The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s

is that the Tipperate Cord organiz this? Yeah, I just this. This brought back a lot of memories because we lived through the Satanic Bannock for sure, and I remember it very distinctly, Like I can imagine young Baptist I was afraid. I can imagine I was very scared. Um. I remember like growing up thinking, you know, some of the big

kids are sacrificing things in the woods. Yeah yeah, Um, which is I mean like that was just part of your normal, everyday thing, like walking around thinking that was happening. But um, it turns out in retrospect it was all almost entirely made up. Yeah. There was also and imagine every neighborhood or town had this with There was off Memorial Drive that was Satan House where supposedly devil worshipers. Yeah, yeah, did you have one in your town? Yeah? Yeah, It's

so funny to me to think about that. Now. They were probably just nice, normal people. It's probably some old uh shut ins, some old folks, elderly folks who just couldn't get out of the house much, right, they murdered anybody for years? You ever noticed you never see anyone. Yeah, it's kind of like kind of dilapidated or run down because they're old. Uh. And we want to issue a big c o A here, parents, this is got some

pretty grizzly stuff in it. You probably don't want your kids listening to this, even though it was all made up. Uh yeah, but there's some detail in some of this that's I found myself even going, oh, we have to say that. Yeah, so uh yeah, just it's rated are maybe even X for content? I'm thinking, Chuck, we should put together the Times America Lost its mind suite include this UM, Associative identity disorder UM, deep programming, could deep

program Salem Witchcraft trials, McCarthyism, McCarthyism, that's right. Yeah, we're gonna do it one of these days, will actually put some of these suites together. Yeah, they exists her mental sweets right. Okay, thanks man for letting off the hook. Um. But I don't know if you guys have picked up on it or not, but I keep saying like they never really existed. It wasn't actually true, It wasn't real.

This whole idea that we're talking about, from the roughly the mid eighties till about the mid nineties, about a ten year period, America as a whole was gripped by again, there's no other way to put it, Satanic panic. This idea that there were cults of Satan worshippers who were very widespread, more than you would think, who were abducting, killing, raping, molesting our children, mutilating animals, and who had been doing it for a very long time. In America was just

now waking up to this reality. It's your teachers, it's the cops, it's the mayor of your town. There's a battle between good and evil very much going on right now. And somehow, some way and people are still studying this. Um. America clomped onto this idea and ran with it like

it was for real. The idea that they were satan murderous, child molesting Satanic cults operating almost openly in the United States was a very deep and widespread belief, not just among religious people, although they were at the forefront of this um, but among people who were writing academic papers and creating television shows in the news. Um. It was people in the courts were subscribed to this. It was just it was a it was what's called a moral panic. Yeah.

And when I was reading this, even though I lived through it, I kept thinking, how in the world did this happen in the nineteen eighties. Nineteen eighties, not the sixteen forties, right, not hundreds uh. And it turns out there's a lot of reasons why. And we gotta go back in time a little bit to touch on the early reasons. You gotta go back in time. So that should be our way Back Machine theme song. That was just two darn loud. What I was continuing with the

back of the Future references. What was too darn loud? Remember Huey Lewis when he auditioned, he said, I'm sorry, that's just right, thank you, thank you. Uh. And by the way. This is not just in the United States. Apparently it was in the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and South Africa still has a cult crimes division. Yeah, I believe it. So. Um Robert Lamb wrote this article of stuff to blow your mind. Uh. And we're gonna be drawing from other articles as well, which will name

drop along the way. I guess one from Slate that was good. There's some name dropping. I've got one for you. I'll hit it up later. So part of the groundwork was laid for this in ancient history. Uh. And Robert does a good job in pointing out that there is long especially when it comes to Christian theology. Long been a divide between us and them, heaven and hell, two sides, good and evil, good and evil, light and dark. I was going to repeat that too. What else, Uh, Yin

and Yang Ye's super Christian? No, actually that I think Yin and Yang worked together, right, Sure, Yeah, we should do one on Yin Yang. But a lot of people, Um, it's not just Christians, chuck, there's humans subscribe to it in group out group mentality. Yeah. Absolutely, Like I took an anthropology class once and the professor was like, try to go a day without using words like us them, We, yeah, they, It's impossible, virtually impossible. Politics. That's just the way our

minds go. In group out group, and our group is safe and good. Their group is potentially threatening and possibly bad. We don't know, absolutely So throughout history this has come up again and again and again, and innocent people have been persecuted for doing nothing at all. One good example

are the Jewish people. Um Christians accused Jews in fourteen seventy five of using blood for kidnapped Christians children and rituals, which is pretty ironic because the Romans just a few hundred years before had accused the Christians of bathing and dining and feasting on baby's blood. Us and them once again baby's blood to go to thing for vilifying an out group. Oh yeah, but you'll see baby's blood in a lot of these cases, because that's I guess, the

hardest blood to get ahold of. It's expensive blood in the most grizzly witchcraft. Everyone. Of course we did, we do one on the Salem witch trials or just McCarthy ism, we did one, I believe. Yeah, Well, let's say we have and if we haven't we will like remember on like them being high on air. Goot, yeah, we did something like that. Okay, alright, So fifteenth century you had witchcraft persecutions all over Europe, innocent women being h killed, drowned, burned,

