Lauren Stratford #fundie books.google.com

My Own Hell
Not all of the rituals took place in Victor's basement. Some occurred on the far side of his estate, or deep in the hills. Occasionally we ventured into a church or cemetery. But no matter where they occurred, it was my own personal hell! I was not Victor's woman for the purpose of becoming a satanist. I was never trained to be a satanist. I only attended the ceremonies because Victor took me with him. However, I was seldom just a passive observer. Victor believed that Satan would give him the power he so desperately craved if he offered his woman as a sexual sacrifice. So I was seldom taken to a ritual where I was not abused.
My one small defense was to carry a little New Testament with the Psalms hidden in a pocket. Whenever I had a chance, I would sneak it out and read a verse or two. Usually I found myself reading from the Psalms. It comforted me to read about David's despair and how God kept loving him and giving him the strength to go on.
Once when I was offered as a sexual sacrifice the New Testament fell out of my pocket. Victor saw it and was livid. He picked it up and tore it into tiny pieces, then threw the pieces on the ground and urinated on them. When he was done, he commanded me to never touch another Bible. "I'll not have my woman being a Jesus lover!" he yelled. "And neither will Satan!"
To my shame, I remained silent. I wanted to yell back at him that there was nothing he could do to make me stop loving Jesus. But I was too scared. However, Victor was now convinced that offering me to be used by the satanists would be doubly pleasing to Satan because of my faith in Jesus.
I don't know how many nights I was laid on that cold, hard slab of rock—naked, shivering from the cold of night, while listening to unending chants that beckoned Satan. Every time, the same horrifying fear would grip my heart as the demons were conjured up to give their orders as to how my body would be used. The steel of a purified knife glistened in the candlelight, and I wondered if it would be used on my body. Already there were scars on my body, for it was commonplace to drain blood into the chalice from a cut they made on me. Sometimes, when a knife was poised above my heart, I wished to God that the high priest would plunge it swiftly into my body, putting an end to my hell. My life was a slow, torturous death fiat never ended.
Suffer the Little Children
Another element of some of the rituals was the sacrifice of animals, and even infants—sometimes taken directly from the young pregnant mother. I hesitate to write of these sacrifices, but I must.
I witnessed the ultimate sacrifice of a baby—skinned while still alive. I heard its screams which must have reached to the heavens. But even God seemed to turn a deaf ear. I often wondered why He allowed the hideous torture of a helpless, innocent little child. Didn't He have the power to protect the little ones? Didn't the sound of the screams that only an infant can make bother Him? Was He a God of love or was He a cold, uncaring God? Bitterness and anger toward this "God of love" began to grow in my heart. How could this Person show no pity on an innocent baby? That question would ring in my mind until I would find myself looking up to the heavens, screaming at Him in anger and resentment.
Victor told me that the purest sacrifice, the sacrifice that pleases Satan the most, is none other than an infant or young child. Why? Because children represent purity and innocence; they belong to God. Animals are offered to Satan. Adults, willingly or unwillingly, are offered to Satan. But Satan revels in the most macabre, inhuman, and bestial evil he can conceive in the diabolical machinations of his mind. There is no evil more perverse than the murder of a little one whose life has been robbed from God and sacrificed to Satan.
Where do they get the children? That is a valid question. I'm sure that it is very difficult for people to believe that children can be used for sacrifices in this country. If I had not witnessed this atrocity, I would ask the same question. Believe me, I would like to deny it, or at least doubt it. But I can't. I learned the answer the hard way.
Tom was a Master Counselor in satanism, and Victor frequently brainstormed ideas for rituals with him. One night I heard Victor blurt out, "I've got a good one, Tom. Listen to this. This is too much, man. I mean, this will blow your brains out!" Victor tried to describe his idea, but he was so consumed with the brilliance of his newly devised horror that he couldn't speak. It was as if his brain was working faster than his mouth.
