The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s

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 today's episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's child to be Chuck Bryant. Uh and this is
stuff you should ail satan Man that would have gotten

(00:22):
you locked up a few 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 Will maybe those
are two separate things. Uh. Um. And the p MRC
is that the Tipperate Cord organiz this? Yeah, I just this.

(00:45):
This brought back a lot of memories because we lived
through the Satanic Bannock for sure, and I remember it
very distinctly, Like I can imagine young Baptist I was afraid.
I can imagine I was very scared. Um. I remember
like growing up thinking, you know, some of the big
kids are sacrificing things in the woods. Yeah yeah, Um,

(01:06):
which is I mean like that was just part of
your normal, everyday thing, like walking around thinking that was happening.
But um, it turns out in retrospect it was all
almost entirely made up. Yeah. There was also and imagine
every neighborhood or town had this with There was off
Memorial Drive that was Satan House where supposedly devil worshipers. Yeah, yeah,

(01:30):
did you have one in your town? Yeah? Yeah, It's
so funny to me to think about that. Now. They
were probably just nice, normal people. It's probably some old
uh shut ins, some old folks, elderly folks who just
couldn't get out of the house much, right, they murdered
anybody for years? You ever noticed you never see anyone. Yeah,
it's kind of like kind of dilapidated or run down

(01:51):
because they're old. Uh. And we want to issue a
big c o A here, parents, this is got some
pretty grizzly stuff in it. You probably don't want your
kids listening to this, even though it was all made up.
Uh yeah, but there's some detail in some of this
that's I found myself even going, oh, we have to
say that. Yeah, so uh yeah, just it's rated are

(02:16):
maybe even X for content? I'm thinking, Chuck, we should
put together the Times America Lost its mind suite include
this UM, Associative identity disorder UM, deep programming, could deep
program Salem Witchcraft trials, McCarthyism, McCarthyism, that's right. Yeah, we're

(02:37):
gonna do it one of these days, will actually put
some of these suites together. Yeah, they exists her mental
sweets right. Okay, thanks man for letting off the hook. Um.
But I don't know if you guys have picked up
on it or not, but I keep saying like they
never really existed. It wasn't actually true, It wasn't real.
This whole idea that we're talking about, from the roughly

(03:00):
the mid eighties till about the mid nineties, about a
ten year period, America as a whole was gripped by again,
there's no other way to put it, Satanic panic. This
idea that there were cults of Satan worshippers who were

(03:21):
very widespread, more than you would think, who were abducting, killing, raping,
molesting our children, mutilating animals, and who had been doing
it for a very long time. In America was just
now waking up to this reality. It's your teachers, it's
the cops, it's the mayor of your town. There's a

(03:42):
battle between good and evil very much going on right now.
And somehow, some way and people are still studying this. Um.
America clomped onto this idea and ran with it like
it was for real. The idea that they were satan murderous,
child molesting Satanic cults operating almost openly in the United

(04:07):
States was a very deep and widespread belief, not just
among religious people, although they were at the forefront of
this um, but among people who were writing academic papers
and creating television shows in the news. Um. It was
people in the courts were subscribed to this. It was

(04:29):
just it was a it was what's called a moral panic. Yeah.
And when I was reading this, even though I lived
through it, I kept thinking, how in the world did
this happen in the nineteen eighties. Nineteen eighties, not the
sixteen forties, right, not hundreds uh. And it turns out
there's a lot of reasons why. And we gotta go

(04:50):
back in time a little bit to touch on the
early reasons. You gotta go back in time. So that
should be our way Back Machine theme song. That was
just two darn loud. What I was continuing with the
back of the Future references. What was too darn loud?
Remember Huey Lewis when he auditioned, he said, I'm sorry,

(05:10):
that's just right, thank you, thank you. Uh. And by
the way. This is not just in the United States.
Apparently it was in the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa,
and South Africa still has a cult crimes division. Yeah,
I believe it. So. Um Robert Lamb wrote this article
of stuff to blow your mind. Uh. And we're gonna
be drawing from other articles as well, which will name

(05:33):
drop along the way. I guess one from Slate that
was good. There's some name dropping. I've got one for you.
I'll hit it up later. So part of the groundwork
was laid for this in ancient history. Uh. And Robert
does a good job in pointing out that there is
long especially when it comes to Christian theology. Long been
a divide between us and them, heaven and hell, two sides,