you name it. Um. And of course not ad us was true in all cases. Uh. When it comes to art, they laid the groundwork, and the nineteenth century, the French Romantic artist loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft and h. By the nineteen twenties and the West, we had a pretty firm established groundwork for believing and things like demons and Satan and a fiery hell. Uh and people who

who worshiped this Satan. Yeah, and uh, this the weird thing is, Chuck, is there's this still to this day, there's this idea that at some point back in antiquity at least, there were devil worshipers who like killed for Satan. And all of this was born out of whole cloth, fabricated from people who were doing the religious persecution along the way and the people who are being tortured to confess into this kind of stuff. It was all just fabricated.

But the fact that it was old the fact that it was sensational, and the fact that it had been repeated so many times it gained traction to become this, to gain this idea that it is historical fact. At some point people just take it as fact. But it's not true. No, it's not true. It's never never been satanic Satanic death cults in the United States or anywhere else. Right,

these people have never existed. Now that is not to say that people haven't killed in the name of Satan or anything like that, but there's never been any kind of Satanic death cult ever in the history of the world as far as we can ever tell. It's all made up right, And we want to go further by saying that these people who have killed in the name of Satan are actually an example of life imitating art.

They're inspired by the the fictitious myth because they're gullible and buy into it just as much as the people who think that this stuff is out there too, Like Richard Ramirez, Sure, and he was driven by eton or something like that. There was a girl in the eighties in Georgia who supposedly killed a friend um and then performed a Satanic Ritchell It's like this stuff did happen, but it happened as a result of the hysteria. It

is a positive feedback, absolutely. Uh So now we're in the twentieth century and the roots of Satanic panic can be found all throughout the entertainment industry. Books. There was one in ninety seven by Herbert Gorman called The Place called Dagon, which was very influential and radical at the time. Uh. Complete fiction, of course, but that doesn't, um, doesn't stop it from establishing firmer roots that this could be a thing. Right,

that's something that kind of keeps coming up again and again. Um. A movie or a work of fiction will establish some storyline, and then somebody will have read it and told a friend about it or something like that, and then it becomes a game of telephone along the way, somebody stops saying I read in this work of fiction, right, or I saw in this movie this happened. Instead it becomes this happened to a friend of mine's sister. Yeah, which we'll get to. Urban legend is one theory, of course. Uh,

and I know we did a podcast on that. Uh. A couple of movies came out, one horror film called The Devil rides out with the great Christopher Lee because he was in every weird movie. He was great man, he was the tall man and phantasm right, No, who's that then? Chris really was? Was he? Oh no, that's Angus somebody. You're right. Christopher Lee was the guy from like the Wicker Man, and I mean dozens and dozens

of horror movies played Dracula a lot. Rosemary's Baby also came out that year, which was way more mainstream, big big hit movie. Uh yeah, really good. Still very creepy movie with Mia Pharaoh and Cassavettis and Charles CrowdIn. Weirdly, I guess it's not weird, but I just associate him with comedy. Yeah, but he always plays a straight man, so he could go back and forth. Yeah, he could

could straddle worlds. So those movies were were huge as far as planning, and you know, of course other things like The Omen and The Exorcist, and it was just it was just a big time for talking about Satan and movies. Yeah, it's very popular. And what's interesting is you can trace it back to and initially that um book the Place called Dagon, which inspired HP Lovecraft. Yeah, that started at all basically uh music of course, which if we ever do one on the PMRC will get

to that and backmasking more heavily. But uh, Satanic imagery and everything from like Iron Maiden to King Diamond and remember they got hauled in the court for back masking

man people I know. And h then you have some real life things, real life occult like Alistair Crowley and Anton LaVey, who really didn't help quell satanic panic fierce if anything, that helps set the stage now, dressing up like with candles and and being naked with like cloaks and pentagrams isn't gonna make people feel any better, but that's what they're doing. And if you will, like I said,

we'll do on on Satanism. If you look at Satanism, it's it's not let's sacrifice animals and throw blood on each other. It's more like, hey, we're on this earth for a short time, let's party and just live for ourselves. It's more about hedonism and being atheist than some weird dark occult. Alistair Crowley was darker and more cult sure, and Anton LaVey definitely dressed his brand of Satanism up

in that kind of like dark theatrics. But the really ironic thing about both of those guys occult stuff is that, again it was life imitating art or life imitating fiction. Their ideas of the black mask or the witches Sabbath or wearing pentagrams, all that stuff came out of those witch persecutions from before war. They were fabricated from whole cloth.