I had seen Victor like this before. His voice always rose to a higher pitch and ran on fast-forward when he was trying to explain a new idea for a future ritual. I always felt I was hearing Satan speak when Victor was this way. I anticipated that each new revelation would be a little more demonic, a little more sadistic, a little more perverse than the last one. I was usually right. This one was no exception.
"Tom, I want Satan to give me more power than any other high priest," exclaimed Victor. "My Master Teacher has always expected great things from me. I don't want to disappoint him. I've been racking my brain thinking about what I can do that will make me more powerful than anyone else. I think I've found it!"
"I'm afraid to ask," Tom said dryly. "Don't lay too much on me if I have any part in your new plan." Though a close friend of Victor's, Tom had always been a little leery of these brainstorms.
"It goes like this." Victor's speech slowed and he was now talking in dead earnest. "We'll get a teenage boy and girl off the street and bring them up here. Then we'll get a baby from a gal we've been keeping our eyes on. Or maybe we'll even use the mother. Yeah! That would be even better."
"Wait a minute," Tom interrupted. "Where are we getting this baby from?"
"Oh, you know, Tom. That babe we've been hiding out. That one who thinks we're going to find a good home for her baby. She's going to have the kid any day now."
"Oh, yeah, I know the one. I can't believe how dumb these girls are. Who does she think we are, anyway—the fairy princess?" Tom was laughing so hard he could hardly speak.
As the laughter died down, Victor continued. "We'll marry the two kids off to each other during the ritual. Then we'll present this little kid to them. We'll make them a family—Mom and Dad and the new baby—the whole family scene."
Victor was getting excited again. Speaking faster and faster, he began to describe his plan for presenting this entire "family" to Satan. The two teenagers would be forced to sanctify their marriage union by having sexual relations with each other on the altar. Then the teenagers and the baby would be sexually abused by the coven members.
The grand finale would be the sacrifice of the baby. When I heard that, once again, as I had done so many times before, I raised my head to the heavens and silently cried out, "My God, what more can Satan do?" Once again, the heavens remained silent.
What particularly shocked me was the way Tom and Victor, and occasionally some coven members, discussed where and how they would get the babies. I learned from Tom that there were fraudulent people who represented themselves as caseworkers of adoption agencies or heads of placement homes. They carried so-called "legitimate" identification papers, but they were either satanists or were acting as go-betweens. Their purpose was to get the unsuspecting and well-intentioned unwed mother to sign her baby away to a pornographic ring or to people connected with satanic cults.
One afternoon Victor and Tom were laughing about what they called "want-ad babies." "Did you see the ad I placed in the paper the other day?" Tom asked. "I said that Janie and I were prospective parents who were searching for an unwed pregnant young woman who would give her baby up to us for adoption after it was born. Man, you wouldn't believe how many gals answered the ad! We've got a supply of babies all set up whenever we need them. We could have enough babies to last us a whole year!"
I cringed. I'd never heard of babies referred to as a supply before. This was too much. I got sick and threw up. Victor and Tom laughed and called me a wimp._
On another occasion some coven members sat around and talked about their breeders. The word "breeder" was new to me. One of the members explained that breeders were women who were born, marked, and raised for the sole purpose of having babies that would be used by satanists—either to be raised in satanism or used in ritualistic sacrifices. Since there was never any public record of their births, they were never missed when they were abused or killed.
I thought I had heard it all until a high priestess approached Victor after a ritual as he and I were about to leave. She informed him that she had completed the assignment. "I convinced Judy (a new female coven member who was eight months pregnant) to assume the highest honor. She agreed to give her baby by C-section while lying on a purified altar."
I gasped. Victor turned and chuckled. He was always amused when I reacted in shock. Then he asked the priestess, "Did you make arrangements for a doctor?"
"Yes, I've engaged the services of a licensed doctor," she answered. "I understand that he is one of ours."
I'm sure this seems too horrendous for many of you to comprehend. It was for me. But I heard it and saw it. It's true.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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