October 19, 2019 • 56 mins
In the late 1980s, the United States experienced a "Satanic Panic," leading parents to fear for the safety of their children. But were there any real examples of Satanic ritual abuse? Find out this and more in this classic episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone. It is Saturday, and that means it's time
for a Saturday Stuff you Should Know select episode. As
you know, Josh and I curate these each week. We
take turns going back through the archives and picking out
some of our favorite episodes. And boy, oh boy, that
I love this one from January two, sixteen, the Satanic
Panic of the nineteen eighties. We lived through it, we
(00:21):
talked about it. It's pretty amazing stuff. Check it out
right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production
of our Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charlot to be Chuck Bryant,
uh and this is stuff you should ail. Satan Man
(00:46):
that would have gotten you locked up a New years ago. Yeah,
so I want to go ahead and say that I
would like to do one on Satanism. Yeah, for sure,
the religion misunderstood may include the Church of Satan or
maybe those are two separates. Uh um. And the PMRC
is that the TIPPERD Core organizes. Yeah, I just this.
(01:10):
This brought back a lot of memories because we lived
through the Satanic Bannock for sure, and I remember it
very distinctly, like, oh, 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,
(01:30):
oh 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 THEO was off Memorial Drive. That was Satan house
(01:52):
where supposedly devil worshipers. Yes, 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, all right. They murdered anybody for years.
You ever noticed you never see anyone. Yeah, it's kind
(02:13):
of old, kind of dilapidated or run down because they're old. Uh.
And we want to issue a big c 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,
(02:35):
we have to say that. So 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? Sweet Yeah,
include this UM dissociative identity disorder, UM deep programming, could
(02:55):
deep program Salem Witchcraft trials. Mccarthier him, McCarthy ism. That's right.
We're going to do it one of these days, will
actually put some of these sweets together. Yeah, he mente 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 that never really existed.
(03:17):
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
(03:37):
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
(03:59):
now waking up to this reality. It's your teachers, it's
the cops, even 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
(04:21):
like it was for real. The idea that they were 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
(04:45):
and creating television shows and 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 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,
(05:08):
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 this was that's a
vur Way Back Machine theme song. That was just too
darn loud. What I was continuing with the back of
(05:29):
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 for that. Uh. And by the way,
this is not just 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.
(05:50):
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. Boom, 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
(06:12):
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
(06:33):
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
(06:58):
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
(07:19):
Jews in fourteen seventy five of using blood for kidnapped
Christian 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 it's to go
to thing for vilifying an out group. Oh yeah, but
(07:43):
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 and 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,
(08:09):
we did something like that. Okay, alright, So fifteenth century
you had witchcraft persecutions all over Europe, innocent women being killed, drowned, burned,
you name it. Um. And of course none of this
was true in all cases. Uh. When it comes to art,
they laid the groundwork. And the nineteenth century, the French
(08:32):
Romantic artist loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft and uh.
By the nineteen twenties in the West, we had a
pretty firm established groundwork for believing in things like demons
and Satan and a fiery hell. Uh and people who
(08:57):
who worshiped this Satan yeah, and a 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 worshippers who like killed for Satan,
and all of this was born out of whole cloth,
fabricated from people who are doing the religious persecution along
(09:19):
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
(09:41):
not true. No, it's not true. It's 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 His tree of
the world as far as we can ever tell. It's
(10:02):
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 Satan or
(10:25):
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 movie.
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
(10:50):
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
(11:14):
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 stopped saying I read
in this work of fiction 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
(11:35):
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 fantasm Right now, who's that then? Because
really was sure? Was he? Oh no, that's angus somebody,
(11:58):
You're right? Christopher Lee was the from like the Wicker Man,
and I mean dozens and dozens of horror movies. Play
Dracula a lot. Rosemary's Baby also came out that year,
which was way more mainstream, big, big hit, great movie.