So these guys were tapping into what was already part of the popular culture in the in the way of what people thought of Satanism and Satanic rituals, and we're just basically playing it up to the It was very much so. But two people who are scared to death of the idea that Satan is real and his worshippers are here on earth and are ready to kill you. Those guys scared those people and just proved that this is very real. See look at those two Anton LaVey

Alistair Crowley proved that they are Satanic cults exactly. And who knows what's going on behind that big, huge iron wooden door. All right, well, let's take a break here and we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about, uh, the nineteen seventies um Stranger Danger panic, which factors in all Right, it's the nineteen seventies and all of a sudden, all you can hear about on the news is our stories about child pornography, rings, murders, child murderers, kidnappings, uh,

crimes involving children in general, and not just that. Chuck. Like, at that time, America was really waking up to the um to just how widespread child abuse was the nineteen seventies, which is great, Yeah, it really was, because apparently it took just a couple of doctors to really stand up and be like, I'm not looking the other way again on these unexplained breaks to a child's arm. Um, it's the it's the parents. You're you're breaking your kid's arms.

It's abuse. That's wrong. Stop doing that. And as a result, the government stood up and was like, Okay, we need some laws here. One of the things that they enacted were mandatory reporting laws. If you're a doctor and you notice signs of child abuse, you have to report it.

And as a result, in ninety four, child abuse cases went from sixty thousand nationwide to the year two thousand there were three million reported, right, and it was because of public education, a lot more visibility um, and then mandatory reporting laws. But it had this cumulative effect of saying, America, your children are being they're in danger and you need to do something about it. And this child protection movement

grew out of it. Yeah. I also get the sense that pre the late seventies, I think the media that was unsavory to report on this kind of stuff, like that's that's that family's business. Yeah, and just period it's like, no one wants to hear about this stuff. It's awful. Uh. And somehow it got transferred to probably to drive ratings, like this is sensational, is what it is. Yeah, anytime America is scared, all you have to do is poke and product and you will get people to watch your

TV show. And it's done very frequently. It's sad and despicable, but it happens a lot. It still does. There's another aspect to this too, Chuck Um with the with the child protection idea. Um. This is also a time. The seventies especially, is when it when women started to go back to work after they had kids. Before they may work and then they would have kids and that was it for their professional career. They would just stay home. They were moms. For the rest of their time, if

they ever worked at all. Originally right now, in the seventies and the eighties, women were having kids, going back to work, and as a result, they were having to leave their kids in more and more daycare workers care, and so this idea that their children were being abused or potentially abused really resonated with families where their kids were in daycare and weren't like constantly under their supervision all the time. How well do you know the people

watching your kids? How much do you trust them? Are they Satanists? And this this fear took root because of the um collective anxiety at the time with more and more families putting their kids in daycare, right or they're just latchkey kids a little older who I remember during the Atlanta child murders, do you know where your children are? Where your children are? It was just a time of in a good way, people were more aware of than

ever of potential dangers for their children. So it's not like it was all bad, but when it goes into panic and well, we'll just see what happened. Yeah, I went from zero to just a couple of seconds. So what happened was during the Satanic panic U. Largely it is based around um court cases where largely daycare centers and people who cared for children were now being accused of some of the craziest things you could ever imagine

in your entire life. And like you said, one of the reasons this was fueled was very much because parents could relate to it. Uh. I mean, should we go ahead and talk about a couple of these cases. Yeah, Um, you know, the whole thing sounds crazy and weird and everything, but just innocuous, I guess until you come across the court cases and then you're like, oh, real people lost decades of their lives because of this because gulibal people were in position of power and lock them up. Yeah,

all right, let's talk about the killers. What was the

actual This is one in Texas. Yeah, in Austin and Austin, Texas. Uh. Frances and Dan Keller ran a daycare center out of their home and were accused of the following things, among others, drowning and dismembering babies in front of other children, killing animals, dogs and cats in front of children, and baby tigers, baby tigers, that's right, Uh, taking the kids to Mexico to be abused sexually by Mexican army soldiers and then brought back in time for their parents to pick them up.

That's right, Uh, dressing his pumpkins and shooting children in the arms and legs, putting children into a pool with sharks, that eight babies, putting blood in their coool aid, forcing children to carry the bones of of bodies that they had dug up. And this is just a few And I'm getting most of this from this great Slate article The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse s r A by Linda Rodriguez McRobie. So the colors were accused of all this stuff. Um, and here's generally what happens. Robert

points out. A lot of times it starts with one, um, perhaps credible case of child abuse, sexual or otherwise, and then that's snowballs. They tell the parents, maybe this is going on. So they tell the parents, uh, hey, that your child may being may be abused. The parents start looking, They start talking to other parents in that same daycare center. They start looking, they start asking their kids, and at all snowballs into these little preschoolers basically making stuff up.

