Setting the record straight: pagans and the press

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to moderate a great panel at Pantheacon with Jason Pitzl-Waters of The Wild Hunt, Satanist Nagasiva Yronwode, Palo Mayombe priest Eric Colon and crime reporter Mike Aldax. It was a chance to discuss how the press has gotten it wrong — and how pagans and reporters can work together to get it right. We should have video soon, but for now, check out the full audio from the panel. Many thanks to Jason for making it available.

Top 10 backward messages of 2012

James Holmes: Six months later, do we know why he did it?

We’re coming to the end of Backward Messages’ second year, and what a year it was. We had some immense tragedies, including mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; and Newtown, Connecticut. Goths around the world also took a major hit, with attacks in Iraq and Britain, but a goth singer in the United States surprised everyone. The word “Satan” was tossed around, as it always is, describing everything from Lady Gaga to the Hunger Games.

Last year we looked back at the blog’s top 5 posts, but I wanted to go a little broader. Here’s what drew people most in 2012:

1. Let’s play “imagine the Aurora killer’s motivations!” After James Holmes killed a dozen people in a movie theater, the press had a field day trying to answer one deceptively small question: why?

2. Young opera singer proves goth culture can nurture: Although he didn’t last long on “America’s Got Talent,” Andrew De Leon surprised his audience by (gasp!) not sounding like a monster. Go figure.

3. New Yorker cartoon: the pagan version of blackface: Why are Wiccans still depicted like ugly old hags?

4. Are “The Hunger Games” sacrifices Satanic? I can’t believe I even had to ask that question.

5. Goth, metalhead beaten in separate UK attacks: In the UK, being different remains an unfortunate liability.

6. It’s time to listen to the moms of violent young men: After Newtown, how long will it be before we help young men struggling with violent thoughts — and support their families?

7. Bloody bath lands Lady Gaga in hot water: This wasn’t the first or last time Gaga was called “Satanic” this year, but it was one of the more creative. She was also banned from several countries, on the grounds that her stage show is Satanic.

8. “The New Satanism” in heavy metal: Speaking of Satanic, heavy metal persists in not being as Satanic as its reputation makes it out to be, but there are a handful of musicians keeping the faith.

9. Ohio shooting: What’s “goth” got to do with it? After Columbine, the press has found ways to link almost every youth-committed mass shooting with goth culture. And every time, reporters have been wrong.

10. Iraqi youth stoned to death after leaders link emo culture to Satanism, homosexuality: One of the most heartbreaking stories of the year.

Happy new year, everyone. See you in 2013!

It’s official: heavy metal is a religion in the UK

At least 6,000 people in the UK feel this way. Photo by Flickr user Iain Purdie.

Some of you may recall that last year, amid the 2011 UK census, there was a campaign to get heavy metal listed as a religion. Well, the results are in, and heavy metal definitely made its mark.

According to the Guardian, 6,242 people listed heavy metal as their religion (65 of them were in Norwich, giving it the highest per-capita concentration in the country). That’s more than said they were Satanists (1,893), New Age (650), Baha’i (5,021), Druids (4,189), or Scientologists (2,418) — and only slightly fewer than the number who said they were Rastafarians (7,906). Jedis still have metalheads beat, with some 176,632 adherents (though that number fell significantly from 300,000 in 2001).

Honestly, I’m surprised the number for heavy metal isn’t higher — certainly there are many more fans than that in the UK — but these, presumably, are either those who take the music and culture seriously enough to consider it a faith, or who liked the amusement value of the idea and went with it.

However, if you’re wondering why your teen, or your friend, is so wrapped up in heavy metal — here’s your answer. It’s potent stuff, and it, like any intense music, can make you feel pretty special when you listen to it.

From the Satanic Panic to 12 years in Texas prison

You’ve heard about the West Memphis 3? Meet the San Antonio 4.

Elizabeth Ramirez, Kristie Mayhugh, Anna Vasquez and Cassandra Rivera have served 12 or more years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. So what were the women convicted of doing?

Satanic ritual abuse.

Yes, that again.

In, 1994, in the midst of the Satanic Panic, Ramirez’s nieces, 7 and 9, stayed with her for a week. Later, there were allegations that the girls were raped at gunpoint, by all four women, during that week. A doctor who examined the girls after they made their claims “thought she saw Satan’s hand in the unspeakable crimes described by the two young girls,” according to the San Antonio Current:

They described their aunt, Elizabeth Ramirez, with red wild eyes grabbing the girls and forcing them into her bedroom. … Kellogg, a widely respected child abuse expert and local pediatrician, examined the girls, deciding “this could be Satanic-related,” according to her exam notes. Based on her research and experience in the field, Kellogg later testified, “If there is a female perpetrator and there’s more than one perpetrator involved, there is a concern for [Satanic abuse].”

