuing debate about the use of the concept "hate crime."
This case is also instructive of how the media can change sides in its coverage of a
story. The media flip-flopped twice in its interpretation of Goetz's actions. On Dec. 22,
1984, Bernhard Goetz shot four young black men on a subway in New York City. From that
moment on Goetz became a news media celebrity, even before anyone knew his name. He was
ultimately only found guilty of illegally carrying a firearm, which enraged both his
detractors and his supporters. The former felt he should have served prison time for the
shootings, while supporters blamed NY's overly restrictive gun laws for the fact that
Goetz wasn't permitted to carry a gun in the first place.
At first the media as well as the public was overwhelmingly supportive of the mystery
gunman. It was assumed that he acted in self-defense; that his life must have been in
serious jeopardy in order for him to take such drastic measures. was he the victim of a
hate crime? Without a real person to identify with, Goetz was compared to Charles Bronson
in Death Wish.
While at first the public seemed hard pressed to believe the story told by Goetz's victims
that they had done nothing to incite him, after Goetz's confession became public it seemed
he may have gone out looking for trouble. Goetz told of being a previous victim of a
mugging and feeling further abused when the assailant was quickly let go by the police.
Goetz's description of how he quickly laid out plans in his head of how to incapacitate
all four of his "attackers" once he recognized they were about to
"toy" with him, was interpreted as premeditation by the media. Had he set
himself up to be a victim just so that he could take the law into his own hands? Did he go
onto the subway with the intention of committing a hate crime? The press used the Goetz
case as an example of vigilante justice and felt it was the media's duty to warn the
public of the tragic dangers of allowing the citizenry to carry guns.
The final flip-flop occurred when several of Goetz's victims went on to commit other
crimes. One brutally raped a pregnant woman and was sentenced to a long prison term. Many
felt this indicated Goetz's actions, that he had correctly surmised that he was in the
midst of a robbery and that if he didn't act he might be hurt. While he had only been
asked for five dollars, he felt he knew that might happen to him if he did not comply.
Maybe Goetz had averted a potential hate crime? Was he singled out for victimization by
his skin color?
Critics of the media coverage found fault in two areas: 1) for incorrectly labeling Goetz
as a vigilante and 2) for never presenting the public with knowledge of the NY state law
concerning self defense so people could ascertain whether Goetz went beyond the law.
Was Goetz a vigilante? Not according to the true definition of the word. Goetz's actions
were essentially individual self-defense--maybe an overreaction--but not vigilantism.
Vigilantes generally work in groups and pick targets in advance. Vigilantes generally see
themselves as either supplementing a corrupt or incompetent criminal justice system, or
providing law enforcement where none exists (e.g., the 19th century western frontier).
Vigilantes act after crimes have been completed and sometimes stage mock trials. Goetz
doesn't really meet these criterion. However, Goetz did feel the NYC criminal justice was
inadequate; he believed it had failed to convict his earlier attackers.
A more controversial issue was whether Goetz went too far in defending himself against the
advances of his attackers. Wouldn't showing the gun have been enough to frighten his
attackers? Did he have to shoot them? What about the 5th shot? Before firing it Goetz was
alleged to have said: "You don't look so bad; here's another?" Goetz was
acquitted because in NY state citizens are allowed to use deadly force to stop an
attempted robbery, even to shoot fleeing felons who have committed robbery. Goetz had
greater discretion as a citizen in when he could shoot his gun than the police do since Garner
v. Tennessee. When law professor Arthur Miller told a 20/20 audience that Goetz
should have first calculated whether to use deadly force, and used it only if and when his
life was in immediate danger, he incorrectly stated NY law. In this case, the use of the
term "hate crime" seems to shed more heat than light on the subject.
Go to the Witch Hunt
Links Page
Visit two of the sites listed there.
Report back to the class using NetForum on
what additional information about the satanic panic you uncovered.
Question 1.
Why do you think there is such a huge rift between those who believe satanism is a real menace and those who view it as largely a hoax?Question 2. How should both the media and the criminal justice system respond to claims of satanic crime in the future?
Question 3. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the use of the concept "hate crimes" to categorize offenses. Why are hate crimes newsworthy?
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Copyright 1996 Cecil Greek
arieties
of