And not only that, it's like, yeah, yeah, I've heard about that. That's just abused, Like it's some Satanists that are like molesting children and murdering them. And the parents are like what or that plays into something they'd already heard on on TV, which we'll talk about the media's

role in this. UM. And like you said, it's snowballs and snowballs and all of a sudden, UM, once concerned parents get involved, UM and start talking to one another panicked concerned parents, UM, then people can end up falsely accused of some pretty horrendous stuff. People stopped thinking critically, and UM, you've got problems if you're on the receiving

end of finger being pointed at you. Well, yeah, because if you're a parent and your child goes through this daycare center, another parent and the cops come and say, hey, this parents kid was sexually abused. What parents gonna be like, Oh, I'm sure it's fine, you're fine, quick complaining, I'm not going to check out my kids take a salt tablet Um. So so with with with the McMartin case, which happened

in UM southern California. Yeah, And and actually UM ended up helping turn the tide against this but the McMartin case and then the Keller case in Texas, both of those were bolstered actually by bad medical testimony by inexperienced doctors who didn't know what they were looking at, who, in their defense, a little bit um was the at the time, no one knew. No one was looking at little kids like three year olds vaginas in describing what

normal ones looked like. So since you didn't know what to look for, but I thought you were looking for evidence of sexual abuse, anything could conceivably look like evidence of say, um, vaginal trauma, so thing like that. And in the case of the Kellers, in particular, UM, the little girl who was basically, I guess, um accuser zero of this um it was, was examined and found that

um her vagina showed some evidence of trauma. Later on, the doctor, after gaining decades of experience, saw that, no, that was totally normal what I saw and is not the it's I basically gave false testimony unwittingly, and I'm sorry. And that was a huge thing because these people were locked away because of medical testimony. And again the case against the mcmartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice

as well or bad medical testimony. Yeah. So with the killer case, Uh, the patient or not patient victim zero Christie Cheviers Chevier. I don't know how you would say. She was three years old, didn't go to the daycare center much. Uh, and told her mom that dan Keller had spanked her. That's what started this whole thing. So all of a sudden, the mom says, uh, and here's a key fact, you're the mom goes to her therapist. Uh. Yeah, Donna David Campbell, who the little girl was seeing because

she had been acting out. She's like a central figure in this whole thing. Who who the doctor? Yeah, So they go to her and say, listen, something's going on here. Can you talk to her about it? And all of a sudden, uh, Donna Campbell, Donna David Campbell starts coaxing out all these really bizarre allegations about what's going on there. Uh. They made us take off our clothes and had a parrot peck us on the pepe That was the one that was the earliest accusation that that formed the foundation

of this whole case, the basis of the snowball. Yes, so this is this is this is what begins the snowball. This is when the mom goes to the other parents, like you hear, what's going on here, look at what's happened to my daughter? And what's really happening here is something called uh. It was part of the recovered therapy, recovered memory therapy movement, which was very big at the time in psychology. Basically the idea that we have these

repressed memories, um, that of abuse. Many people do that they have no idea of, and it's up to the therapist to bring these out of us. Yeah, that's almost like a separate, intertwined thread to this whole Satanic panic thing. The Satanic ritual abuse is the recovered memory therapy movement, right and um, So the Satanic panic can actually trace its roots directly to a book from nineteen seventy two by a guy named Mike warren Key. He was a

Christian stand up comedian. He also was totally full of it.

He wrote a book called The Satan Seller where he talked about his life as a former Satanic cult priest, I believe, and drug dealer, and he was eventually exposed far too late by the Christian magazine Cornerstone as almost entirely fraudulent and made up in just a liar, but his book just sold like wildfire through the Christian fundamentalist community and basically really established the groundwork for the idea that they were Satanic cults operating in the United States.

Right for for the thread of the Recovered memory Um movement that formed part of the Satanic Panic, you can trace that back to a book from nineteen eighty called I Think Michelle Remembers, Yeah, nineteen eighty And this was, by the way, I was on the cover of a Christian magazine in the nineteen eighties, Cornerstone magazine. I thought it was, but it wasn't Guide Posts. I've heard of that. That's a that's a big time Christian magazine. Man, that's

a coverboy one, what nice? What were you doing on the cover? I was. I was at a church camp one summer and that was just like it was like a four panel cover of just kids having fun at church camp, and I was one of them. The May eighty two issue. Man, I hope, I wish I could track that thing down. That'd be great. You If anyone out there has the issue of Chuck on the cover of guide Post magazine, from do you remember the year, Uh, it would have been um, probably between nineteen and nineteen

eight seven. Okay, we need that everyone. I wanted to post that that cover. That would be awesome. So this book, Michelle remembers, it was a It was just like dropping a bomb in the midst of this everybody. So everyone was transitioning from who can we start pointing at and persecuting now that we've decided the colts are okay and we're gonna stop deprogramming them, who can we do? What can we do next? And this book comes in the midst of that in nineteen eighty and it's a book

about a woman named Michelle and her therapist Lawrence passed her. Yeah, he wrote it, and he he was He helped her uncover repressed memories of being ritually satanically abused or satanic ritually abused in the nineteen fifties in Vancouver. Yeah, he actually ended up marrying her, and he coined the term ritual abuse. That lies directly at his feet. And Uh, this thing had a lot of attraction. I mean, this lady was on Oprah, she did the talk show circuit

for years. The guy was used as as an expert witness in court cases like he he founded a whole movement in psychology. It was completely debunked. Yeah, and the whole idea is it's based on this premise that if you undergo a traumatic experience, your mind is going to try to repress that memory, but it's gonna have all