(05:57):
good and evil, good and evil, light and dark. I
was going to repeat that too. What else, Uh, Yin
and Yang Ye's super Christian? No, actually that I think
Yin and Yang worked together, right, Sure, Yeah, we should
do one on Yin Yang. But a lot of people, Um,
it's not just Christians, chuck, there's humans subscribe to it

(06:18):
in group out group mentality. Yeah. Absolutely, Like I took
an anthropology class once and the professor was like, try
to go a day without using words like us them, We, yeah, they,
It's impossible, virtually impossible. Politics. That's just the way our
minds go. In group out group, and our group is
safe and good. Their group is potentially threatening and possibly bad.

(06:41):
We don't know, absolutely So throughout history this has come
up again and again and again, and innocent people have
been persecuted for doing nothing at all. One good example
are the Jewish people. Um Christians accused Jews in fourteen
seventy five of using blood for kidnapped Christians children and rituals,

(07:01):
which is pretty ironic because the Romans just a few
hundred years before had accused the Christians of bathing and
dining and feasting on baby's blood. Us and them once
again baby's blood to go to thing for vilifying an
out group. Oh yeah, but you'll see baby's blood in
a lot of these cases, because that's I guess, the

(07:22):
hardest blood to get ahold of. It's expensive blood in
the most grizzly witchcraft. Everyone. Of course we did, we
do one on the Salem witch trials or just McCarthy ism,
we did one, I believe. Yeah, Well, let's say we
have and if we haven't we will like remember on
like them being high on air. Goot, yeah, we did

(07:45):
something like that. Okay, alright, So fifteenth century you had
witchcraft persecutions all over Europe, innocent women being h killed, drowned, burned,
you name it. Um. And of course not ad us
was true in all cases. Uh. When it comes to art,
they laid the groundwork, and the nineteenth century, the French

(08:07):
Romantic artist loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft and h.
By the nineteen twenties and the West, we had a
pretty firm established groundwork for believing and things like demons
and Satan and a fiery hell. Uh and people who

(08:32):
who worshiped this Satan. Yeah, and uh, this the weird
thing is, Chuck, is there's this still to this day,
there's this idea that at some point back in antiquity
at least, there were devil worshipers who like killed for Satan.
And all of this was born out of whole cloth,
fabricated from people who were doing the religious persecution along

(08:54):
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

(09:16):
not true. No, it's not true. It's never never been
satanic Satanic death cults in the United States or anywhere else. Right,
these people have never existed. Now that is not to
say that people haven't killed in the name of Satan
or anything like that, but there's never been any kind
of Satanic death cult ever in the history of the
world as far as we can ever tell. It's all

(09:37):
made up right, And we want to go further by
saying that these people who have killed in the name
of Satan are actually an example of life imitating art.
They're inspired by the the fictitious myth because they're gullible
and buy into it just as much as the people
who think that this stuff is out there too, Like
Richard Ramirez, Sure, and he was driven by eton or

(10:00):
something like that. There was a girl in the eighties
in Georgia who supposedly killed a friend um and then
performed a Satanic Ritchell It's like this stuff did happen,
but it happened as a result of the hysteria. It
is a positive feedback, absolutely. Uh So now we're in
the twentieth century and the roots of Satanic panic can

(10:20):
be found all throughout the entertainment industry. Books. There was
one in ninety seven by Herbert Gorman called The Place
called Dagon, which was very influential and radical at the time. Uh.
Complete fiction, of course, but that doesn't, um, doesn't stop
it from establishing firmer roots that this could be a thing. Right,

(10:43):
that's something that kind of keeps coming up again and again. Um.
A movie or a work of fiction will establish some storyline,
and then somebody will have read it and told a
friend about it or something like that, and then it
becomes a game of telephone along the way, somebody stops
saying I read in this work of fiction, right, or
I saw in this movie this happened. Instead it becomes

(11:05):
this happened to a friend of mine's sister. Yeah, which
we'll get to. Urban legend is one theory, of course. Uh,
and I know we did a podcast on that. Uh.
A couple of movies came out, one horror film called
The Devil rides out with the great Christopher Lee because
he was in every weird movie. He was great man,
he was the tall man and phantasm right, No, who's

