Sex Charges Follow a Church's Collapse (Hosanna Church and Satanisim?)

nytimes.com ^ | May 25, 2005 | RICK LYMAN

[Destro]

And now, many of them, including Louis Lamonica Jr. and a deputy sheriff who once lived on the church grounds, are behind bars, accused by the police of a litany of ungodly offenses, including sexual abuse of perhaps two dozen children and the mutilations of cats for satanic rituals.

Eddie Robinson, assistant pastor at the 5,000-member Harvest World Outreach Ministries in nearby Hammond - to which many Hosanna members migrated - says what happened is clear. He told congregants on Sunday that a prophecy of "witchcraft" problems had been revealed in recent weeks.

"When the leadership of that church kept the enemy out, everything was fine," Mr. Robinson said. "But when the leadership of that church let the enemy in, things began to change."

The authorities - who got the first whiff of trouble six weeks ago when a woman, Nicole Bernard, 36, called the Sheriff's Office from Ohio to say she had fled the town to save her child from sexual abuse - are still trying to piece together what happened.

Nine people have been arrested in the past week. A dozen computers have been seized, at least some of which the police believe contain child pornography, as well as dozens of videotapes, hundreds of computer disks and eight large boxes of documents and photographs. Inside the shuttered church compound, in a "youth hall" behind the sanctuary, the police found the faint imprint of pentagrams on the floor that someone had apparently tried to scrub away. Some of those arrested, the police said, described rituals within those pentagrams involving cats' blood and people dressed in black robes.

[Gingersnap]

I'm going to reserve judgment here. Although there certainly are flaky churches that injure people emotionally (and no doubt in other ways), the whole satanic panic thing makes me feel suspicious. Every time this comes up there is either no proof at all or the evidence stems from the acts of teenagers. Also, the story is out of the NYT.

If true, we'll hear much more, I'm sure.

[Destro]

the whole satanic panic thing makes me feel suspicious.

Ditto.

There is in fact no such thing as "Satanisim" organized or otherwise beyond a small group of people making it up and calling what they do 'Satanisim'. Also, it seems to me these rural folk are not the brightest of bulbs. They see witchcraft and demonisim in everything that is not familiar to them - for example rock music.

[Destro]

PS: The NYT is late on the story - they are following it - they did not originate it.

[weegee]

Anton LaVey made a fortune off of "satanism" even though he himself was an atheist.

[weegee]

There are a lot of Christian sects in the Topics list. Which one uses pentagrams?

[Cronos]

"When the leadership of that church kept the enemy out, everything was fine," Mr. Robinson said. "But when the leadership of that church let the enemy in, things began to change."

errr.... NATURALLY!!!

Still, all this little splinter cults really are silly. I wonder why people don't wise up and join the Apostolic Church -- either Western (catholic) or Eastern (Orthodox/Oriental)