Uh yeah, really good. Still very creepy movie with Mia
Farrow and Cassavettis and Charles CrowdIn. Weirdly, I guess it's
(12:21):
not weird, but I dis 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,
(12:43):
it's very popular. 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
(13:03):
Iron Maiden to King Diamond and Judas. 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 fearce if anything that helps
(13:26):
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 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,
(13:47):
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,
more 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 the
(14:10):
cult 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 they were
fabricated from a whole cloth. So these guys were tapping
into what was already part of the popular culture in
(14:32):
the in the way of what people thought of Satanism
and Satanic rituals. And we're just basically playing it up
to the ante 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
(14:53):
just proved that this is very real. See look at
those two Anton LaVey Alistair Crowley proved of that they're
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 the nineteen seventies um stranger
(15:15):
danger panic which factors in story. All Right, it's the
nineteen seventies, and all of a sudden, all you can
(15:38):
hear about on the news is our stories about child pornography, rings, murders,
child murders, 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 ninety and seventies, which is great, Yeah,
(16:02):
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.
Stopped doing that, and as a result, the government stood
up and was like, Okay, we need some laws here.
(16:23):
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
(16:43):
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 it was unsavory to report on
(17:04):
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. That's right,
(17:26):
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
(17:48):
then they would have kids and that was it for
their professional career. They would just stay home. There 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
(18:10):
abused really resonated with families where their kids are 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 that um collective
anxiety at the time, with more and more families putting
their kids in daycare, right or they're just latchkey kids
(18:32):
a little older who remember during the Atlanta child murders,
do you know where your children aren't to where your
children are? It was just a time of in a
good way, people were more aware of uh than ever
of potential dangers for their children. So it's not like
it was all bad. But when it goes into panic
(18:53):
and well, we'll just see what happened. Yeah, I went
from like zero to one twenty and just a couple
of second basically. 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
(19:13):
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
(19:40):
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.
(20:00):
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
(20:22):
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, this is my favorite.
And shooting children in the arms and legs, Putting children
into a pool with sharks that eight babies, putting blood
in their kool aid, forcing children to carry the bones
(20:44):
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
(21:07):
times it starts with one, UM, perhaps credible case of
child abuse, yeah, 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
(21:28):
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,
not 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
(21:50):
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 eat Um.
Then people can end up falsely accused of some pretty
horrendous stuff. People stopped thinking critically, and UM, you've got
(22:14):
problems if you're on the receiving end of finger being
pointed at you. Well, yeah, because if you're a parent,
your child goes to this daycare center, another parent and
the cops come and say, hey, this parents kid was
sexually abused. What parents going to 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.
(22:34):
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
(22:57):
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 of 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,
(23:22):
evidence of say, um vaginal trauma or something 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,
(23:43):
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
sucked away because of medical testimony. And again, the case
against the mcmartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice
(24:06):
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
(24:30):
all of a sudden, the mom says, uh, and here's
a key fact, you're the mom goes to her therapist. H. 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. This whole who the doctor. Yeah,
so they go to her and say, listen, something's going
(24:52):
on here. Can you talk to her about it? And
all of a sudden, uh, Donna Campbell, Donna David Campbell
starts coaxing out all the is 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 pep.
That was one that was the earliest accusation that that
(25:13):
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
(25:37):
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 was the Satanic Panic
(26:01):
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
(26:21):
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
(26:43):
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 Night.
And this was, by the way, I was on the
cover of a Christian magazine in the nineteen eighties, Cornerstone Magazine.
(27:03):
I thought it was, but it wasn't Guide Posts. I
heard of that. That's a that's a big time Christian magazine. Man,
that's a cover boy 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
(27:26):
I could track that thing down. They'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 roughly? Uh, it would have been um probably
between nineteen eighty five 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
(27:49):
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
(28:10):
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.
(28:33):
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's. 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
(28:57):
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
(29:18):
these memories unlocked, which only proved Pastor's point even further. Right,
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
(29:40):
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 prem sure conclusions. You have to have evidence,
(30:02):
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
(30:23):
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.