(11:28):
that then? Chris really was? Was he? Oh no, that's
Angus somebody. You're right. Christopher Lee was the guy from
like the Wicker Man, and I mean dozens and dozens
of horror movies played Dracula a lot. Rosemary's Baby also
came out that year, which was way more mainstream, big
big hit movie. Uh yeah, really good. Still very creepy

(11:50):
movie with Mia Pharaoh and Cassavettis and Charles CrowdIn. Weirdly,
I guess it's not weird, but I just associate him
with comedy. Yeah, but he always plays a straight man,
so he could go back and forth. Yeah, he could
could straddle worlds. So those movies were were huge as
far as planning, and you know, of course other things
like The Omen and The Exorcist, and it was just

(12:13):
it was just a big time for talking about Satan
and movies. Yeah, it's very popular. And what's interesting is
you can trace it back to and initially that um
book the Place called Dagon, which inspired HP Lovecraft. Yeah,
that started at all basically uh music of course, which
if we ever do one on the PMRC will get
to that and backmasking more heavily. But uh, Satanic imagery

(12:37):
and everything from like Iron Maiden to King Diamond and
remember they got hauled in the court for back masking
man people I know. And h then you have some
real life things, real life occult like Alistair Crowley and
Anton LaVey, who really didn't help quell satanic panic fierce

(13:00):
if anything, that helps set the stage now, dressing up
like with candles and and being naked with like cloaks
and pentagrams isn't gonna make people feel any better, but
that's what they're doing. And if you will, like I said,
we'll do on on Satanism. If you look at Satanism,
it's it's not let's sacrifice animals and throw blood on
each other. It's more like, hey, we're on this earth

(13:23):
for a short time, let's party and just live for ourselves.
It's more about hedonism and being atheist than some weird
dark occult. Alistair Crowley was darker and more cult sure,
and Anton LaVey definitely dressed his brand of Satanism up
in that kind of like dark theatrics. But the really
ironic thing about both of those guys occult stuff is that,

(13:46):
again it was life imitating art or life imitating fiction.
Their ideas of the black mask or the witches Sabbath
or wearing pentagrams, all that stuff came out of those
witch persecutions from before war. They were fabricated from whole cloth.
So these guys were tapping into what was already part
of the popular culture in the in the way of

(14:07):
what people thought of Satanism and Satanic rituals, and we're
just basically playing it up to the It was very
much so. But two people who are scared to death
of the idea that Satan is real and his worshippers
are here on earth and are ready to kill you.
Those guys scared those people and just proved that this

(14:30):
is very real. See look at those two Anton LaVey
Alistair Crowley proved that they are Satanic cults exactly. And
who knows what's going on behind that big, huge iron
wooden door. All right, well, let's take a break here
and we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about, uh,
the nineteen seventies um Stranger Danger panic, which factors in

(15:00):
all Right, it's the nineteen seventies and all of a sudden,
all you can hear about on the news is our
stories about child pornography, rings, murders, child murderers, kidnappings, uh,

(15:23):
crimes involving children in general, and not just that. Chuck. Like,
at that time, America was really waking up to the
um to just how widespread child abuse was the nineteen seventies,
which is great, Yeah, it really was, because apparently it
took just a couple of doctors to really stand up
and be like, I'm not looking the other way again

(15:43):
on these unexplained breaks to a child's arm. Um, it's
the it's the parents. You're you're breaking your kid's arms.
It's abuse. That's wrong. Stop doing that. And as a result,
the government stood up and was like, Okay, we need
some laws here. One of the things that they enacted
were mandatory reporting laws. If you're a doctor and you
notice signs of child abuse, you have to report it.

(16:06):
And as a result, in ninety four, child abuse cases
went from sixty thousand nationwide to the year two thousand
there were three million reported, right, and it was because
of public education, a lot more visibility um, and then
mandatory reporting laws. But it had this cumulative effect of saying, America,
your children are being they're in danger and you need

(16:28):
to do something about it. And this child protection movement
grew out of it. Yeah. I also get the sense
that pre the late seventies, I think the media that
was unsavory to report on this kind of stuff, like
that's that's that family's business. Yeah, and just period it's like,
no one wants to hear about this stuff. It's awful. Uh.
And somehow it got transferred to probably to drive ratings,

(16:51):
like this is sensational, is what it is. Yeah, anytime
America is scared, all you have to do is poke
and product and you will get people to watch your
TV show. And it's done very frequently. It's sad and despicable,
but it happens a lot. It still does. There's another
aspect to this too, Chuck Um with the with the

