Controversies

The Temple’s most significant historical controversy concerned Aquino personally. In 1986 he became a suspect in the Presidio of San Francisco child-care centre abuse investigation; the investigation, conducted by Army CID and the San Francisco Police Department, examined allegations made by a child whom that child later identified as Aquino. Aquino was never charged. Army CID closed its investigation in 1989 with no findings against him; the San Francisco District Attorney declined to file charges; the Army’s internal review of his security clearance found no basis for revocation. The allegations were subsequently absorbed into the broader Satanic Panic conspiracy literature of the late 1980s, where they have been repeatedly recirculated in unverified and embellished forms. The disciplined documentary statement remains: investigations occurred, no charges were filed, and no findings were entered against him.

The Order of the Trapezoid’s focused study of Germanic and specifically National Socialist occult material has drawn criticism from outside the Temple. The Temple’s and Aquino’s public position is that the material is studied as historical record and as a documentary case in the ritual operationalisation of political power, not as ideological endorsement; the criticism has continued nonetheless.

Some doctrinal disagreement persists within the wider contemporary Satanic community about whether the Temple’s theistic position belongs within Satanism at all, or constitutes a distinct tradition that should be discussed separately. Setian commentators generally accept the latter framing; the Church of Satan position is that LaVey’s symbolic Satanism is the true reading and theistic Satanism is a misunderstanding of his work.