(30:47):
And so there 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 Researchudo memory pseudo memory, sorry,
um is backed up by research. There's a searcher, famous
memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus. She found that participants of
the study came to believe that they had done something
(31:10):
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
(31:32):
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,
(31:56):
you must be right. So I am going to confess
he was a true too, wouldn't he. 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 took the rap for this
(32:19):
even though it never happened. No one ever showed that
any of this stuff happened. Yeah, he served his full
prisons and it's of twenty years, twenty 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 to such a weird reversal
in that case, you know, UM should we take another
(32:41):
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 story. All right, if you
(33:06):
were alive during the nineteen eighties and early nineties, which
I was, then, you remember Oprah, Haraldouble, Sally, Jesse, Raphael,
you name it, every single talk show, Dona Hue doing
lots and lots of shows on satanic death cults. If
it's two pm on a Wednesday afternoon and you want
(33:28):
to figure out how to get America to turn their
TV to your station, you would have had a choice
of different shows to watch, probably totally yeah, on the
same day, right, um, and yeah, everybody did Satanists and
Horaldo 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 teen parts.
(33:50):
I watched one of them where he had Assie on
and Ozzie's like, uh for Ozzie, he's Ozzie looks like
a pre golden girl's door. The is the way he's
dressed and done up. It's awesome. But he's like, I
don't mean to freak anybody out with music. Um. He
doesn't know what to make of this, but was like,
(34:11):
as he 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, detective,
you're a cop, not a theologian, but let me ask you.
Was this boy possessed? Dead? Serious? And the cop was like,
(34:34):
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 get 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 harld was like, yes,
(34:57):
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
(35:18):
this is totally real. Yeah, you know, it's easy to
laugh about now, but shame on all of them. Well,
Haraldough 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 children's picture book UM called Don't
(35:44):
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, right, you
know that. Well they also had in many of the
court cases a 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
(36:06):
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 your 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,
(36:30):
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 in 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
(36:52):
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 the points
they're probably well meaning, probably thinking they were doing this
great work, like helping these kids, but like with no
(37:14):
scientific basis whatsoever, right, 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 Secret tunnels, you know, secret tunnels. That was an
explanation there was a lot there. There wasn't enough critical thinking.
(37:37):
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 are a lot of
hucksters and frosters making a lot of money as UM
satanic experts at the time. Both is like legal UM,
(37:59):
legal UH representatives, UM expert witnesses, expert witnesses, authors 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, yeah, lying, lying, lying
their faces off UM and and scaring people to death
(38:21):
and making a lot of money out of it. Uh.
So he said it was widespread. There was a Red
Book magazine survey in and this is at the end
of the whole thing. Yeah true, UM that found that
seventy percent of Americans believed in Satanic ritual abuse. Uh.
And in n this is the really scary one. A
survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and
(38:43):
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 West Memphis, Arkansas, the West Memphis Three UM,
(39:06):
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 trial. It wasn't a documentary. I
(39:27):
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,
(39:47):
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 sexu abused, and the woman actually sadly went on
to die from alcohol poisoning a couple of years later,
was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in
(40:08):
that time, and yet nobody stopped and said, oh, well,
wait a minute, she was the center of the accusers
of all this. Should we take another look at all this?
It was like, no, let's spend fifteen million dollars of
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
(40:31):
other way 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 um and and
all of that was based on the satanic panic thing
(40:53):
as well. Um, but you go. You should definitely watch
those again. HBO documentaries Paradise Lost, one, two, and three
and the a Um 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? Yeah, about the older
older brothers. Love that one man. That's the same guy
(41:14):
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, 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,
(41:35):
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. Yeah, um yeah,
(41:56):
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 Michael's in New Jersey. Um In. She was let
(42:16):
out of prison after it was revealed how coercive the
questioning was. Um of the children who ended up accusing
her of this, and that was true in every case.