(17:11):
child protection idea. Um. This is also a time. The
seventies especially, is when it when women started to go
back to work after they had kids. Before they may
work and then they would have kids and that was
it for their professional career. They would just stay home.
They were moms. For the rest of their time, if
they ever worked at all. Originally right now, in the
seventies and the eighties, women were having kids, going back

(17:34):
to work, and as a result, they were having to
leave their kids in more and more daycare workers care,
and so this idea that their children were being abused
or potentially abused really resonated with families where their kids
were in daycare and weren't like constantly under their supervision
all the time. How well do you know the people
watching your kids? How much do you trust them? Are

(17:55):
they Satanists? And this this fear took root because of
the um collective anxiety at the time with more and
more families putting their kids in daycare, right or they're
just latchkey kids a little older who I remember during
the Atlanta child murders, do you know where your children are?
Where your children are? It was just a time of

(18:17):
in a good way, people were more aware of than
ever of potential dangers for their children. So it's not
like it was all bad, but when it goes into
panic and well, we'll just see what happened. Yeah, I
went from zero to just a couple of seconds. So
what happened was during the Satanic panic U. Largely it

(18:39):
is based around um court cases where largely daycare centers
and people who cared for children were now being accused
of some of the craziest things you could ever imagine
in your entire life. And like you said, one of
the reasons this was fueled was very much because parents

(19:00):
could relate to it. Uh. I mean, should we go
ahead and talk about a couple of these cases. Yeah, Um,
you know, the whole thing sounds crazy and weird and everything,
but just innocuous, I guess until you come across the
court cases and then you're like, oh, real people lost
decades of their lives because of this because gulibal people

(19:23):
were in position of power and lock them up. Yeah,
all right, let's talk about the killers. What was the
actual This is one in Texas. Yeah, in Austin and Austin, Texas. Uh.
Frances and Dan Keller ran a daycare center out of
their home and were accused of the following things, among others,

(19:44):
drowning and dismembering babies in front of other children, killing animals,
dogs and cats in front of children, and baby tigers,
baby tigers, that's right, Uh, taking the kids to Mexico
to be abused sexually by Mexican army soldiers and then
brought back in time for their parents to pick them up.
That's right, Uh, dressing his pumpkins and shooting children in

(20:08):
the arms and legs, putting children into a pool with sharks,
that eight babies, putting blood in their coool aid, forcing
children to carry the bones of of bodies that they
had dug up. And this is just a few And
I'm getting most of this from this great Slate article

(20:28):
The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse s r A
by Linda Rodriguez McRobie. So the colors were accused of
all this stuff. Um, and here's generally what happens. Robert
points out. A lot of times it starts with one, um,
perhaps credible case of child abuse, sexual or otherwise, and

(20:50):
then that's snowballs. They tell the parents, maybe this is
going on. So they tell the parents, uh, hey, that
your child may being may be abused. The parents start looking,
They start talking to other parents in that same daycare center.
They start looking, they start asking their kids, and at
all snowballs into these little preschoolers basically making stuff up.

(21:12):
And not only that, it's like, yeah, yeah, I've heard
about that. That's just abused, Like it's some Satanists that
are like molesting children and murdering them. And the parents
are like what or that plays into something they'd already
heard on on TV, which we'll talk about the media's
role in this. UM. And like you said, it's snowballs
and snowballs and all of a sudden, UM, once concerned

(21:33):
parents get involved, UM and start talking to one another
panicked concerned parents, UM, then people can end up falsely
accused of some pretty horrendous stuff. People stopped thinking critically,
and UM, you've got problems if you're on the receiving
end of finger being pointed at you. Well, yeah, because

(21:53):
if you're a parent and your child goes through this
daycare center, another parent and the cops come and say, hey,
this parents kid was sexually abused. What parents gonna be like, Oh,
I'm sure it's fine, you're fine, quick complaining, I'm not
going to check out my kids take a salt tablet Um.
So so with with with the McMartin case, which happened

(22:14):
in UM southern California. Yeah, And and actually UM ended
up helping turn the tide against this but the McMartin
case and then the Keller case in Texas, both of
those were bolstered actually by bad medical testimony by inexperienced
doctors who didn't know what they were looking at, who,

(22:35):
in their defense, a little bit um was the at
the time, no one knew. No one was looking at
little kids like three year olds vaginas in describing what
normal ones looked like. So since you didn't know what
to look for, but I thought you were looking for
evidence of sexual abuse, anything could conceivably look like evidence

