When the Temple of Set was founded in 1975, indeed, those of us who had resigned from the
Church of Satan to create this new institution felt that it was time to calm down a little. The
Church had remained such a darling of the media that Satanists found their time taken up
largely by public relations events. There just wasn’t time for serious Black Magic, which, after all,
was what becoming a Satanist was supposed to be all about.
Furthermore the Temple of Set was finally facing head-on what its predecessor had been tap-
dancing around for the previous decade: that there was a serious, sophisticated, and potentially
- 130 -
very illuminating foundation for this “religion of otherness”. In this the Temple also benefitted
from divesting itself completely of Judæo-Christian mythology, ideology, and symbolism. We
harked back instead to pre-J/C ancient Egypt, and an interpretation of its metaphysics that
promised to open a door to the divinity of each initiated individual.
And so it was for the Temple’s first decade as well - with one difference: that we determined
from the outSet that our attention would always be devoted to our own membership’s benefit.
We were not there to entertain, fascinate, or stimulate the public any more. So modest and
private was the Temple of Set, indeed, that the outside world scarcely knew we were there at all.
That was just fine with Setians as we settled down to explore the great mysteries of philosophy,
magic, and metaphysics.
And we expected it would continue pleasantly on that way forever. None of us, myself
included, ever anticipated the nightmare that awaited not just Satanists/Setians, but indeed the
entire “occult subculture” - and many who weren’t actually part of it at all - in the 1980s.
It began in 1977 when a man named Lawrence Pazder published a book entitled Michelle
Remembers. In this book he alleged that his wife Michelle had as an infant been kidnapped and
sexually abused by Satanists, then had “repressed” all memories of the experience until he
elicited them from her as an adult through “therapy sessions”.
I remember that when we first heard of it, we all laughed it off as ludicrous, and certainly too
transparently so for anyone to take seriously. It was soon to be found on “remaindered” sale
tables, from one of which I picked up my own copy.
But away from our amused and contemptuous dismissal, it happened that many other eyes
were reading the book and taking it very seriously indeed. Or, more malevolently, seeing in it a
new technique for acquiring power, fame, and money by imitating its theme.
Michelle Remembers was ultimately exposed as a fraud, but by then its damage had been
done, and that damage proved to be horrific and incalculable, destroying lives, families, and
societies throughout many countries.
The ominous consequences of Michelle Remembers first came to widespread public attention
in 1983, when a mentally-ill woman named Judy Johnson, on the sole “evidence” of her son’s
irritated anus, made an accusation of “Satanic child-molestation” against the McMartin
Preschool in Los Angeles. Although the child’s doctor and father saw nothing unusual about the
irritation, and although Johnson was later diagnosed as an acute paranoid schizophreniac, the
damage was done and the McMartin witch-hunt was ignited. It was to end in court seven years
later with no finding of any abuse by anyone at the day-care center.
The nationwide drama and sensationalism associated with Michelle Remembers and the
McMartin case ignited an epidemic of “day-care Satanic sex abuse” witch-hunts across the
United States. While many persons were prosecuted and convicted of sex-abuse as a
consequence, not one instance of “Satanism” in connection with either child abuse or day-care
center activity was ever demonstrated.
The Department of Defense community was not immune from the epidemic. By November
1987 there had been 15 child-sex-abuse accusation scares at Army day-care centers and
elementary schools alone. In late 1986 it was the turn of the Presidio of San Francisco.
On 9/28/86 the San Francisco Examiner began a series of 8 front-page stories
sensationalizing the witch-hunts. Approximately a month later one set of Presidio parents
claimed that their son might have been anally raped by one of the day-care teachers, Gary
Hambright, and the scare was off and running, with scores of children being “abuse-diagnosed”
by a “play-therapist” despite not a single published confirmation of actual physical harm to any
child. Hambright denied any “abusing” whatever, and all of the other teachers and staff
supported him.
- 131 -
As in other witch-hunts it made no difference: Over the next year Hambright was suspended,
indicted, charges dropped, reindicted, charges redropped amidst a massive media frenzy.
Parents rushed to file over $74 million in claims, as was also routine in such witch-hunts. [The
previous year a similar, highly-publicized witch-hunt at West Point had resulted in $110 million
claims.]
Left out of the Presidio claims bonanza were Christian chaplain Larry Adams-Thompson and
his wife Michele, who had never reported their daughter Kinsey Almond for any physical or
psychological symptoms during the entire time she had been under Hambright’s supervision at
the day-care center (9/1-10/31/86). In their original 1/87 FBI interviews both A-Ts were specific
about that date- window, because Almond turned 3 on 9/1/86 and, as confirmed by the Presidio
Director of Personnel & Community Affairs, Hambright supervised only children age 3 and
older.