It seems like it was. It shed a lot of
light onto this and people started going like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait,
this is coercive. Let's look at these other cases. And
you go back and look at the transcripts and see like, Okay,
(42:38):
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 were 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
(43:00):
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,
(43:20):
it sounds like if you asked a 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 UM
(43:43):
with a meta survey for UM, the National Center and
Child Abuse and 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
(44:05):
found UM all sorts of things. Specifically, what they found
is there was no evidence whatsoever of any Satanic cults
operating anywhere in the U s or a single crime
carried out by a Satanic cult. That said that they
found a couple of UM crimes that were carried up
by people allegedly in the name of Satan, but that
(44:25):
these were most likely inspired by the Satanic panic itself
and solo affairs. 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
(44:48):
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
(45:11):
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 of religious based crimes, including murders
carried out things like exorcisms that went too far. That
(45:32):
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
(45:53):
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. Yes, you're totally mangled. Not this like ambiguous like, well, yeah,
(46:17):
I think that it 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
(46:39):
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 we 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
(47:03):
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
(47:25):
was super interesting. 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 and formed
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. Everything's changing
(47:46):
and 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? Yeah, basic Jews, and
before that it was Christians exactly. Now it puts a
face to 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
(48:11):
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 subverse subversion ideology. Well, and one thing I thought
was really interesting in here is, um, they contend. And
(48:33):
I'm sure it's true that subversion ideology actually ends up
having a stabilizing effect because people then go, oh, okay,
well that's why I'm so upset and worried and anxious
is because of the Satanist, not what's really going on,
which is the end of the millennium apparently really yeah whatever.
That was Another explanation I ran across is that it
(48:53):
was millennial anxiety. Um. There is also know that another
one you said, moral or rumor panic, yeah, 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
(49:17):
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
(49:39):
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 the sociological article pointed something
(49:59):
out that I hadn't thought out 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 future. Just go ask Whitney Houston. You
can't it's true, um. And then as people start to
(50:19):
buy into it, it becomes a rumor panic and you
can dress it up with some version ideology. So in
the end, UH, the mcmartin's I don't think they ever well.
I think they never prosecuted. 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
(50:41):
in prison. Their life was ruined, twenty one years in
prison each based on these false accusations. 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. Was written while this satanic panic
is going on, but somehow Texas Monthly took a critical
eye to this stuff. It's really good article. I thought
(51:02):
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
(51:23):
sense when you look at everything behind it. It does,
but doesn't it also still like, even even even if
you take into account that you're using hindsight, and that
the perspective that's afforded by that, the gull ability I know,
that's it that is involved in a moral panic is
It's just it's saddening. I bet Edward Burns would have
(51:44):
been all over this. Oh yeah, well he fomented those
kind of things, you know, Um, yeah, yeah, it's sad. Also,
if you want some yucks, go look up Law Enforcement
Guide to Satanic Cults 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
(52:05):
did a 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. It's not like this is ancient history.
(52:26):
You know. If you want to know more about moral
panics and specifically the Satanic panic, you can type those
words into the search bart how stuff works dot com
so I said, search parts time for a listener and mail.
Here's what I predict is 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
(52:47):
vocal fry. Perhaps some lady called me the fry Master
and an email. Do 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 uh, he totally. I've noticed it a lot more
since we um uh said that you do that episode? Yeah, yeah, whatever,
(53:09):
being me, Yeah, man, you should. I'm a trend setter.
I'm gonna call this. Um oh, guys sitting a 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 reach out to you.
At the end of the podcast on Tuesday, um you said,
(53:31):
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.
I 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
(53:52):
that guy 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 Network specifically. I used to
do a lot of work with them in l a
them 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.
(54:14):
It 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 them to use that
for their taxes. What a quick fun fact about the
miracle balloon um that I reference is that the first
(54:35):
one ever sold the entire world was at a small
diner in downtown Middletown, Connecticut to roy Comb in nineteen
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
(54:59):
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
are patient families. Please help me get this corrected. The
stuff you should know, legion, don't worry. I still love you, guys.
(55:20):
That is from Scott uh organ Eck, the director of
Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Wow from the horse's mouth or
a director? Yeah, so I don't. We're gonna have to
look in 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
(55:42):
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 ritual abuser. No, not
at all in any way, So we'll look into it.