(22:57):
of say, um, vaginal trauma, so thing like that. And
in the case of the Kellers, in particular, UM, the
little girl who was basically, I guess, um accuser zero
of this um it was, was examined and found that
um her vagina showed some evidence of trauma. Later on,

(23:18):
the doctor, after gaining decades of experience, saw that, no,
that was totally normal what I saw and is not
the it's I basically gave false testimony unwittingly, and I'm sorry.
And that was a huge thing because these people were
locked away because of medical testimony. And again the case
against the mcmartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice

(23:40):
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

(24:04):
all of a sudden, the mom says, uh, and here's
a key fact, you're the mom goes to her therapist. Uh. Yeah,
Donna David Campbell, who the little girl was seeing because
she had been acting out. She's like a central figure
in this whole thing. Who who the doctor? Yeah, So
they go to her and say, listen, something's going on here.

(24:27):
Can you talk to her about it? And all of
a sudden, uh, Donna Campbell, Donna David Campbell starts coaxing
out all these really bizarre allegations about what's going on there. Uh.
They made us take off our clothes and had a
parrot peck us on the pepe That was the one
that was the earliest accusation that that formed the foundation

(24:49):
of this whole case, the basis of the snowball. Yes,
so this is this is this is what begins the snowball.
This is when the mom goes to the other parents,
like you hear, what's going on here, look at what's
happened to my daughter? And what's really happening here is
something called uh. It was part of the recovered therapy,
recovered memory therapy movement, which was very big at the

(25:12):
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,

(25:32):
right and um, So the Satanic panic can actually trace
its roots directly to a book from nineteen seventy two
by a guy named Mike warren Key. He was a
Christian stand up comedian. He also was totally full of it.
He wrote a book called The Satan Seller where he
talked about his life as a former Satanic cult priest,

(25:53):
I believe, and drug dealer, and he was eventually exposed
far too late by the Christian magazine Cornerstone as almost
entirely fraudulent and made up in just a liar, but
his book just sold like wildfire through the Christian fundamentalist
community and basically really established the groundwork for the idea
that they were Satanic cults operating in the United States.

(26:15):
Right for for the thread of the Recovered memory Um
movement that formed part of the Satanic Panic, you can
trace that back to a book from nineteen eighty called
I Think Michelle Remembers, Yeah, nineteen eighty And this was,
by the way, I was on the cover of a
Christian magazine in the nineteen eighties, Cornerstone magazine. I thought

(26:38):
it was, but it wasn't Guide Posts. I've heard of that.
That's a that's a big time Christian magazine. Man, that's
a coverboy one, what nice? What were you doing on
the cover? I was. I was at a church camp
one summer and that was just like it was like
a four panel cover of just kids having fun at
church camp, and I was one of them. The May
eighty two issue. Man, I hope, I wish I could

(27:01):
track that thing down. That'd be great. You If anyone
out there has the issue of Chuck on the cover
of guide Post magazine, from do you remember the year, Uh,
it would have been um, probably between nineteen and nineteen
eight seven. Okay, we need that everyone. I wanted to
post that that cover. That would be awesome. So this book,

(27:22):
Michelle remembers, it was a It was just like dropping
a bomb in the midst of this everybody. So everyone
was transitioning from who can we start pointing at and
persecuting now that we've decided the colts are okay and
we're gonna stop deprogramming them, who can we do? What
can we do next? And this book comes in the

(27:44):
midst of that in nineteen eighty and it's a book
about a woman named Michelle and her therapist Lawrence passed her. Yeah,
he wrote it, and he he was He helped her
uncover repressed memories of being ritually satanically abused or satanic
ritually abused in the nineteen fifties in Vancouver. Yeah, he
actually ended up marrying her, and he coined the term

(28:07):
ritual abuse. That lies directly at his feet. And Uh,
this thing had a lot of attraction. I mean, this
lady was on Oprah, she did the talk show circuit
for years. The guy was used as as an expert
witness in court cases like he he founded a whole
movement in psychology. It was completely debunked. Yeah, and the

(28:27):
whole idea is it's based on this premise that if
you undergo a traumatic experience, your mind is going to
try to repress that memory, but it's gonna have all
sorts of horrible effects in your life. You're gonna be
an alcoholic and a drug addict and maybe a child
abuser and you won't know why, but it's because you
were abused as a child, probably by Satanists, and you
covered it up, and you need to go to therapy