The prosecutors went even further, suggesting Satanic overtones even though they were forbidden from bringing up the subject directly in the courtroom:

“[T]he evidence is going to show that young woman over there held a nine-year-old girl up as a sacrificial lamb to her friends. … We’re going to ask you to believe a nine-year-old little girl who was sacrificed on the altar of lust.”

From there, prosecutors moved on to suggesting that some or all of the women might be lesbians. (Which is just about as relevant as Satanism accusations — which is to say, not at all relevant.)

So where did these ideas come from? It seems, as is often the case with such situations, that they came from the prosecutors themselves, which may explain why their stories made no sense:

the jury heard a maze of contradictions from the supposed victims. On and off the witness stand, their accounts changed, sometimes in dramatic fashion. The assaults happened at night, then in the morning, then in the afternoon while “Full House” was on TV. They were assaulted in the living room, or in the bedroom, either together or separate. Mayhugh wasn’t there. Or was she? Their father picked them up from the apartment following the assault. Then it was Ramirez and Mayhugh who drove them home. Ramirez pointed a gun at the girls as they spoke to their father on the phone, threatening them to keep quiet. Then, Ramirez and Vasquez each had guns. Then, only Vasquez had a gun.

This wasn’t the first time the girls had made such a claim. Earlier, they had told adults that they were assaulted by a “mysterious 10-year-old boy.” They made similar claims while their mother and father battled for custody, and again when their mother remarried. Although we should be careful to listen to children who say they were abused, it’s unlikely that this happened to them four times in their young lives. (Ramirez claims that the girls’ father had an unrequited passion for her; and when she rejected him, she believes he urged the girls to make the accusations against her.)

Oh, and one of their “victims” has since recanted.

There wasn’t much hard evidence against the San Antonio Four. Even examinations of their hymens weren’t conclusive — and then the doctor who photographed them said she couldn’t produce photos as courtroom evidence. All four of the accused have passed polygraph tests.

But they were convicted anyway. Three were sentenced to 15 years. Ramirez, the alleged ringleader, got 37.5 years in prison.

To bring light to their case, there’s a documentary in the works. Will it help spring them from prison? Will it remind the public the very real cost of fear and hysteria? How many more people remain in jail, convicted in the 1980s and 1990s of crimes they didn’t commit?

Satanism, Santeria, or Sensationalism?

Is a torched chicken Satanic? Photo by Flickr user adactio.

Step 1: Patrol the local cemetery at night.

Step 2: Find a patch of burned ground.

Step 3: Find a dead, burned chicken.

Step 4: Find an empty bottle of cologne nearby.

Step 5: Conclude Satanism is involved.

Wow. Do they teach this stuff in the police academy?

Honestly, I’m still trying to wrap my head around this particular bit of deductive reasoning. Maybe the fact that this incident took place near Halloween is what set the police officer’s Satan-radar off; I’m not sure. The article is much less about the actual incident in question and more about a string of supposedly Santeria-related activities involving everything from dead animals to human skulls and, er, coconuts.

Because, of course, a bunch of police guesswork is the same thing as proof of an “upswing of occult activity in Bridgeport, much of it related to voodoo or Santeria.”

Unfortunately, one thing it doesn’t include is any information from actual Santeria practitioners, or Satanists for that matter, to discuss such things as a) their actual religious/spiritual practices, b) whether those practices routinely involve harming animals, and c) how these groups feel being mistaken for each other. (Try calling a Catholic a Mormon sometime, or vice versa. After all, they both believe in Jesus, right? Just try. See what happens.)

As I’ve said here before, Satanists rarely, if ever, practice animal sacrifice. Those who do harm animals under the banner of Satanism probably aren’t dedicated practitioners, but dabblers who don’t know what they’re doing, and are following horror movies or misguided web sites or books — they aren’t the real deal.

Santeria does, at times, involve animal sacrifice — and, by the way, it’s protected under the Constitution after a 1993 Supreme Court vote. It’s part of the religion, practiced rarely and carefully, and shouldn’t be touted as ooky-spooky “occult” ritual and certainly not “Satanic.” However, it’s hard to say whether these particular incidences in Connecticut were the work of a devoted Santerian, since I’ve been told that just leaving animals lying around — or, in this case, leaving one of them alive and half-burned, isn’t considered a respectful part of their religious practice.