I certainly did not mean to disparage the no I
did there, and I mean, if that's the way it works,
I retract that, but I need to look into it
(56:02):
a little more first, all right, the jury's out. Um,
thank you very much. What 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 at
how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us
(56:24):
at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works for more podcasts for my
Heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello everyone. It is Saturday, and that means it's time
for a Saturday Stuff you Should Know select episode. As
you know, Josh and I curate these each week. We
take turns going back through the archives and picking out
some of our favorite episodes. And boy, oh boy, that
I love this one from January two, sixteen, the Satanic
Panic of the nineteen eighties. We lived through it, we
(00:21):
talked about it. It's pretty amazing stuff. Check it out
right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production
of our Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charlot to be Chuck Bryant,
uh and this is stuff you should ail. Satan Man
(00:46):
that would have gotten you locked up a New years ago. Yeah,
so I want to go ahead and say that I
would like to do one on Satanism. Yeah, for sure,
the religion misunderstood may include the Church of Satan or
maybe those are two separates. Uh um. And the PMRC
is that the TIPPERD Core organizes. Yeah, I just this.
(01:10):
This brought back a lot of memories because we lived
through the Satanic Bannock for sure, and I remember it
very distinctly, like, oh, 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,
(01:30):
oh 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 THEO was off Memorial Drive. That was Satan house
(01:52):
where supposedly devil worshipers. Yes, 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, all right. They murdered anybody for years.
You ever noticed you never see anyone. Yeah, it's kind
(02:13):
of old, kind of dilapidated or run down because they're old. Uh.
And we want to issue a big c 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,
(02:35):
we have to say that. So 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? Sweet Yeah,
include this UM dissociative identity disorder, UM deep programming, could
(02:55):
deep program Salem Witchcraft trials. Mccarthier him, McCarthy ism. That's right.
We're going to do it one of these days, will
actually put some of these sweets together. Yeah, he mente 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 that never really existed.
(03:17):
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
(03:37):
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
(03:59):
now waking up to this reality. It's your teachers, it's
the cops, even 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
(04:21):
like it was for real. The idea that they were 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
(04:45):
and creating television shows and 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 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,
(05:08):
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 this was that's a
vur Way Back Machine theme song. That was just too
darn loud. What I was continuing with the back of
(05:29):
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 for that. Uh. And by the way,
this is not just 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.
(05:50):
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. Boom, 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
(06:12):
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
(06:33):
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
(06:58):
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
(07:19):
Jews in fourteen seventy five of using blood for kidnapped
Christian 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 it's to go
to thing for vilifying an out group. Oh yeah, but
(07:43):
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 and 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,
(08:09):
we did something like that. Okay, alright, So fifteenth century
you had witchcraft persecutions all over Europe, innocent women being killed, drowned, burned,
you name it. Um. And of course none of this
was true in all cases. Uh. When it comes to art,
they laid the groundwork. And the nineteenth century, the French
(08:32):
Romantic artist loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft and uh.
By the nineteen twenties in the West, we had a
pretty firm established groundwork for believing in things like demons
and Satan and a fiery hell. Uh and people who
(08:57):
who worshiped this Satan yeah, and a 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 worshippers who like killed for Satan,
and all of this was born out of whole cloth,
fabricated from people who are doing the religious persecution along
(09:19):
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
(09:41):
not true. No, it's not true. It's 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 His tree of
the world as far as we can ever tell. It's
(10:02):
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 Satan or
(10:25):
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 movie.
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
(10:50):
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
(11:14):
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 stopped saying I read
in this work of fiction 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
(11:35):
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 fantasm Right now, who's that then? Because
really was sure? Was he? Oh no, that's angus somebody,
(11:58):
You're right? Christopher Lee was the from like the Wicker Man,
and I mean dozens and dozens of horror movies. Play
Dracula a lot. Rosemary's Baby also came out that year,
which was way more mainstream, big, big hit, great movie.
