File 18 was the title of a law enforcement newsletter

Newsletter

A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...

 published by Lt. Larry Jones of the Boise, Idaho

Boise, Idaho

Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...

 police department and head of the Cult Crime Impact Network (CCIN). Issue #1 was privately published on May 2, 1986.

It purported to uncover the level of Satanic

Satanism

Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...

 and occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

 crime in America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In the first issue, Dr. Al Carlisle of the Utah State

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

 Prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 System is quoted as estimating that "between 40,000 - 60,000 ritual homicides per year occur in the United States." Disclaimers were included warning that the newsletter was "CONFIDENTIAL. RESTRICTED ACCESS INFORMATION FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY." File 18 ceased publication after 1989, after a run of about 20 issues.

At its height, the newsletter claimed an audience of nearly two thousand subscribers, mostly law enforcement officials. In the October 1989 newsletter Maureen Davies of the Reachout Trust

Reachout Trust

Reachout Trust is a British evangelical Christian organisation. Its stated aims are to "Examine in the light of the Christian gospel the beliefs and spirituality of people within the cults, occults, new age and all not upholding to biblical truth."...

 authored a lengthy section on "Satanic Ritual Abuse

Satanic ritual abuse

Satanic ritual abuse refers to the abuse of a person or animal in a ritual setting or manner...

".

External links

• The Vile "File 18", hosted by Holysmoke.org, contains copies of early issues.
• Skeptic Tank Text Archive File, contains (among other things) copies of the newsletter
• Bad Satan Psycho-Juju False Memories, Broken Families, Child Sacrifice and the New Satanic Panic - claims that CCIN was "operated out of the basement of the Trinity Fellowship Church of Boise, Idaho".
• Occult Crime: A Law Enforcement Primer, refutes, in detail, the claims made by Lt. Jones and his newsletter.