sorts of horrible effects in your life. You're gonna be an alcoholic and a drug addict and maybe a child abuser and you won't know why, but it's because you were abused as a child, probably by Satanists, and you covered it up, and you need to go to therapy to have it unlocked. And a lot of people went to therapy and had these memories unlocked, which only proved Pastor's point even further. The problem is is if when

they were re examined, they were pseudo memories. Through the power of suggestion and over zealous UM therapists, a lot of people form memories of stuff that never happened. Yeah, the problem is recovered memory therapy. There's little to no scientific evidence that it's a thing at all that people unconsciously repressed these memories UM. The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain Uh. They have officially banned its members from

using it altogether. The British Psychological Society says you can use it, but you can't draw any premature conclusions. You have to have evidence, not just well this is what they said in therapy, right, So that's a repressed memory that came to the surface. Right. And the A M A. I'm sorry, the A p A and the United States, Uh, their official stance was issued nineteen eighty I'm sorry. N Uh.

There's a consensus among memory researches and clinicians that most people who are sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them, although they may not fully understand or disclose it. So a competent psychotherapist is um likely to acknowledge that current knowledge does not allow the definite conclusion without corroborating evidence. So again, the general consensus is that people don't completely unconsciously forget everything that happened.

It's virtually impossible. Um. And so this idea that during therapy, while you're coaxing these memories out, you're actually forming pseudotherapy is backed up by a lot of follow up research. Memory pseudo memory, sorry, um is backed up by research. There's a researcher, famous memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus. She found that participants of this study came to believe that they had done something they hadn't when confronted with witnesses

who said that they had done it. That's the real danger in all this sure is that these memories become just as valid as real memories and do damage because they aren't real. And there's actually a real life case that came out of all this who this one was crazy? Paul Ingram. Paul Ingram was a sheriff's deputy UM, and he was accused by his young daughter of Satanic ritually abusing her, and that he was a member of a Satanic cult and that um, she had been raped by

this cult six to eight hundred times. Um, they had been involved in the murder of twenty five babies at least. And paul Ingram said, I don't remember any of this, but um, you must be right, So I am going to confess. He was a preacher. Yeah, he was a fundamentalist um Christian. So he was very much primed to believe that there is um a very a very real Satan roaming the earth. And if his daughter is telling him that he did this, why what what reason does

she have to lie? So he actually, I mean, he bought into it and and took the rap for this even though it never happened. No one ever showed that any of this stuff happened. He served his full prisons and of twenty years years and maybe didn't even do it anything. Yeah, but he himself said, well, I don't know, maybe I did, and I think he fully bought into it over time. Such a weird reversal in that case,

you know, Um, should we take another break? Maybe? So, all right, we'll take another break here and talk about the media and then some other theories in cases in satanic panic. All right, If you were alive during the nineteen eighties and early nineties, which I was, then, you remember Oprah, Haraldo, Sally Jesse, Raphael you name it, every single talk show Dona Hue doing lots and lots of

shows on satanic death cults. It this two PM on a Wednesday afternoon, and you want to figure out how to get America to turn their TV to your station, you would have a choice of different shows to watch, probably total yeah, on the same day, right, Um, and yeah, everybody did Satanists and Haralda was the king of this. He actually had a two hour primetime special in called Exposing Satan's Underground and it is on YouTube and I

think about tim parts. I watched one of them where he had Assie on and Ozzie's like, uh, Ozzie looks like a pre Golden Girls Dorothy is. The way he's dressed and done up. It's awesome. But he's like, I don't mean freak anybody out with the music. Um, and he doesn't know what to make of this, but it's like, Ozzie,

just sit there, we'll get back to you. Like, but there's this classic line in this, right, Haralda goes they're talking about a murder that was carried out by this boy, and um, Haraldo says to this copy goes to detective, you're a cop, not a theologian, but let me ask you, was this point possessed? Dead serious? And the cop is like, I he had just a little bits like I think that's a state of mind. But yeah, and in that sense, yes,

I think he was. Haralda doesn't give what he's looking for out of the guy, so he goes to an actual theologian, a priest. He goes, uh, you know you're you're you're charged with um investigating these cases for the Catholic Church. Do you think that this is a case of possession? He's like absolutely, And Harrold was like, yes,

that's what I was looking for. But that's the level of journalism that people were tuning into on like NBC at eight o'clock for two hours in like the highest rated two hour TV documentary ever, and a third or a half of America is like, what idiot believes this is the most entertaining thing I've ever seen. The other half is scared to death and thinks that all of this is totally real. You know, it's easy to laugh

about now, but shame on all of them. Well, Haraldo came out and said, I want to apologize for that bit of journalism. That was really bad, and I'm sorry for it. But I mean that's how he made his name with stuff like that. Well, he was caught up in the moral panic. Everyone was doing it. There was a book in night children's picture book UM called Don't Make Me Go Back, Mommy Colin, a child's book about satanic ritual abuse to read to your children or if

you were a therapist, to use in therapy. You know that. Well, they also had in many of the court cases little little anatomically correct rag dolls that they would use in court like you know, show me where you were touched and things like this, which I'm sure that has valid use as well, and you know, like sex abuse cases for sure, but you're like completely poopooing that you have to, um,