Uh yeah, really good. Still very creepy movie with Mia
Farrow and Cassavettis and Charles CrowdIn. Weirdly, I guess it's
(12:21):
not weird, but I dis 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,
(12:43):
it's very popular. 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
(13:03):
Iron Maiden to King Diamond and Judas. 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 fearce if anything that helps
(13:26):
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 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,
(13:47):
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,
more 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 the
(14:10):
cult 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 they were
fabricated from a whole cloth. So these guys were tapping
into what was already part of the popular culture in
(14:32):
the in the way of what people thought of Satanism
and Satanic rituals. And we're just basically playing it up
to the ante 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
(14:53):
just proved that this is very real. See look at
those two Anton LaVey Alistair Crowley proved of that they're
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 the nineteen seventies um stranger
(15:15):
danger panic which factors in story. All Right, it's the
nineteen seventies, and all of a sudden, all you can
(15:38):
hear about on the news is our stories about child pornography, rings, murders,
child murders, 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 ninety and seventies, which is great, Yeah,
(16:02):
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.
Stopped doing that, and as a result, the government stood
up and was like, Okay, we need some laws here.
(16:23):
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
(16:43):
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 it was unsavory to report on
(17:04):
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. That's right,
(17:26):
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
(17:48):
then they would have kids and that was it for
their professional career. They would just stay home. There 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
(18:10):
abused really resonated with families where their kids are 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 that um collective
anxiety at the time, with more and more families putting
their kids in daycare, right or they're just latchkey kids
(18:32):
a little older who remember during the Atlanta child murders,
do you know where your children aren't to where your
children are? It was just a time of in a
good way, people were more aware of uh than ever
of potential dangers for their children. So it's not like
it was all bad. But when it goes into panic
(18:53):
and well, we'll just see what happened. Yeah, I went
from like zero to one twenty and just a couple
of second basically. 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
(19:13):
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
(19:40):
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.
(20:00):
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
(20:22):
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, this is my favorite.
And shooting children in the arms and legs, Putting children
into a pool with sharks that eight babies, putting blood
in their kool aid, forcing children to carry the bones
(20:44):
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
(21:07):
times it starts with one, UM, perhaps credible case of
child abuse, yeah, 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
(21:28):
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,
not 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
(21:50):
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 eat Um.
Then people can end up falsely accused of some pretty
horrendous stuff. People stopped thinking critically, and UM, you've got
(22:14):
problems if you're on the receiving end of finger being
pointed at you. Well, yeah, because if you're a parent,
your child goes to this daycare center, another parent and
the cops come and say, hey, this parents kid was
sexually abused. What parents going to 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.
(22:34):
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
(22:57):
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 of 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,
(23:22):
evidence of say, um vaginal trauma or something 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,
(23:43):
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
sucked away because of medical testimony. And again, the case
against the mcmartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice
(24:06):
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
(24:30):
all of a sudden, the mom says, uh, and here's
a key fact, you're the mom goes to her therapist. H. 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. This whole who the doctor. Yeah,
so they go to her and say, listen, something's going
(24:52):
on here. Can you talk to her about it? And
all of a sudden, uh, Donna Campbell, Donna David Campbell
starts coaxing out all the is 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 pep.
That was one that was the earliest accusation that that
(25:13):
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
(25:37):
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 was the Satanic Panic
(26:01):
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
(26:21):
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
(26:43):
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 Night.
And this was, by the way, I was on the
cover of a Christian magazine in the nineteen eighties, Cornerstone Magazine.
(27:03):
I thought it was, but it wasn't Guide Posts. I
heard of that. That's a that's a big time Christian magazine. Man,
that's a cover boy 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
(27:26):
I could track that thing down. They'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 roughly? Uh, it would have been um probably
between nineteen eighty five 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
(27:49):
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
(28:10):
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.
(28:33):
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's. 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
(28:57):
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
(29:18):
these memories unlocked, which only proved Pastor's point even further. Right,
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
(29:40):
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 prem sure conclusions. You have to have evidence,
(30:02):
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
(30:23):
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.
