Joseph Scott Craig, 25, and his wife, Joy Johnson, 30, were arrested last month after a man and a woman told authorities they were beaten, shackled to beds, kept in dog cages and starved.
According to the couple's defense attorney, the victims could have left at any time and were not prevented from doing so, implying that whatever went on was consensual. Also in the article, a "cult" organization is finally named - "The Order of the Morning Star." No order of that exact name maintains a web site and the only references to it are in articles about the case. It might be a case of prosecuters garbling "Hermetic Order of the Morning Star" and if that's the case the organization is part of the Golden Dawn tradition and has nothing whatsoever to do with Satanism. Then again, this is North Carolina.
A second Durham County Democratic Party official has been arrested in relation to the case, which raises the specter of possible political persecution on the part of law enforcement.
Diana Palmer, 44, of Cottage Woods Court, surrendered to police Wednesday afternoon. She was charged with being an accessory after the fact of assault with a deadly weapon and was being held in the Durham County Jail.
Palmer denies knowledge of any cult or illegal activity. It seems awfully convenient that both women happened to be involved in a Democratic Party that may finally be within striking distance of winning North Carolina in the upcoming presidential election. Also in the article, a representative of the actual Church of Satan issued a statement that the original couple charged were not members and that the Church does not sanction any sort of sexual abuse.
Also, am I the only one who finds this suspicious?
Prosecutors say both victims are originally from out of state and have since left North Carolina. The District Attorney's Office says that so far, it hasn't been able to contact them and that the contact information is with an investigator who is on vacation for the next two weeks.
From the same article, we find that:
The male victim went to live with the couple in November 2007, the female victim a month later.
So the victims and the accused were housemates. Maybe this whole thing doesn't have anything to do with BDSM or Satanism or magick, but some sort of bad roommate situation. If that is the case, the lurid allegations could be yet another instance of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" that never actually occurred.
Even more sinister, could this be some sort of a setup in the ongoing battle between the various Golden Dawn lineages? (1) We would have to start out assuming that the couple were involved with the Hermetic Order of the Morning Star, part of the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn, rather than some made-up organization consisting of the people involved in the case. (2) EOGD has been the target of numerous attacks on various online lists, especially from David Griffin's Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. To be fair to Griffin, his group has also been targeted so perhaps some third party might be involved. It seems unlikely that anyone would go to such great lengths to discredit a rival magical order and a bit paranoid to even float the suggestion, but stranger things have happened in the magical community.
I'll keep following the case and post any new revelations that arise during the trial, but at this point the line between prosecution and persecution in this case is starting to look awfully thin.
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