you have to use that. I would imagine you you're training in how to do that correctly without inadvertently or advertently leading the child on into creating some sort of pseudo memory. It should be extensive, I would guess, you know, I mean, yeah, So the media was definitely complicit in all this, really saw that there's a lot of ratings to be had and just fanning the flames of the satanic panic. And I think a lot of people bought

into it as well. Um And then so too were things like the um the field of psychiatry and psychology very much complicit in this by allowing repressed memory therapy to really spread as much as it did without any kind of real, um verified research into whether it was

real or not. And to defend them a little bit Robert also makes it points they're probably well meaning, probably thinking they were doing this great work like helping these kids, but like with no scientific basis whatsoever, and lacking a lot of critical thinking too. And they dressed as pumpkins and shot the kids in the arms and the legs. Where are the bullet wounds? How exactly did they get the kids to Mexico and then back to Austin in

the average daycare day? You know, secret tunnels? That was an explanation. There was a lot there. There wasn't enough critical thinking. So you can definitely take UM the media, psychology, psychiatry UM and a lot of UM law enforcement investigators to task for this. But really there were a lot of hucksters and fraudsters making a lot of money as

UM satanic experts at the time. Both is like legal UM legal UH representatives, UM expert witness expert witnesses UM going on shows like Heraldo and Sally Jesse, Raphael UH and those people are really should bear the brunt of this because they were just lying, lying, lying, lying their faces off UM and and scaring people to death and making a lot of money out of it. Uh. So

he said it was widespread. There was a Red Bull magazine survey in and this is at the end of the whole thing, Yeah true, UM that found that seventy percent of Americans believed UH in satanic ritual abuse. UH. And in ninete, this is the really scary one, a survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law found that twenty six a quarter more than a quarter of prosecutors said they handled at least one case involving ritual satanic ritual abuse during that time period.

So UM. Within that time too, there was a very famous case in in West Memphis, Arkansas, the West Memphis three UM, who were very famously exonerated thanks to crack documentary filmmaking UM on HBO's half. As a matter of fact, HBO really led the vanguard against this whole satanic panic. UM. They released in UH documentary I think it was a

biopic on the McMartin try. It wasn't a documentary. I think it was like dramatized And that really started to change the tide of how academics, intellectuals, and in the media itself saw satanic ritual abuse started to expose it as this is not real. Yeah, and this is after the McMartin trial had been the longest and most expensive trial in the history of the United States. That's right, fifteen sixteen million dollars spent for with zero can convictions

because it didn't happen. UM, And that case actually was UM started with a woman who believed her child had been sexually abused, and the woman actually sadly went on to die from alcohol poisoning a couple of years later. In was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in that time. And yet nobody stopped and said, oh, well, wait a minute, she was the center of the accusers of all this should be take another look at all this.

It was like, no, let's spend fifteen million dollars a taxpayer money trying to prosecute these people and get zero convictions out of it. Um. The West Memphis three were successfully prosecuted in Arkansas, I mean railroaded. There is no other way to to put this, thanks to something like a false confession by Jesse ms Kelly, UM, which is mind blowing until you should go listen to our episode

on false confessions, which I believe you did that one right. Uh, either that or it was a part of another one. But yeah, we covered that topic for sure. Um. And and all of that was based on the satanic panic thing as well. Um, but you go, you should definitely watch those again HBO documentaries Paradise Lost one, two, and three. Yeah, and they they made the original and Paradise Lost the Child murders of Robin Hood Hills. And I think they

thought it was the same guy. Did you see Brothers Keeper the other documentary, Uh, yeah, about the older love that one man, that's the same guy that Brothers Keepers will put him on the map. So I think he thought that Paradise Lost One was just the documentary. And to his credit Joe Biden Burlinger, sure, I think he uh, he really championed this case and followed it to its

conclusion over the course of two more documentaries over the years. Yeah, And from what I understand, he changed his mind about the content or the crime mid stream. Like I think, didn't he go there thinking he was just covering the crime, And then when I actually saw what was going on, I was like, WHOA, Yeah, I think I think he was. I mean because of him, they were exonerated ultimately. Yeah, Like he got three people out of prison. One off death row. Um, Yeah, hats off. But again, this is

part of the satanic panic scare. Um and that not that one that kind of came at the end of it. But the McMartin movie on HBO started to change the tide, and so too to the exoneration of a woman named um Margaret Kelly Michaels in New Jersey. Um In. She was let out of prison after it was revealed how coercive the questioning was Um of the children who ended up accusing her of this and was true in every case,

it seems like it was. It shed a lot of light onto this and people started going like whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait, this is coercive. H Let's look at these other cases. And you go back and look at the transcripts and see, like, Okay, these people were basically telling the kids what they wanted to hear. They were using approval whenever the kids said something that that pointed the finger. They're using disapproval when

the kids refused to talk or whatever or implicate anyone. Um. And if you go back and really listen to what the kids are saying, a lot of the times they're like, no, nothing happened. Well, and then they would follow that with are you sure this didn't happen? Are you sure this didn't happen. You're not supposed to do that, and you're certainly not supposed to put people in prison for half