(28:49):
to have it unlocked. And a lot of people went
to therapy and had these memories unlocked, which only proved
Pastor's point even further. The problem is is if when
they were re examined, they were pseudo memories. Through the
power of suggestion and over zealous UM therapists, a lot
of people form memories of stuff that never happened. Yeah,

(29:09):
the problem is recovered memory therapy. There's little to no
scientific evidence that it's a thing at all that people
unconsciously repressed these memories UM. The Royal College of Psychiatrists
in Britain Uh. They have officially banned its members from
using it altogether. The British Psychological Society says you can

(29:31):
use it, but you can't draw any premature conclusions. You
have to have evidence, not just well this is what
they said in therapy, right, So that's a repressed memory
that came to the surface. Right. And the A M A.
I'm sorry, the A p A and the United States, Uh,
their official stance was issued nineteen eighty I'm sorry. N Uh.
There's a consensus among memory researches and clinicians that most

(29:54):
people who are sexually abused as children remember all or
part of what happened to them, although they may not
fully understand or disclose it. So a competent psychotherapist is
um likely to acknowledge that current knowledge does not allow
the definite conclusion without corroborating evidence. So again, the general
consensus is that people don't completely unconsciously forget everything that happened.

(30:19):
It's virtually impossible. Um. And so this idea that during therapy,
while you're coaxing these memories out, you're actually forming pseudotherapy
is backed up by a lot of follow up research.
Memory pseudo memory, sorry, um is backed up by research.
There's a researcher, famous memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus. She
found that participants of this study came to believe that

(30:44):
they had done something they hadn't when confronted with witnesses
who said that they had done it. That's the real
danger in all this sure is that these memories become
just as valid as real memories and do damage because
they aren't real. And there's actually a real life case
that came out of all this who this one was crazy?
Paul Ingram. Paul Ingram was a sheriff's deputy UM, and

(31:05):
he was accused by his young daughter of Satanic ritually
abusing her, and that he was a member of a
Satanic cult and that um, she had been raped by
this cult six to eight hundred times. Um, they had
been involved in the murder of twenty five babies at least.
And paul Ingram said, I don't remember any of this,

(31:28):
but um, you must be right, So I am going
to confess. He was a preacher. Yeah, he was a
fundamentalist um Christian. So he was very much primed to
believe that there is um a very a very real
Satan roaming the earth. And if his daughter is telling
him that he did this, why what what reason does
she have to lie? So he actually, I mean, he

(31:50):
bought into it and and took the rap for this
even though it never happened. No one ever showed that
any of this stuff happened. He served his full prisons
and of twenty years years and maybe didn't even do
it anything. Yeah, but he himself said, well, I don't know,
maybe I did, and I think he fully bought into
it over time. Such a weird reversal in that case,

(32:12):
you know, Um, should we take another break? Maybe? So,
all right, we'll take another break here and talk about
the media and then some other theories in cases in
satanic panic. All right, If you were alive during the

(32:41):
nineteen eighties and early nineties, which I was, then, you
remember Oprah, Haraldo, Sally Jesse, Raphael you name it, every
single talk show Dona Hue doing lots and lots of
shows on satanic death cults. It this two PM on
a Wednesday afternoon, and you want to figure out how

(33:03):
to get America to turn their TV to your station,
you would have a choice of different shows to watch,
probably total yeah, on the same day, right, Um, and yeah,
everybody did Satanists and Haralda was the king of this.
He actually had a two hour primetime special in called
Exposing Satan's Underground and it is on YouTube and I

(33:23):
think about tim parts. I watched one of them where
he had Assie on and Ozzie's like, uh, Ozzie looks
like a pre Golden Girls Dorothy is. The way he's
dressed and done up. It's awesome. But he's like, I
don't mean freak anybody out with the music. Um, and
he doesn't know what to make of this, but it's like, Ozzie,

(33:46):
just sit there, we'll get back to you. Like, but
there's this classic line in this, right, Haralda goes they're
talking about a murder that was carried out by this boy,
and um, Haraldo says to this copy goes to detective,
you're a cop, not a theologian, but let me ask you,
was this point possessed? Dead serious? And the cop is like,

