Satanic panic
The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse, sometimes known as ritual abuse, starting in North America in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make claims about Satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifice, pornography, and prostitution.
Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers, therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse. Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with dissociative identity disorder and anti-government conspiracy theories, such as QAnon.
Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences as well as through talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers."
A 1994 article in the New York Times stated that: "Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any allegations of organized cult abuse".
History
Origins
Among the explanations of why the panic occurred when it did, or "took the shape that it did", include- Three films that opened and ran near the beginning of the panic pertained to Satanism, namely Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Omen. According to scholar Joseph Laycock, patients hypnotized by therapists to recover memories of SRA, often "seemed to be recalling scenes from these films".
- The reaction against the surge of new religious movements in the 1960s due to both the immigration reform allowing missionaries for Asian religions, as well as new religions,, arising from the counterculture of the baby boomer generation. Sometimes called the "cult wars" or "cult scare".
- The Tate–LaBianca murders committed by cult members in the Manson Family which consisted of "mostly lonely teenagers from broken homes".
- Mike Warnke's bestselling 1972 memoir The Satan Seller, in which he claimed to have led a group of 1,500 Satanists that engaged in rape and human sacrifice before he converted to evangelical Christianity. The book was praised by Moody Monthly and The Christian Century. Two decades later the book was debunked by an evangelical magazine, Cornerstone.
Early history
File:Onbekend Heksenverbranding.jpg|thumb|In Early Modern Europe people accused of being witches were stated to be working for Satan and burned at the stake
A more immediate precedent to the context of Satanic ritual abuse in the United States was McCarthyism in the 1950s. The underpinnings for the contemporary moral panic were found in a rise of five factors in the years leading up to the 1980s: the establishment of fundamentalist Christianity and the founding and political activism of the religious organization which was named the Moral Majority; the rise of the anti-cult movement which accused abusive cults of kidnapping and brainwashing children and teens; the appearance of the Church of Satan and other explicitly Satanist groups which added a kernel of truth to the existence of Satanic cults; the development of the social work or child protection field, and its struggle to have child sexual abuse recognized as a social problem and a serious crime; and the popularization of post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed memory, and the corresponding survivor movement.
''Michelle Remembers'' and the McMartin preschool trial
Michelle Remembers, written by Canadians Michelle Smith and her husband, psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, was published in 1980. Now discredited, the book was written in the form of an autobiography, presenting the first modern claim that child abuse was linked to Satanic rituals. According to the "memoir", at the age of five Michelle was tortured by her mother for days in "elaborate satanic rituals". As the torture reached a climax, a portal to hell opened and Satan himself appeared, only to be driven away by the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael. Explanations for a lack of any evidence of abuse on Michelle's body were that it had been miraculously removed by St. Mary. Not explained was testimony from Michelle's father and two sisters, contradicting the memoir, as well as a 1955/56 St. Margaret's School yearbook. The yearbook includes a photo taken in November 1955 showing Michelle attending school and appearing healthy, when according to Pazder's book Michelle spent that month imprisoned in a basement.Pazder was also responsible for coining the term ritual abuse. Michelle Remembers provided a model for numerous allegations of SRA that ensued later in the same decade. On the basis of the book's success, Pazder developed a high media profile, gave lectures and training on SRA to law enforcement, and by September 1990 had acted as a consultant on more than 1,000 SRA cases, including the McMartin preschool trial. Prosecutors used Michelle Remembers as a guide when preparing cases against alleged Satanists. Michelle Remembers, along with other accounts portrayed as survivor stories, are suspected to have influenced later allegations of SRA, and the book has been suggested as a causal factor in the later epidemic of SRA allegations.
The early 1980s, during the implementation of mandatory reporting laws, saw a large increase in child protection investigations in America, Britain, and other developed countries, along with a heightened public awareness of child abuse. The investigation of incest allegations in California was also changed, with cases led by social workers who used leading and coercive interviewing techniques that had been avoided by police investigators. Such changes in the prosecution of cases of alleged incest resulted in an increase in confessions by fathers in exchange for plea bargains. Shortly thereafter, some children in child protection cases began making allegations of horrific physical and sexual abuse by caregivers within organized rituals, claiming sexual abuse in Satanic rituals and the use of Satanic symbols. These cases garnered the label satanic ritual abuse both in the media and among professionals. Childhood memories of similar abuse began to appear in the psychotherapy sessions of adults.
In 1983, charges were laid in the McMartin preschool trial, a major case in California, which received attention throughout the United States and contained allegations of satanic ritual abuse. The case caused tremendous polarization in how to interpret the available evidence. Shortly afterward, more than 100 preschools across the country became the object of similar sensationalist allegations, which were eagerly and uncritically reported by the press. Throughout the McMartin trial, media coverage of the defendants was unrelentingly negative, focusing only on statements by the prosecution. Michelle Smith and other alleged survivors met with parents involved in the trial, and it is believed that they influenced testimony against the accused.
Kee MacFarlane, a social worker employed by the Children's Institute International, developed a new way to interrogate children with anatomically correct dolls and used them in an effort to assist disclosures of abuse with the McMartin children. After asking the children to point to the places on the dolls where they had allegedly been touched and asking leading questions, MacFarlane diagnosed sexual abuse in virtually all the McMartin children. She coerced disclosures by using lengthy interviews that rewarded discussions of abuse and punished denials. The trial testimony that resulted from such methods was often contradictory and vague on all details except for the assertion that the abuse had occurred. Although the initial charges in the McMartin case featured allegations of Satanic abuse and a vast conspiracy, these features were dropped relatively early in the trial, and prosecution continued only for non-ritual allegations of child abuse against only two defendants. After three years of testimony, McMartin and Buckey were acquitted on 52 of 65 counts, and the jury was deadlocked on the remaining 13 charges against Buckey, with 11 of 13 jurors choosing not guilty. Buckey was re-charged and two years later released without conviction.