of their lives. Well, and you're especially not supposed to do that to a kid who's highly suggestible and wants to please, because most kids want to please. And when you look at some of these allegations, it sounds like if you asked the three year old to make up what they think ritual abuse would be, Here's here's what a kid would say. Yeah, they locked us in a closet with spiders and snakes. Yeah, they put us in a pool with sharks that ate babies, and they fed

us baby parts. So UM, the real death knell of the Satanic ritual abuse scare came in UM with the Meta survey for UM, the National Center and Child abusea Neglect and this study it contacted UM prosecutors, regular lawyers, social workers, psychologists, I think that was it. Thousands and tens of thousands of them across the country. Ended up whittling it down to a sizeable sample and found UM

all sorts of things. Specifically, what they found is there was no evidence whatsoever of any Satanic cults operating anywhere in the US, or a single crime carried out by a Satanic cult. They said that they found a couple of um crimes that were carried up by people allegedly in the name of Satan, but that these were most likely inspired by the Satanic panic itself, and that's what. Yeah, that's what That's what I'm saying, UM. But they had

had it was in a Satanic cult by any means. UM. They also found in this study that children UM of the ages that that where they would go to daycare weren't capable of forming the type of accusations against Satanic ritual abuse UM that people have been convicted of. That clearly the adults were the ones who were channeling themselves through their children to accuse these people. The kids were saying things like they locked us in a closet with

spiders and snakes. They weren't saying like they carved open a baby and um sexually abused it and then we all drank its blood while everyone's wearing black ropes. They're they're not sophisticated enough to think that kind of thing. So the study also proved that too. And then ironically, the same survey found plenty of evidence religious based crimes, including murders, carried out things like exorcisms that went too far,

that kind of stuff. They're like, that actually is real, And ironically, we have a lot of laws protecting people who do that, but we have laws that step up the punishment for satanic abuse even though that doesn't exist. And that one really changed the tide of how people saw the satanic panic. Well yeah, and then experts later came out and said as far as the uh, physical abuse, and the doctors who testified at trial, like the type

of physical abuse these kids were enduring. They were like a layman could look at a child and and say, wow, what happened to this kid? But you will obviously never be able to reproduce because you're totally mangled. Not this like ambiguous like, well, yeah, I think that seems like they had some marks where they could have been, you know, molested or something like. It would have been so obvious because these allegations were so far out there. And of

course years later they say this. At the time, everyone was drinking the flavor aid you know, nice the blood drenched flavor aid and insult to injury that same media. All of a sudden, the hot story became the outrage that was Satanic panic, and what a bunch of crap that it was. So now let's cover that story in full, even though he had a lot to do with it. Yeah, um, so, Chuck, why did people drink the flavor aid? Like? What was

the immediate reason for the Satanic panic? Well, you found this great article, which one I found a lot of great articles, the three uh satanic ritual abuse as Oh yeah, this sociological article. Yeah, that was good. Um. They have a few reasons um as subversion ideology, as rumor panic, and as contemporary legend. And the subversion ideology I thought was super into thing. I didn't even know what that was.

I hadn't heard of it before you. They define it as a culturally constructed myth that gives shape informed the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about the future that our experienced between periods of rapid, unpredictable social change. Right, So, so we're anxious. We're not even necessarily conscious of our anxiety, but we just we don't feel quite right that everything's changing. We don't know what's going on, so what's yeah, what what? What exactly is making us nervous? Oh? How about that

group over there, Satanists. Before it was Jews, and before that it was Christians. Now it puts a face to this underlying sense of dread we feel because the times are a changeing exactly, and it gives us a um an outlet at the expense of other people. But that's the with the subversion ideology. The hallmark characteristic of it is that that that other group takes everything we hold dear and values the opposite of it. So Satanists they use upside down crosses and evil is what's really good?

And um it was. It's a classic example of subvers subversion ideology. Well, and one thing I thought was really interesting in here is um they contend And I'm sure it's true that subversion ideology actually ends up having a stabilizing effect because people didn't go, oh, okay, well, that's why I'm so upset and worried and anxious is because of the Satanists, not what's really going on, which is the end of the millennium apparently. Yeah whatever, That was

another explanation I ran across is that it was millennial anxiety. Um. There is also know that another one you said, moral or rumor panic um, which we touched on before. But basically that is this idea that, um, it's just buying into a rumor and like really really buying into it. And the way you buy into it is because all of a sudden, um, professional psychiatrists and psychologists and law enforcement people and people in the newspaper are talking about

this stuff like it's fact. And with that, because we trust these people as being smart, intelligent people, it becomes fact in the eyes and the minds of just normal people,

and that gives it veracity in and of itself. Once people start believing something as fact without any proof, you are rumor panic has just set in well, and ironically to them, it seems like the more out there the panic is, the more readily it's believed, because that the old like who would make something like that up right, a three year old might being coaxed by police and