(34:09):
I he had just a little bits like I think
that's a state of mind. But yeah, and in that sense, yes,
I think he was. Haralda doesn't give what he's looking
for out of the guy, so he goes to an
actual theologian, a priest. He goes, uh, you know you're
you're you're charged with um investigating these cases for the
Catholic Church. Do you think that this is a case
of possession? He's like absolutely, And Harrold was like, yes,

(34:32):
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

(34:52):
this is totally real. You know, it's easy to laugh
about now, but shame on all of them. Well, Haraldo
came out and said, I want to apologize for that
bit of journalism. That was really bad, and I'm sorry
for it. But I mean that's how he made his
name with stuff like that. Well, he was caught up
in the moral panic. Everyone was doing it. There was
a book in night children's picture book UM called Don't

(35:18):
Make Me Go Back, Mommy Colin, a child's book about
satanic ritual abuse to read to your children or if
you were a therapist, to use in therapy. You know that. Well,
they also had in many of the court cases little
little anatomically correct rag dolls that they would use in
court like you know, show me where you were touched

(35:39):
and things like this, which I'm sure that has valid
use as well, and you know, like sex abuse cases
for sure, but you're like completely poopooing that you have to, um,
you have to use that. I would imagine you you're
training in how to do that correctly without inadvertently or
advertently leading the child on into creating some sort of

(36:02):
pseudo memory. It should be extensive, I would guess, you know,
I mean, yeah, So the media was definitely complicit in
all this, really saw that there's a lot of ratings
to be had and just fanning the flames of the
satanic panic. And I think a lot of people bought
into it as well. Um And then so too were

(36:24):
things like the um the field of psychiatry and psychology
very much complicit in this by allowing repressed memory therapy
to really spread as much as it did without any
kind of real, um verified research into whether it was
real or not. And to defend them a little bit
Robert also makes it points they're probably well meaning, probably
thinking they were doing this great work like helping these kids,

(36:46):
but like with no scientific basis whatsoever, and lacking a
lot of critical thinking too. And they dressed as pumpkins
and shot the kids in the arms and the legs.
Where are the bullet wounds? How exactly did they get
the kids to Mexico and then back to Austin in
the average daycare day? You know, secret tunnels? That was

(37:07):
an explanation. There was a lot there. There wasn't enough
critical thinking. So you can definitely take UM the media, psychology,
psychiatry UM and a lot of UM law enforcement investigators
to task for this. But really there were a lot
of hucksters and fraudsters making a lot of money as

(37:29):
UM satanic experts at the time. Both is like legal
UM legal UH representatives, UM expert witness expert witnesses UM
going on shows like Heraldo and Sally Jesse, Raphael UH
and those people are really should bear the brunt of
this because they were just lying, lying, lying, lying their

(37:52):
faces off UM and and scaring people to death and
making a lot of money out of it. Uh. So
he said it was widespread. There was a Red Bull
magazine survey in and this is at the end of
the whole thing, Yeah true, UM that found that seventy
percent of Americans believed UH in satanic ritual abuse. UH.
And in ninete, this is the really scary one, a

(38:13):
survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and
the Law found that twenty six a quarter more than
a quarter of prosecutors said they handled at least one
case involving ritual satanic ritual abuse during that time period.
So UM. Within that time too, there was a very

(38:34):
famous case in in West Memphis, Arkansas, the West Memphis
three UM, who were very famously exonerated thanks to crack
documentary filmmaking UM on HBO's half. As a matter of fact,
HBO really led the vanguard against this whole satanic panic. UM.
They released in UH documentary I think it was a

(38:58):
biopic on the McMartin try. It wasn't a documentary. I
think it was like dramatized And that really started to
change the tide of how academics, intellectuals, and in the
media itself saw satanic ritual abuse started to expose it
as this is not real. Yeah, and this is after
the McMartin trial had been the longest and most expensive

(39:19):
trial in the history of the United States. That's right,
fifteen sixteen million dollars spent for with zero can convictions
because it didn't happen. UM, And that case actually was
UM started with a woman who believed her child had
been sexually abused, and the woman actually sadly went on
to die from alcohol poisoning a couple of years later.