Despite Almond’s untouched state [on 3/12/87 Presidio doctors examined her and
pronounced her a virgin free from any physical signs of abuse], the A-Ts placed her in an
intensive 8-month program of “play-therapy”. The same “therapist” who pronounced the scores
of other children “abused” soon pronounced Almond “abused” as well.
The A-Ts, however, were not content with just accusing Hambright. In 6/87 Michele
introduced “SRA” themes and insinuations about me - who had been a topic of curiosity and
gossip as a famous “Satanist” officer throughout my 1981-86 assignment to the Presidio
Headquarters - to the “therapist”. Then on 8/13/87 the A-Ts saw my wife Lilith and myself at the
Presidio post exchange and went running to the witch-hunt investigators alleging that Almond
had accused us of kidnapping and raping her while she was under Hambright’s supervision.
[They then climbed on board the financial bandwagon with a $3 million claim of their own based
on their faked story.] This quickly resulted in an even more sensationalistic international media
storm.
The San Francisco Police investigated, verified that Lilith and I had been 3,000 miles away in
Washington, D.C. - where I was on duty every single day Almond was at the daycare center
9/1-10/31/86 - and closed the case with no charges accordingly.
In October 1988, however, I appeared as a panelist on a Geraldo Rivera Halloween special.
Rivera was trying to sensationalize and encourage the “SRA” witchhunt mania, and I was
speaking out against it. The broadcast came to the attention of Senator Jesse Helms, who
became enraged that a Lt. Colonel in the Army should dare to hold
a “Satanic” religion. As
Freedom of Information Act filings later revealed, Helms then secretly contacted his close
personal friend, Secretary of the Army John Marsh, and insisted that Marsh devise some way to
destroy my career.
As my 20-year military record was without blemish [In 1987 I was the sole U.S. Army Reserve
officer in the nation selected to attend the prestigious National Defense University/Industrial
College of the Armed Forces], the only way to act on Helms’ demand was to try to revive the
chaplain’s scheme to threaten Lilith and myself, apparently expecting that with sufficient
intimidation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) I would resign and “disappear”.
[It didn't work.]
The CID first (1/89) illegally forced a fulltime active duty board to deny me a new fulltime
contract on expiration of my current one in 9/90. Six months later, after a sham
“reinvestigation”, it issued a report “titling” Lilith and myself for the chaplain’s allegations.
[“Titling” is a statement by the CID that it thinks a crime occurred.] Nevertheless the report itself
contained not a single item of “evidence” other than the A-Ts’ allegations that any crime
whatever had occurred - and either suppressed or ignored abundant evidence of our innocence
and the A-Ts’ violations.
- 132 -
[For example, the CID tried to get around our 3,000-miles-away proof of innocence by
finding out when we had previously been in San Francisco - several months before the 9-10/86
“window” - and then (in 1989) simply revising the allegation to that date! When the CID then
learned that that this manufactured redate made the A-Ts’ alleged location physically
impossible, it then (in 1991) proceeded to invent a new location, once again on no grounds
except its 1991 predicament. Both the manufactured “redating” and “relocating” necessarily
made numerous additional elements of the chaplain’s original fabrication impossible as well -
inconvenient complications that the CID addressed by simply ignoring them.]
What this bizarre exercise in “manufactured evidence” did demonstrate was the strength of
the political agenda predetermining the CID’s “reinvestigation” from the outset. [For instance,
the CID’s illegal fixing of the fulltime-duty board took place at the beginning of its
“reinvestigation” - half a year before it was supposedly able to perform the evaluation of that
investigation.] Clearly an exposé that we had in fact been the innocent victims of a cold-blooded,
calculated scheme to defraud the government - by a Christian chaplain - was politically out of
the question from the beginning.
My repeated demands that those responsible for the CID action, as well as the chaplain, be
court-martialed for false official statements, manufacture of evidence, obstruction of justice,
misprision of serious offense, attempted $3 million defrauding of the government, and several
other UCMJ and federal law violations, were similarly - and equally illegally - suppressed. The
CID’s response was to say that I was “swearing falsely” to these facts. Nevertheless it could not -
and did not - produce even a single example of any such “factual falsehood” in the documents I
filed and swore to under penalty of perjury. [Nor, of course, was I ever charged with making even
a single “false statement”.]
No charges at all resulted from the CID report. Not so much as even a letter of reprimand.
The Army had known from the outset that the chaplain’s allegations were fraudulent, of course.
By administrative complaint process in 1990 we were able to have the “SRA titling” of Lilith
removed. The CID refused to remove mine - although the A-Ts had always alleged we “did the
SRA together” - because to do so would have exploded the entire CID operation and opened a
trail of serious law violations leading to Helms and Secretary of the Army Marsh.