her parents and her shrink. And then the last one is an urban legend, which we talked about before, but this sociological article pointed something out that I hadn't thought of that Um, urban legends deal in metaphors, even though we don't think of them as metaphors. So in this case, the children that were being abused by Satanists were a metaphor for our future, and children are a future. Just

go ask Whitney Houston, can't it's true, um. And then as people start to buy into it, it becomes a rumor panic, and you can dress it up with some version ideology. So in the end, the mcmartin's, I don't think they ever well, I think they need I think they were in jail here and there while the trial was going on. Yeah, but they were never prosecuted, but never successfully prosecuted. The Kellers were eventually exonerated, but they

spent twenty one years in prison. Their life was ruined, twenty one years in prison each based on these false I have to say, if you want to read one of the better articles I've ever read, it's called The Innocent and the Damned. It's from Texas Monthly. He was written in while this Satanic panic is going on, But somehow Texas Monthly took a critical eye to this stuff. Really good article. I thought this was so fascinating because

as crazy as it seems now. And like I was saying at the very beginning, like how in the world in the nineteen eighties did we buy into this like it was Salem, Massachusetts. Uh, when you look at the reasons behind it, it was like the perfect storm coalescing. Uh, it sort of makes perfect sense when you look at

everything behind it. It does, but doesn't it Also, like, even even even if you take into account that you're using hindsight and that the perspective that's afforded by that, the gullibility that's it that is involved in a moral panic is it's just it's saddening that Edward Burns would have been all over this. Oh yeah, well he fomented those kind of things. Um, yeah, yeah, it's sad. Also, if you want some yucks, go look up law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Coults on YouTube hit the video series.

Yeah so weird. I'm glad to know that you had a Satan house in your neighborhood too. I think everybody did or rumors that, like somebody found a cat with its head cut off in a panagram and he's like, oh that happened because I'm ten, Which is okay if you're ten, But if you're fifty, it's not okay, especially if you're the local prosecutor. Uh. And it also one last thing, Chuck, it makes you wonder what moral panics are we working on right now? What's this ancient history?

You know? Uh? If you want to know more about moral panics and specifically the Satanic panic, you can type those words into the search part how stuff works dot com. Since I said search parts time for listener mail. Here's what I predict because that some people are going to write in and say, dudes, we're in the middle of another moral panic right now and it is blank vocal fry. Perhaps some lady called me the fry master and the emailed you see that. No, I didn't. She was like,

Chuck always uses vocal fry. And then when I listened to my voice, I'm like, I totally do, but totally I've noticed it a lot more since we um uh said that episode. Yeah, yeah, whatever, I'm being me. Yeah, man, you should. I'm a trend center. I'm gonna call this. Um oh, guys sitting straight on these grocery store donations. Okay, hey guys, a long time listener, love you guys. Never thought, uh, this would be the reason I have to each out to you at the end of the podcast on Tuesday. Um,

he said, I don't know which podcast it was. At the end of the recent podcast, actually had to stop and say no because my friends Josh and Chuck didn't just do that and told people not to donate a dollar to buy the little hot air balloons at the grocery store because the company then uses those donations to get text credit. This is absolutely not true. That is not true what I said. He says, I have actually been working with Children's Miracle Network hospitals in Connecticut for

about twenty years. And by the way, when I said the balloons, I forgot that was Children's Miracle Networks specifically. I used to do a lot of work with them in l A on video shoots. No, of course not. It's They're amazing. You're like, it's the shamrocks. I have a problem. I know. I just felt terrible after that, so um. He says. Our corporate partners do not get

text credits for donations made by their customers. In fact, many of our corporate partners ring these donations through their registers, so the donation shows on the customer's receipt. Allowing it them to use that for their taxes. What a quick fun fact about the Miracle Balloon UM that I reference is that the first one ever sold the entire world was that a small diner in downtown Middletown, Connecticut to Roy Come in nineteen six. I thought he's gonna say

like nineteen not four. Uh. Soon after that, UM, the Miracle Balloon became a multinational program that raises money for more than one seventy local children's hospitals across the US in Canada, and its creator became very, very rich. As I mentioned, I've been doing this job for about twenty years, and I have to tell uh that I always say I have the best job in the world. I get to work with amazing people like my co workers and all of our partners, and I get to work for

the most inspiring people, our patient families. Please help me get this corrected. The stuff you should know, legion, don't worry, as I love you guys. That is from Scott uh organ Eck, the director of Children's Racle Network Hospitals. While from the Horse's Mouth or a director, Yeah, so I don't We're gonna have to look into this a little Further, I think we got other people that said that's not true, and other people said it is true for Children's Miracle Network.

I'm sure he knows what he's talking about, but there are all kinds of things that done it too. And it's also probably not a liar. I don't know. He seems like a regular guy, not a Satanic, which a will be user. No, not at all in any way, so we'll we'll look into it. It certainly did not mean to disparage the No. I didn't in there, and I mean, if that's the way it works, I retract that, but I need to look into it a little more first, all right, the jury's out. Um, thank you very much.

Was his name, David. David, You're awesome. Thank you for the work you're doing too. If you want to get in touch with us to set us straight, we love that. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast to house Stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. VI is it, how stuff works, dot com h