Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

288 Chronology
being forced to eat feces, pose for pornographic
pictures, take mind-altering drugs, kill animals,
and submit to anal rape with a crucifix. The
children also described the chanting of prayers
to Satan, eating someone’s head, and riding on
sharks. Fuster received a sentence of six life
terms and 165 years in prison and his wife was
eventually deported to Honduras.
Margaret Kelly Michaels, an employee of the
Wee Care Day Nursery of Maplewood, New
Jersey, is charged with 115 counts of sexual
assault against 20 of her students. Many of the
accusations came directly out of Satanic ritual
abuse literature. Michaels was eventually
convicted of all 115 counts and given a 47-
year-sentence. She was subsequently released
on appeal by the Appeals Court of New Jersey
after serving five years.
A Nevada judge agrees to hear a case involving
the suicide of two young men, based on the
accusation that a backward-masked message
on a Judas Priest album had subliminally urged
them to “Do it.” A similar case was brought
against Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath fame
in 1991. Both cases were dismissed.
Founding of the Gnostic Order and Temple of
Satanas by Damian Alan Sinclair and Laylah
Agatha Sinclair.
Capture of Richard Ramirez, better known as
the Night Stalker, a burglar, rapist, and sadistic
serial murderer who terrorized the Los Angeles
area in the mid-1980s. A self-identified
Satanist, Ramirez’s crime spree was one of the
few cases that might legitimately be called
“Satanic crime.”
1986 The Church of Satanic Liberation founded by
Paul Douglas Valentine. Although inspired by
LaVey, Valentine has been harshly critical and
has portrayed himself as inheriting LaVey’s
mantle.
1988 Paul R. Ingram, a deputy sheriff and
chairman of the local Republican party in
Olympia, Washington, becomes the first
person ever to plead guilty to accusations of
Satanic ritual abuse.
Broadcast of Geraldo Rivera’s most influential
Satanic ritual abuse special, “Devil Worship:
Exposing Satan’s Underground,” by NBC
shortly before Halloween.
1989 Bodies discovered in the grounds of a
ranch near Matamoros, Mexico, not far from
the Texas border, make headlines. The
murders, which are associated with a drugsmuggling
operation, are immediately linked
to Satanic worship.
After local police attend a Satanic ritual abuse
seminar, in excess of 90 children accuse a total
of 20 adults with 429 instances of child sexual
abuse in a day-care center in Edenton, North
Carolina. The sheriff and the mayor are
among the alleged perpetrators. It becomes the
most famous Satanic day-care ritual abuse case
in North America after the McMartin
Preschool case.
A parent asserts that her child had been
abused at the Breezy Point Day School in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The charges that
are clearly inspired by Satanic ritual abuse
literature then began to escalate quickly, and
expand to include a female aide, the
instructor’s husband, and others.
1990 Idaho passes a ritual abuse law “To provide a
felony offense for specified abuse of a child as
part of a ritual.”
Lucifers Den founded in Big Spring, Texas, by
Brian Nalls. It is later refounded and expanded
in 1997.
The Rochdale, United Kingdom, Satanic ritual
abuse case begins when police and social
workers conduct a dawn raid on area homes
and take twenty-one children into protective
custody.
1991 In New Zealand, a conference takes place in
Christchurch that includes a workshop on
Satanic ritual abuse. Seventeen days after the
Christchurch conference, a therapist files a
complaint alleging that Peter Ellis, an
employee of the Christchurch Civic Child Care
Centre, may have abused her son. Ellis was
eventually charged and convicted.
Publication of Robert D. Hicks’s important, In
Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult, and
James T. Richardson, Joel Best, and David G.
Bromley’s The Satanism Scare, both of which
take a debunking stance on Satanic ritual abuse.
Dale Akiki is accused of abusing children at
Faith Chapel in Spring Valley, California,
where he was a volunteer baby-sitter and
Sunday school worker. As in many other
Satanic child abuse cases, therapists prompt
the children to relate “memories” of Akiki
murdering or mutilating a baby, rabbits, and
even a giraffe and an elephant.
1992 The Sterling Family along with an unidentified
minor female and five other men, are charged