In other words, it’s wrong to peg such acts on a particular faith without a much deeper knowledge of the incident in question, and who perpetrated it. Right now, all they’re doing is making Satanists and Santerians look bad, and that’s not right.

Violent video games, Satan, and murder (again)

Did video games make Peter Charles John Jensen, left, shoot his wife? Did Satan make Christopher Roalson, right, stab an elderly woman to death? If not, why are police, prosecutors, and the press mentioning it?

On Sept. 25, police in Jacksonville, Florida, charged Peter Charles John Jensen with murder. Allegedly, he apparently was “playing violent video games under the influence of some type of drug,” police said, before he got into an argument with his wife, Karina, and shot her. A witness — who was playing video games with Jensen — reported the shooting, and fled when Jensen pointed the gun at him. Karina was dead when police arrived and found her.

A few days earlier, a Hayward, Wisconsin, jury found Christopher Roalson guilty of first-degree murder. Roalson, along with accomplice Austin Davis, broke into 93-year-old Irena Roszak’s Radisson house and stabbed her to death in 2009. They have called it a “thrill kill,” and Davis told the court that he heard screaming and someone saying “Hail Satan” coming from Roszak’s bedroom the night of the murder. Roalson also reportedly claimed he was “Satan’s son” as he and Davis left the house that night.

As you can see, the headline in the Jensen case is:
Man killed wife in Julington Creek shooting Saturday, police say
Police: He played video games and took drugs before the slaying.

And for Roalson, the lede in a Duluth newspaper:
A Sawyer County jury on Friday found 30-year-old Christopher Roalson guilty in the murder of 93-year-old Irena Roszak, a case that officials called a “thrill kill” with satanic overtones.

Coverage in both cases has been sketchy and doesn’t point to a clear, legitimate motive. Maybe that’s why everyone has latched onto these sensationalistic but meaningless details. I can point to Jensen’s glazed demeanor and compare it to that of (allegedly schizophrenic) Aurora, Colorado, shooter James Holmes, but that’s guesswork at best. How we can get through an entire trial, in Roalson’s case, and not be clear on why he killed an elderly woman, is beyond me — especially since you have to prove premeditation for first-degree murder, and premeditation suggests a motive.

Instead, we’re left with violent video games, drugs, and Satan: scary things many people don’t understand, but are happy to consider valid motivations for killing — as valid as any other impetus we also might not understand. We’re also left with the impression that these things might make anyone else commit murder. Better take them away before that happens, right?

Could Egypt’s heavy metal days be numbered?

A band performs at the Heavy Tune Metal Festival at Nile Country Club in Cairo, Egypt, in July 2011. Photo by Flickr user lokha/Lorenz Khazaleh.

In January of 1997, roughly 100 Egyptian heavy-metal fans were rounded up, arrested, and accused of Satanism. Now, almost 16 years later, it looks like it could happen again.

Over the weekend, Ismail El-Weshahy, a lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), filed a complaint to the Egyptian interior ministry against El-Sawy Culturewheel. He claims that the venue, a regular home for rock and metal shows, was hosting “Satanic” rock bands and events. El-Weshahy even claimed that his clients, members of an independent anti-corruption group called “We’re Watching You,” filmed “satanic rituals” at Culturewheel.

The news comes just as the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining power and legitimacy in Egypt. After the 1997 arrests, most were freed because the charges against them were unprovable. However, the metal scene in Egypt was essentially silenced; too many bands were afraid to play, and clubs were afraid to host them. But slowly the scene re-emerged. Today, it’s a healthy scene, but it remains underground for the most part — it hasn’t achieved pop-culture status. Most Egyptian metal bands aren’t known outside the country. That leaves them relatively to these kinds of political and cultural attacks.

Some metal musicians in the scene saw this latest move coming.

Wael Osama, founder and manager of heavy metal band Enraged, said:

“I was expecting that something like this could happen in the future, but I did not think it would be this soon. No matter how absurd the accusations are, the fact they are brought by a well known lawyer from the FJP will generate a big amount of bad publicity with possible serious repercussions.”

What those repercussions could be remains to be seen. Metal musicians in the country are gathering this week to discuss what to do and how to respond to the attacks.

Heba Ahmed, who works at Culturewheel, said the venue will continue hosting events, including heavy metal shows. In addition, a statement on its Web site denies the allegations: “In our ten years of activity, the Culturewheel has not hosted any kind of practice that could be called Satanic,” the statement asserted, going on to express doubt that Satanism in Egypt existed at all.

Certainly, heavy metal is not Satanism.

