Bewildered by the noise and bustle, the teenage girl stepped off the train in London. Without a thought for her safety she had run away from her drab home life in a northern city to join the swinginging Sixties' scene in the capital.

Her nervousness turned to relief when she was approached by a smiling Audrey Harper. The 21-year-old friendly looking woman said, "You look lost, love. Need something to eat and a place to stay?"

The youngster readily accepted - her family have neither seen nor heard of her since. Within days she had been sucked into a web of satanic corruption - she became the sexual plaything for a coven of black witches.

She was just one of 100 teenage boys and girls who, Harper claims, she lured into Satanism in the five years she spent as a black witch in London.

In 1967 she became a Christian convert and remains guilt-ridden about her past. She has revealed the evil and twisted practices in a television interview and now talks to Bella.

Her statements make horrifying reading. But her claims have been taken so seriously that they're been investigated by the police.

Now a 49-year-old housewife living in the West Midlands, she says: "I was at low ebb when I was drawn into a coven, after being invited to some parties with free drinks and drugs.

"At my initiation ceremony I watched the high priest slit the throat of his nine-day-old daughter, and birn the body. The mother was a witch and the murdered baby had never been registered. I think a doctor in the coven had delivered the child secretly.

"Then, in a mesmerised state, I was laid across the altar and raped by the high priest. I signed a parchment in blood and from that moment lived in fear and obeyed his commands. I didn't want to die.

"I was taught to recruit youngsters for coven meetings. The teenage runaways are east prey because they're very vunerable.

"They were taken to coven parties where their drinks were spiked with drugs. Then they were encouraged to take their clothes off and paw at each other. Coven members took photographs to blackmail them with.

"I watched coven members rape and have oral and anal sex with the children. lesbians took advantage of them too, because the children belonged to everyone in the coven. I remember seeing one 13-year-old girl raped on the altar. To finance the covens, some children were sold off to wealthy paedophiles or blackmailed into prostitution."

Now a mother herself, Audrey's motives for speaking out are simple: "I want parents to realise just how easily their children can become victims. Witches are quick to move in on them. Look to your children. They have never been at greater risk than now."

Estimates of the number of Satanists active in Britain vary wildly between 40,000 and 100,000. What is certain is the growing risk the evil art poses to our youngsters.

Self-styled witchfinder and occult expert the Rev. Kevin Logan estimates there are 50 satanic covens in and around his parish in Blackburn, Lancashire, alone. It's an area where devil-worship has traditionally thrived. He says: "Many of the members are very intelligent professional people looking for alternative lifestyles.

"But even without their direct influence, children are being fed a daily of the occult through films, books, magazines, and ouija boards."

The Reachout Trust is a Christian organisation directed to helping anyone who has been involved with the occult. Counsellor Maureen Davies says: "There's a calculated recruitment program of children, some as young as 12, by Satanists.

"Children have committed suicise as a result. They're frequently sexually abused and used in rituals because Satanists believe they're able to generate more power for themselves through children.

"A child is innocent and pure and it is from abuse and the desecration of life and Christianity that Satanists draw strength."

A Satanic magazine operating from a London box number which has been investigated by Bella, sickeningly underlines this principle. It claims: "For the highrst spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which cointains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim."

Childwatch co-ordinator Diane Core, who campaigns against the abuse of children, says: "Satanism is one of the greatest threats ever face dby family life. Children are trapped through drugs and then emotionally and physically abused and encouraged to reject their parents. Their minds are mangled and they end up as old people in young bodies."

David Stilwell, from Luton, Bedfordshire, was only eight when he started dabbling with a ouija board out of curiosity. By the time he was 17 he'd started his own coven with a friend and was recruiting members through occult magazines. He says: "It became tame after a while and I decided to investigate Satanism. We sacrificed rabbits, pigeons and drank their blood.

"I only realised what i was doing when someone at my work, who was a Christian, showed me how I was blindly worshipping Satan."

Now aged 31 and converted to Christianity by his colleague, he warns: "You're too easily influenced at that age. I was lucky and got out early enough; others get trapped and literally dragged down to Hell."

The day before dovorcee Jule Wykes stabbed her three children and killed herself in January this year, she begged her local vicar, the Rev. Chris Murray, to save her from the Devil. The usually level-headed 23-year-old from Turlin Moor, Dorset, had originally been led into witchcraft by a boyfriend.

The following day it drove her to attack her two-year-old son and daughters aged four and six. By some miracle they survived, despite multiple stab wounds. Their mother killed herself outright by plunging a bread knife into her heart.

The Witchcraft Act, which banned the practice of Satanism and the occult, was repealed in 1736 - as a result the police are prevented from acting against covens unless the illicit use of drugs and sexual abuse can be proved.

Detectives approached by Bella wouldn't comment on investigations they're carrying out into Satanic covens. But crusading MP Geoffrey Dickens is currently preparing a report for the Home Office which, he hopes, will force new legislation curtailing their evil activities.

He says: "Banning witchcraft altogether would be difficult because this is a free country and it is up to adults to do as they wish. But it must be made illegal for children to take part in any sense whatsoever.

"All the signs of a huge increase in Satanism can be seen. More graveyards are being desecrated, video shops are hiring out more black magic films and the biggest waiting lists at libraries are for books on the occult."

This week the Royal Society for Medicine have organised a special conference on "Child Abuse and the Occult". One delegate says: "Some psychiatrists discount Satanism and put it down to schizophrenia, because the signs and actions are very similar. Tragically, children who have been forced to make pacts with Satan are difficult to save."