
By: Sheppard Gordon
Re: Satan probe goes south

SATANISM PROBE COMES UP EMPTY
Byline:   THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
02/28/95
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    An investigation by the Utah Attorney General's Office has
failed to uncover any evidence of a satanic conspiracy to abuse and
murder Utah children.
    Investigator Mike King told KUTV that a report due to be
released next month will say no evidence was found to justify
prosecution for alleged crimes.
    King and another investigator screened 225 cases and gave close
scrutiny to 125 of them during 2 1/2 years.
    King said he talked to hundreds of victims who alleged they
were raped, tortured, forced to perform horrible acts and
brainwashed. Some said they saw babies murdered or were forced to
participate in ritual murders.
    "I really feel for these people and I would like to help them,
but we just couldn't find the evidence," King said.
    Investigation for the report, titled "Ritual Abuse in the State
of Utah," was launched with $250,000 from the Legislature in 1991
after numerous allegations of satanic ritual child abuse.
    Among the allegations were those of Elder Glenn Pace, then a
member of the presiding bishopric of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints and now in the church's First Quorum of the
Seventy.
    In a memo to other church leaders, Pace said he knew of 60
victims of satanic abuse, and that there might have been as many as
800 in Utah. He charged that the satanic conspiracy included
"members of bishoprics, LDS bishops . . . and members of the
Tabernacle Choir."
   Others alleged that general authorities of the church were
abusing children as part of a satanic ritual. King said the
investigation found the allegations involving church leaders to be
"absurd."
    Also in 1991, a University of Utah Medical Center psychologist
said that there were 366 victims of satanic ritual abuse under
treatment by therapists in Utah.
    The investigation launched by then-Gov. Norm Bangerter and the
Legislature was conducted by two full-time investigators who
canvassed law-enforcement agencies, social-work offices and
religious leaders to find cases of abuse.
    King said some informants claimed to have participated in
satanic rituals recently.
    "They said there were at a ritual in the mountains the night
before; we spent all day tracking around the hills and couldn't
find anything. Then they said, `I must have been given a drug or
brainwashed to cloud my mind.' "
    Jerry Lazar, head of the department of psychiatry at LDS
Hospital, said allegations of satanic ritual abuse often are made
by persons who believe they remember abuse years after it happened.
    Sometimes the memories turn out to be true and sometimes they
are false, Lazar said. In some cases, false memories are induced by
therapists. He said he has never been able to independently verify
memories of satanic ritual abuse.


