Call for Policy to Increase Protection for Victims of Ritual Abuse in San Diego, Part II

Law enforcement is also affected by negative media attention on officers investigating occult crimes. In Mark Sauer's September 21, 2002 article, "Abuse or Unfounded Fear", he ridicules "two San Diego police detectives, who also subscribed to the ritual-abuse theory, that the murderous cult was operating out of a Clairemont area church."

Sauer also stated in the same article; "The detectives requisitioned bulldozers and prepared to excavate church grounds before police brass stepped in and halted the unlikely investigation." Detectives can have no incentive to investigate reports of ritual crimes when their superiors halt their investigations.

F. Family Court

Family court judges, Family Court Services, mediators, attorneys, and psychologists performing custody evaluations, have all been affected by negative media attention and political pressure to avoid reports of ritual abuse. Protective parents who have reason to believe that a co-parent ritually abused their children are routinely advised by their attorneys to say nothing about this to the court or evaluators or they run the risk of being viewed as crazy and losing custody of their children. Custody has been lost on this basis in the San Diego Family Court.

II. Goal: Call for Policy to Increase Protection for Victims of Ritual Abuse

The San Diego public, ritual abuse survivors, the mental health community, child protective agencies, law enforcement agencies, the district attorney's office, the Grand Jury, and legislators need to work together to create a county and state where victims or ritual crime can begin to be protected. There is no ritual abuse law on the books in California now. Laws will be needed to adapt to the special circumstances in investigating and prosecuting cases of ritual abuse and to protect individuals and agencies from lawsuits as they do this work.

Four critical starting points toward these objectives in San Diego County are:

1. A county policy that reports of ritual abuse will be investigated by San Diego County law enforcement agencies, Children's Services Bureau (CSB), and the District Attorney's office.

2. A county policy that the District Attorney's office, CSB, and the TERM Team, will support mandated reporters in filing Suspected Child Abuse Reports of ritual abuse.

3. A San Diego county policy of not interfering with the academic freedom to teach about ritual abuse and treatment of ritual trauma.

4. The convening of a task force to study the problem of ritual crime and to develop an interagency coordinated

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