believers" probably have a similar problem with their teenagers rebelling against their belief system. To some extent, even these Traditional satanists are self-stylized. They practice what they have come to believe is "satanism." There is little or no evidence of the much discussed multigenerational satanists whose beliefs and practices have supposedly been passed down through the centuries. Many admitted adult satanists were in fact raised in conservative Christian homes.
Washington Post editor Walt Harrington reported in a 1986 story on Anton LaVey and his Church of Satan that "sociologists who have studied LaVey's church say that its members often had serious childhood problems, like alcoholic parents or broken homes, or that they were traumatized by guilt-ridden fundamentalist upbringings, turning to Satanism as a dramatic way to purge their debilitating guilt" (p. 14). Some have claimed that the accounts of ritual abuse victims coincide with historical records of what traditional or multigenerational satanists are known to have practiced down through the ages. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of numerous scholarly books on the devil and satanism, believes that the universal consensus of modern historians on satanism is "1) incidents of orgy, infanticide, cannibalism, and other such conduct have occurred from the ancient world down to the present, 2) such incidents were isolated and limited to local antisocial groups, 3) during the period of Christian dominance in European culture, such groups were associated with the Devil in the minds of the authorities, 4) in some cases the sectaries believed that they were worshiping Satan, 5) no organized cult of Satanists existed in the Christian period beyond localities, and on no account was there ever any widespread Satanist organization or conspiracy, 6) no reliable historical sources indicate that such organizations existed, 7) the black mass appears only once in the sources before the late nineteenth century" (Personal Communication, Nov. 1991).
Many police officers ask what to look for during the search of the scene of suspected satanic activity. The answer is simple: look for evidence of a crime. A pentagram is no more criminally significant than a crucifix unless it corroborates a crime or a criminal conspiracy. If a victim's description of the location or the instruments of the crime includes a pentagram, then the pentagram would be evidence. But the same would be true if the description included a crucifix. In many cases of alleged satanic ritual abuse, investigation can find evidence that the claimed offenders are members only of mainstream churches and are often described as very religious.
There is no way anyone law enforcement officer can become knowledgeable about all the symbols and rituals of every spiritual belief system that might become part of a criminal investigation. The officer needs only to be trained to recognize the possible investigative significance of such signs, symbols, and rituals. Knowledgeable religious scholars, academics, and other true experts in the community can be consulted if a more detailed analysis is necessary. Any analysis, however, may have only limited application, especially to cases involving teenagers, dabblers, and other self-styled practitioners. The fact is, signs, symbols, and rituals can mean anything that practitioners want them to mean and/or anything that observers interpret them to mean. The meaning of symbols can also change over time, place, and circumstance. Is a swastika spray painted on a wall an ancient symbol of prosperity and good fortune, a recent symbol of Naziism and anti-Semitism, or a current symbol of hate, paranoia and adolescent defiance? The peace sign, which in the 1960s was a familiar antiwar symbol, is now supposed to be a satanic symbol. Some symbols and holidays become "satanic" only because the antisatanists say they are. Then those who want to be "satanists" adopt them and now you have "proof' they are satanic.
In spite of what is sometimes said or suggested at law enforcement training conferences, police have no authority to seize any satanic or occult paraphernalia they might see during a search. A legally valid reason must exist for doing so. It is not the job of law enforcement to prevent satanists from engaging in noncriminal teaching, rituals, or other activities.
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