(30:47):
And so there 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 Researchudo memory pseudo memory, sorry,
um is backed up by research. There's a searcher, famous
memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus. She found that participants of
the study came to believe that they had done something
(31:10):
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
(31:32):
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,
(31:56):
you must be right. So I am going to confess
he was a true too, wouldn't he. 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 took the rap for this
(32:19):
even though it never happened. No one ever showed that
any of this stuff happened. Yeah, he served his full
prisons and it's of twenty years, twenty 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 to such a weird reversal
in that case, you know, UM should we take another
(32:41):
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 story. All right, if you
(33:06):
were alive during the nineteen eighties and early nineties, which
I was, then, you remember Oprah, Haraldouble, Sally, Jesse, Raphael,
you name it, every single talk show, Dona Hue doing
lots and lots of shows on satanic death cults. If
it's two pm on a Wednesday afternoon and you want
(33:28):
to figure out how to get America to turn their
TV to your station, you would have had a choice
of different shows to watch, probably totally yeah, on the
same day, right, um, and yeah, everybody did Satanists and
Horaldo 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 teen parts.
(33:50):
I watched one of them where he had Assie on
and Ozzie's like, uh for Ozzie, he's Ozzie looks like
a pre golden girl's door. The is the way he's
dressed and done up. It's awesome. But he's like, I
don't mean to freak anybody out with music. Um. He
doesn't know what to make of this, but was like,
(34:11):
as he 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, detective,
you're a cop, not a theologian, but let me ask you.
Was this boy possessed? Dead? Serious? And the cop was like,
(34:34):
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 get 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 harld was like, yes,
(34:57):
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
(35:18):
this is totally real. Yeah, you know, it's easy to
laugh about now, but shame on all of them. Well,
Haraldough 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 children's picture book UM called Don't
(35:44):
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, right, you
know that. Well they also had in many of the
court cases a 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
(36:06):
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 your 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,
(36:30):
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 in 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
(36:52):
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 the points
they're probably well meaning, probably thinking they were doing this
great work, like helping these kids, but like with no
(37:14):
scientific basis whatsoever, right, 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 Secret tunnels, you know, secret tunnels. That was an
explanation there was a lot there. There wasn't enough critical thinking.
(37:37):
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 are a lot of
hucksters and frosters making a lot of money as UM
satanic experts at the time. Both is like legal UM,
(37:59):
legal UH representatives, UM expert witnesses, expert witnesses, authors 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, yeah, lying, lying, lying
their faces off UM and and scaring people to death
(38:21):
and making a lot of money out of it. Uh.
So he said it was widespread. There was a Red
Book magazine survey in and this is at the end
of the whole thing. Yeah true, UM that found that
seventy percent of Americans believed in Satanic ritual abuse. Uh.
And in n this is the really scary one. A
survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and
(38:43):
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 West Memphis, Arkansas, the West Memphis Three UM,
(39:06):
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 trial. It wasn't a documentary. I
(39:27):
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,
(39:47):
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 sexu abused, and the woman actually sadly went on
to die from alcohol poisoning a couple of years later,
was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in
(40:08):
that time, and yet nobody stopped and said, oh, well,
wait a minute, she was the center of the accusers
of all this. Should we take another look at all this?
It was like, no, let's spend fifteen million dollars of
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
(40:31):
other way 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 um and and
all of that was based on the satanic panic thing
(40:53):
as well. Um, but you go. You should definitely watch
those again. HBO documentaries Paradise Lost, one, two, and three
and the a Um 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? Yeah, about the older
older brothers. Love that one man. That's the same guy
(41:14):
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, 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,
(41:35):
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. Yeah, um yeah,
(41:56):
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 Michael's in New Jersey. Um In. She was let
(42:16):
out of prison after it was revealed how coercive the
questioning was. Um of the children who ended up accusing
her of this, and that was true in every case.
