recreational situations where the care and facilities are not routinely examined; children in out-of-home day care and recreational situations who have low self-esteem and/or whose parents have not taught or encouraged them to question adult authority; adolescents and adults who are kidnapped; adolescents or adults who are recruited and converted to an occult belief system.

What are the Symptoms of Surviving Victims?

Most people in the therapeutic community are in agreement that ritually abused children and adults often suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), a little understood phenomenon. The standard diagnostic tool of American psychiatrists, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised 1987 also known as DSM Ill-R, says MPD is "the essential feature" of dissociative disorders which are disturbances or alterations "in the normally integrative functions of identity, memory, or consciousness." The DSM Ill-R further states that MPD sufferers may exhibit as many as 10 personalities and, in some cases, more than 200 in which "the personalities and personality states each have unique memories, behavior patterns, and social relationships." MPD sufferers may also have a belief that they are possessed by another person or entity, a feeling that "may also be a delusion in a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia..." (American Psychiatric Association, 1987: 269-270.)

Thus, the debate that surrounds this particular issue does not question the existence of some victims who have been ritually abused and consequently suffer from MPD, but rather whether the very nature of MPD makes the survivor's story credible in a court of law. In other words, can it provide hard evidence? As Robert Hicks, former police officer and currently Criminal Justice Analyst for the Commonwealth of Virginia warns, law enforcers are faced with a series of paradoxes when dealing with MPD victims who are allegedly survivors of occult-related ritualistic abuse:

On the one hand, police cite the growing number of cult survivor stories and their sameness as evidence of the satanic underground (that is, people who have never met telling identical tales.) Yet most MPD sufferers, usually young women, do not present verifiable stories. None has yielded physical evidence of crime other than physiological symptoms which are part and parcel of MPD. Hypnosis for police purposes produces no results. MPD sufferers can take years to interview to ascertain even a few facts. (Hicks, 1989:19.)

For the law enforcer, then, the question is not "can we believe the survivor's story"? Indeed, the controversies discussed in The Occult Debate: Issue #5 are not of paramount importance to the law enforcement community. Instead, the essential question asks, "can we corroborate the survivor's story with hard evidence?" Thus, victims who have survived and are known MPD sufferers will continue to have low credibility as witnesses until the medical community can allay

Legal Case Study #2 Admission of a Defendant's Belief in Satanism State v. Waterhouse At the 1986 trial of Scott Waterhouse for the strangulation killing of a twelve year-old girl, the State introduced a tape recorded conversation between Waterhouse and the police officers. In the tape, Waterhouse described at length Satanic beliefs which involved sexual and destructive rituals and the extent of his involvement with Satanism. At the trial, the following were introduced into evidence: the above mentioned tape; Waterhouse's testimony that Satanism represented the darker side of humanity and urges indulgence of man's carnal needs rather than abstinence; and a portion of The Satanic Bible that emphasized a belief that weaker people should be dominated by those who are stronger. At no time during the trial did Waterhouse object to the admission of any such evidence. Upon conviction and subsequent appeal, Waterhouse argued that the evidence pertaining to Satanism was inadmissible under Maine laws because its potential for unfairly prejudicing the jury outweighed its probative value. In the August 15, 1986 decision of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, it was found that evidence of the defendant's belief in Satanism was properly admitted at his trial and the value of such evidence outweighed danger of unfair prejudice. The text of the conclusion read in part: "We conclude that the evidence of Satanism and the defendant's belief therein is relevant for the permissible purposes of proving the identity of the perpetrator as well as his intent. As to identity, the evidence described above demonstrates that as a believer in Satanism, defendant could view commission of the heinous crime involved in this case as a means of achieving 'physical, mental or emotional gratification.' Similarly, he could believe that a demonstration of strength by total domination of a weaker person would bring 'reverence among men' at the expense of one who, being weak, deserved his fate. It was for the jury to decide whether such motivations were actually at work in this case, but the evidence of satanic beliefs is certainly probative of motive and, therefore, of the identity of the perpetrator within the meaning of M.R. Evid. 401. On the issue of intent, which the State has an affirmative burden to prove, the consistency between the circumstances of the crime and Satanism's emphasis on sex, destruction and denigration of weakness, makes it more likely that if the defendant killed the victim, he did so intentionally rather than by accident, i.e., through recklessness or criminal negligence. Thus, the evidence of Satanism is probative on the issue of intent."