I next filed suit in federal court in 1990 to have the rest of the CID report exposed and
retracted. The U.S. Privacy Act would have forced a comparison of every CID statement in the
report with the actual facts (a de novo judicial review). For this reason the CID argued intensely
that its reports should be immune from de novo review.
The case was filed as a Motion for Summary Judgment. There was no jury or in-court
testimony. We assumed that the CID’s legal violations were so flagrant, obvious, and numerous
that a simple ruling by the judge would suffice.
To our surprise the judge ruled that all CID reports were indeed exempt from de novo judicial
review, and that the CID could conclude whatever it wished from its report as written.
We appealed, and the appeals court upheld the district judge’s decision to exempt CID
reports from the Privacy Act. Again in its decision, the appeals court recited as “facts” excerpts
from the very CID document whose falsehoods were the issue of the entire lawsuit.
Following the lawsuit I detailed and documented the CID lawyer’s extensive lies in briefs &
oral argument to the Army Inspector General, Judge Advocate General, and finally the Army
Chief of Staff.
None of my facts or documents was disputed or refuted, but neither was any action taken to
court-martial those responsible. This effectively exhausted my options.
The bottom line was that on one hand the politically-driven “black bag job” to intimidate me
out of the Army had failed, and indeed could not withstand many other decent and honorable
- 133 -
abet, or tolerate it. [This included every single superior officer in my own chain of command
throughout all the years of the initial attack against us and the subsequent investigations.]
On the other hand we came to realize that it was politically out of the question that a
Christian chaplain be court-martialed for crimes committed against a “Satanist” and his wife, or
that trails of illegal actions leading to powerful national political figures would be followed. And
we also learned that the courts were also not about to force exposure such a widespread and
potentially politically-explosive cover-up as this one.
On the expiration of my fulltime active duty contract in 1990, I continued as a part-time
active USAR officer for the next four years, assigned to Headquarters US Space Command with
an above-Top Secret clearance. I decided to retire from the Active Reserve in 1994, and at that
time received the Meritorious Service Medal from the [new] Secretary of the Army, covering
1984-1994. I remain today in the Army as a Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired).
Most people will find it sufficient, I think, that Lilith and I were never charged with anything
after two long investigations (SFPD/FBI, CID), that I retained my TS+ clearance, and that I
retired honorably in 1994. All of my Officer Efficiency Reports from the time of the attack on us
to my 1994 retirement also continued to give me the highest possible evaluations in all
categories.
My military service and present Army-Retired status are public record and can be
independently verified by anyone wishing to take the trouble.
Nor is the 1990 lawsuit in any sense a “skeleton in my closet”. A review of my attorney’s
district & appea
ls briefs & orals will glaringly expose what was actually taking place: a court
- 134 -
coverup of blatant Senatorial/SecArmy/CID misconduct - and simultaneous brushing-aside of
numerous illegal actions against an Army officer and his wife of a “politically incorrect” religion.
By the end of the 1980s the “SRA” urban myth had been exhausted: It had become
conspicuously obvious to all but the most irrational fanatics that not a single one of the staged
witch-hunts had actually produced any Satanists or Satanic cults. Also, law-enforcement and
child-protective authorities, which had been caught off-guard by the decade of hysteria, had by
now completed their own methodical studies. The consensus was that “SRA”:
• - does not exist in the United States, as reported by the FBI’s National Center for the
Analysis of Violent Crime in 1992, after an 11-year study. “There are many children in the
United States who, starting early in their lives, are severely psychologically, physically,
and sexually traumatized by angry, sadistic parents or other adults. Such abuse, however,
is not perpetrated only or primarily by satanists. The statistical odds are that such abusers
are members of mainstream religions ... For the last eight years American law
enforcement has been aggressively investigating the allegations of victims of ritual abuse.
There is little or no evidence for the portion of their allegations that deals with large-scale
baby-breeding, human sacrifice, and organized satanic conspiracies.” ( Investigator’s
Guide to Allegations of “Ritual” Child Abuse, January 1992)
• - does not exist in the United States, as concluded by an exhaustive national study for the
National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect: “In a survey of more than 11,000 psychiatric
and police workers throughout the country, conducted for the National Center on Child
Abuse and Neglect, researchers found more than 12,000 accusations of group cult sexual
abuse based on Satanic ritual, but not one that investigators had been able to
substantiate. ‘After scouring the country, we found no evidence for large-scale cults that
sexually abuse children,’ said Dr. Gail Goodman, a psychologist at the University of
California at Davis, who directed the survey. The survey included 6,910 psychiatrists,