It seems like it was. It shed a lot of
light onto this and people started going like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait,
this is coercive. Let's look at these other cases. And
you go back and look at the transcripts and see like, Okay,
(42:38):
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 were 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
(43:00):
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,
(43:20):
it sounds like if you asked a 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 UM
(43:43):
with a meta survey for UM, the National Center and
Child Abuse and 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
(44:05):
found UM all sorts of things. Specifically, what they found
is there was no evidence whatsoever of any Satanic cults
operating anywhere in the U s or a single crime
carried out by a Satanic cult. That said that they
found a couple of UM crimes that were carried up
by people allegedly in the name of Satan, but that
(44:25):
these were most likely inspired by the Satanic panic itself
and solo affairs. 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
(44:48):
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
(45:11):
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 of religious based crimes, including murders
carried out things like exorcisms that went too far. That
(45:32):
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
(45:53):
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. Yes, you're totally mangled. Not this like ambiguous like, well, yeah,
(46:17):
I think that it 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
(46:39):
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 we 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
(47:03):
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
(47:25):
was super interesting. 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 and formed
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. Everything's changing
(47:46):
and 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? Yeah, basic Jews, and
before that it was Christians exactly. Now it puts a
face to 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
(48:11):
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 subverse subversion ideology. Well, and one thing I thought
was really interesting in here is, um, they contend. And
(48:33):
I'm sure it's true that subversion ideology actually ends up
having a stabilizing effect because people then go, oh, okay,
well that's why I'm so upset and worried and anxious
is because of the Satanist, not what's really going on,
which is the end of the millennium apparently really yeah whatever.
That was Another explanation I ran across is that it
(48:53):
was millennial anxiety. Um. There is also know that another
one you said, moral or rumor panic, yeah, 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
(49:17):
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
(49:39):
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 the sociological article pointed something
(49:59):
out that I hadn't thought out 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 future. Just go ask Whitney Houston. You
can't it's true, um. And then as people start to
(50:19):
buy into it, it becomes a rumor panic and you
can dress it up with some version ideology. So in
the end, UH, the mcmartin's I don't think they ever well.
I think they never prosecuted. 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
(50:41):
in prison. Their life was ruined, twenty one years in
prison each based on these false accusations. 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. Was written while this satanic panic
is going on, but somehow Texas Monthly took a critical
eye to this stuff. It's really good article. I thought
(51:02):
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
(51:23):
sense when you look at everything behind it. It does,
but doesn't it also still like, even even even if
you take into account that you're using hindsight, and that
the perspective that's afforded by that, the gull ability I know,
that's it that is involved in a moral panic is
It's just it's saddening. I bet Edward Burns would have
(51:44):
been all over this. Oh yeah, well he fomented those
kind of things, you know, Um, yeah, yeah, it's sad. Also,
if you want some yucks, go look up Law Enforcement
Guide to Satanic Cults 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
(52:05):
did a 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. It's not like this is ancient history.
(52:26):
You know. If you want to know more about moral
panics and specifically the Satanic panic, you can type those
words into the search bart how stuff works dot com
so I said, search parts time for a listener and mail.
Here's what I predict is 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
(52:47):
vocal fry. Perhaps some lady called me the fry Master
and an email. Do 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 uh, he totally. I've noticed it a lot more
since we um uh said that you do that episode? Yeah, yeah, whatever,
(53:09):
being me, Yeah, man, you should. I'm a trend setter.
I'm gonna call this. Um oh, guys sitting a 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 reach out to you.
At the end of the podcast on Tuesday, um you said,
(53:31):
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.
I 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
(53:52):
that guy 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 Network specifically. I used to
do a lot of work with them in l a
them 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.
(54:14):
It 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 them to use that
for their taxes. What a quick fun fact about the
miracle balloon um that I reference is that the first
(54:35):
one ever sold the entire world was at a small
diner in downtown Middletown, Connecticut to roy Comb in nineteen
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
(54:59):
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
are patient families. Please help me get this corrected. The
stuff you should know, legion, don't worry. I still love you, guys.
(55:20):
That is from Scott uh organ Eck, the director of
Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Wow from the horse's mouth or
a director? Yeah, so I don't. We're gonna have to
look in 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
(55:42):
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 ritual abuser. No, not
at all in any way, So we'll look into it.
I certainly did not mean to disparage the no I
did there, and I mean, if that's the way it works,
I retract that, but I need to look into it
(56:02):
a little more first, all right, the jury's out. Um,
thank you very much. What 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 at
how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us
(56:24):
at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works for more podcasts for my
Heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.