Grandma’s corpse theft leads to journalistic horrors

After a body was stolen from a mausoleum in a NJ cemetery, police and the press blamed Satanists and Palo Mayombe. Photo by Flickr user scottnj.

At first, it sounds like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a low-budget horror flick: in late July, thieves broke into the Spinelli tomb at New Jersey’s Greenwood Cemetery, smashed the marble slab protecting a casket, and then opened the casket. They made off with the body of the family’s matron, Pauline, who was buried there in 1996.

But from there, it gets truly horrific.

Headlines describing the theft have blamed everything from cults to Satanists. We might expect this from outlets such as Catholic Online, but even ABC is playing up the “woo-woo” angle:

A satanic cult could be responsible for breaking into a mausoleum and stealing the remains of a New Jersey grandmother who died 16 years ago, police said today.

It goes on from there, because apparently the family believes that a poorly understood and peaceful religion could somehow be responsible:

“We did a lot of research and my husband found a group online that uses bodies in some kind of a ritual and they need the bones for their ritual. The group is called Palo. There were some bodies found in Newark and Woodbridge and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, speculated to have been used by this group,” [granddaughter Paula Lafollette] said. “Who else would want a body?”

To research this claim, did the reporter talk to a respected leader in the Palo Mayombe Community? No — they went to “occult expert” Rick Ross. Surprisingly, he actually provided some factual information about Palo:

“The likelihood they would go into a mausoleum and drag out a body seems remote. Usually these hybrid religious groups [including Palo] use chicken and other animal bones,” Ross said. “Typically these acts end up being individual perpetrators not linked to an organized group.”

Still, it’s disturbing that these folks believe that “Satanic cults” exist — despite no evidence — or that Satanists dig up bodies. Or that Palo Mayombe is the same thing as Satanism. Or that there’s anything wrong with Palo Mayombe or Satanism. Or that their freaked-out notions made it into several national news reports.

To me, it seems extremely unlikely that someone would break into this tomb completely at random. Sure, stealing a corpse from an above-ground setting is easier than digging up a grave. But why Pauline Spinelli? Whoever took her body, as awful as it was, had to break through a metal chain, smash a marble slab, pry open a casket, and then smuggle out her body. That’s an Olympic amount of effort.

Could they have wanted HER body, specifically? Did she have any enemies? Did her family make anyone angry? Obviously this is all speculation on my part, but it seems more likely that someone took her body to upset her family than that a “Satanic cult” or Palo practitioners picked her at random for rituals that either don’t exist or don’t use human bones.

I’m not saying Paula or her family deserved this, which is obviously and understandably causing them grief. I’m just saying it makes no sense to blame faiths and practices for whom stealing a grandmother’s bones is as abhorrent as it is for the Spinelli family.

Retired therapist invents 22 ways to make money, and all of them involve “Satanic ritual abuse”

Judy Byington’s book, Twenty-Two Faces, resurrects the disproven ideas of multiple personality disorder and Satanic ritual abuse.

Just when you thought we were safe from the “Satanic ritual abuse” moral panic, along comes retired therapist Judy Byington with a new book detailing the supposed case study of Jenny Hill. According to Byington, Hill is “one of few surviving chosen sacrifices from a Black Temple ceremony.” Given the title of the book, we can presume that Hill coped with the alleged experience by splitting into 22 personalities — a syndrome many believe is actually the result of brainwashing by therapists.

Here’s a snippet from the book:

Secret ceremonies in which malevolent men and women cloaked in hooded robes, hiding behind painted faces and chanting demonic incantations while inflicting sadistic wounds on innocent children lying on makeshift altars, or tied to inverted crosses, sounds like the stuff of which B-grade horror movies are made,” Byington writes in closing her 428-page work. “Some think amoral religious cults only populate the world of ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ but don’t exist in real life. Or do they? Ask Jenny Hill.”

It’s notable that most cases of multiple personality disorder not only emerged in therapy, but emerged at the same time as mysteriously “remembered” memories of Satanic abuse. Most of these memories are “recovered” during hypnosis — a state in which people are also highly suggestible. Speaking of suggestible, in the 1980s, 58% of the SRA claims gathered in a study of 12,000 appeared in the years following the Geraldo Rivera special on SRA and a further 34% following a workshop on SRA. Many believe that these false memories are then exploited by therapists, who claim it will take many years of treatment for people to heal — thus ensuring a steady, paying client base for the therapist.

Instead, Byington claims, according to the reporter, that “Satanic mind control programming helped create 22 personalities … in Hill as a young child.”

Well, at least she’s right about the “mind control” part.

The author is also the founder of the Trauma Research Center. There, she sells copies of her books and offers for-pay “webinars” on dissociative identity disorder/multiple personality disorder and other topics. And, according to a guest post over on She Writes, she has another book on the way, Saints, Sinners and Satan, “a first person account of her own experiences with multiple personality survivors and Occult crime.”

Sounds to me like she’s resurrecting some old (and debunked) ghosts to make a living. Don’t get me wrong; we do need outlets for legitimate sufferers of trauma. But does Byington think she can really sell this idea in 2012, when most people are pretty skeptical of Satanic-abuse claims — and with good reason? Is society tipping back to a place of superstition and fear?

Let’s play “imagine the Aurora killer’s motivations!”

Aurora, Colorado, shooting suspect James Holmes, in a recent mugshot courtesy the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

We’ve had the weekend to begin to digest the news of what happened in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater early Friday morning. While officials spent much of the weekend de-activating suspect James Holmes’ booby-trapped apartment — where the most information about Holmes’ life is likely kept — reporters began circulating among his former friends and neighbors, gathering what shreds of information they could about a man who apparently lived little of his life on the Internet and mostly kept his interests and proclivities private.

In the absence of much information, people’s — and pundits’ — imaginations have begun to fill in the details.

For example, Pat Brown, a criminal profiler, speculated on CNN that video games were at the center of Holmes’ murderous outburst:

“He’s probably prepared for this for a long time, just obsessing over it, gathering his weapons,” Brown said on CNN. ”[He] probably spent a lot of time in his apartment, playing one video game after the other—shooting, shooting, shooting—building up his courage and building up the excitement of when it’s going to be real for him. And it’s made his day.”

“This has been something he has really been into. And now we’re going to find, probably on [Facebook] or anybody who knows him will say, ‘Yeah, he did have a lot of interest in that. He was always playing the video games. And I’m not saying video games make you a killer. But if you’re a psychopath, video games help you get in the mode to do the killing.”

Perhaps more innocently, the Los Angeles Times circulated an article in which a childhood friend of Holmes said the suspected shooter enjoyed video games and movies as a teenager. Of course, that’s like saying a teenager enjoyed loud music, Facebook, and sleeping until noon. None of it describes Holmes with any accuracy, and it especially doesn’t say anything about his ability to plan and commit such a horrific crime. However, pundits like Brown, and anyone who believes video games cause violent behavior, will jump on such a line and consider it evidence.

In fact, much research has found no link between mass shootings and video games. Some shooters may play video games, but the one doesn’t cause the other.

There are a couple of reports that Holmes was into role-playing games. Of course, those reports are coming from fishy-looking Web sites that harbor more conspiracy theories (or, er, boxing information) than actual fact-based journalism.

Then come the religious pundits who argue that the shooting was, in fact, motivated by Satan. In the Christian Post, Greg Stier writes that a text-message exchange about the shootings:

… got me thinking about another “Dark Knight” who ruled the heart of a gunman in Aurora last night. It got me thinking about Satan’s role in the Columbine massacre on April 20th, 1999 when he invaded the hearts of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. It got me thinking about Satan and the stranglehold he has in the souls of so many. Jesus tells us in John 10:10 that this dark knight, “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” and he did just that last night. He used the trigger finger of this twisted madman to steal innocence, kill people and destroy hope.

Research has indicated that Eric Harris’ psychopathy and Dylan Klebold’s depression, not Satan, was ultimately behind what happened in Columbine. (Apparently Stier didn’t get that memo.) I can understand the impulse to name the Devil as a scapegoat when we don’t understand why something awful has happened, and I’m thankful that Stier is blaming a mythological figure, rather than real-life Satanists, for what went on in that midnight movie.

As long as we blame forces outside ourselves (and to some extent outside our control), we let go of our power over very real, treatable motivations, such as mental illness in the Columbine case. In other words, it means we not only let the killers off the hook, we let ourselves off the hook for not intervening if someone we love goes off the deep end in a catastrophically violent way. It wasn’t my fault; it wasn’t his fault. It was Satan. It was video games. It was role-playing games.

Speaking of Columbine, Dave Cullen, the author of the definitive book on the shootings, wrote a piece in the New York Times decrying the temptation to jump to conclusions, and we all should heed it:

Over the next several days, you will be hit with all sorts of evidence fragments suggesting one motive or another. Don’t believe any one detail. Mr. Holmes has already been described as a loner. Proceed with caution on that. Nearly every shooter gets tagged with that label, because the public is convinced that that’s the profile, and people barely acquainted with the gunman parrot it back to every journalist they encounter. The Secret Service report determined that it’s usually not true.