(39:39):
In was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic
in that time. And yet nobody stopped and said, oh, well,
wait a minute, she was the center of the accusers
of all this should be take another look at all this.
It was like, no, let's spend fifteen million dollars a
taxpayer money trying to prosecute these people and get zero
convictions out of it. Um. The West Memphis three were

(40:00):
successfully prosecuted in Arkansas, I mean railroaded. There is no
other way to to put this, thanks to something like
a false confession by Jesse ms Kelly, UM, which is
mind blowing until you should go listen to our episode
on false confessions, which I believe you did that one right. Uh,
either that or it was a part of another one.

(40:20):
But yeah, we covered that topic for sure. Um. And
and all of that was based on the satanic panic
thing as well. Um, but you go, you should definitely
watch those again HBO documentaries Paradise Lost one, two, and three. Yeah,
and they they made the original and Paradise Lost the
Child murders of Robin Hood Hills. And I think they
thought it was the same guy. Did you see Brothers

(40:42):
Keeper the other documentary, Uh, yeah, about the older love
that one man, that's the same guy that Brothers Keepers
will put him on the map. So I think he
thought that Paradise Lost One was just the documentary. And
to his credit Joe Biden Burlinger, sure, I think he uh,

(41:02):
he really championed this case and followed it to its
conclusion over the course of two more documentaries over the years. Yeah,
And from what I understand, he changed his mind about
the content or the crime mid stream. Like I think,
didn't he go there thinking he was just covering the crime,
And then when I actually saw what was going on,
I was like, WHOA, Yeah, I think I think he was.

(41:23):
I mean because of him, they were exonerated ultimately. Yeah,
Like he got three people out of prison. One off
death row. Um, Yeah, hats off. But again, this is
part of the satanic panic scare. Um and that not
that one that kind of came at the end of it.
But the McMartin movie on HBO started to change the tide,

(41:43):
and so too to the exoneration of a woman named
um Margaret Kelly Michaels in New Jersey. Um In. She
was let out of prison after it was revealed how
coercive the questioning was Um of the children who ended
up accusing her of this and was true in every case,
it seems like it was. It shed a lot of
light onto this and people started going like whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait,

(42:06):
this is coercive. H Let's look at these other cases.
And you go back and look at the transcripts and see, like, Okay,
these people were basically telling the kids what they wanted
to hear. They were using approval whenever the kids said
something that that pointed the finger. They're using disapproval when
the kids refused to talk or whatever or implicate anyone. Um.

(42:28):
And if you go back and really listen to what
the kids are saying, a lot of the times they're like, no,
nothing happened. Well, and then they would follow that with
are you sure this didn't happen? Are you sure this
didn't happen. You're not supposed to do that, and you're
certainly not supposed to put people in prison for half
of their lives. Well, and you're especially not supposed to
do that to a kid who's highly suggestible and wants
to please, because most kids want to please. And when

(42:51):
you look at some of these allegations, it sounds like
if you asked the three year old to make up
what they think ritual abuse would be, Here's here's what
a kid would say. Yeah, they locked us in a
closet with spiders and snakes. Yeah, they put us in
a pool with sharks that ate babies, and they fed
us baby parts. So UM, the real death knell of

(43:12):
the Satanic ritual abuse scare came in UM with the
Meta survey for UM, the National Center and Child abusea
Neglect and this study it contacted UM prosecutors, regular lawyers,
social workers, psychologists, I think that was it. Thousands and

(43:33):
tens of thousands of them across the country. Ended up
whittling it down to a sizeable sample and found UM
all sorts of things. Specifically, what they found is there
was no evidence whatsoever of any Satanic cults operating anywhere
in the US, or a single crime carried out by
a Satanic cult. They said that they found a couple

(43:54):
of um crimes that were carried up by people allegedly
in the name of Satan, but that these were most
likely inspired by the Satanic panic itself, and that's what. Yeah,
that's what That's what I'm saying, UM. But they had
had it was in a Satanic cult by any means. UM.
They also found in this study that children UM of

(44:18):
the ages that that where they would go to daycare
weren't capable of forming the type of accusations against Satanic
ritual abuse UM that people have been convicted of. That
clearly the adults were the ones who were channeling themselves
through their children to accuse these people. The kids were

(44:38):
saying things like they locked us in a closet with
spiders and snakes. They weren't saying like they carved open
a baby and um sexually abused it and then we
all drank its blood while everyone's wearing black ropes. They're
they're not sophisticated enough to think that kind of thing.
So the study also proved that too. And then ironically,
the same survey found plenty of evidence religious based crimes,

(45:01):
including murders, carried out things like exorcisms that went too far,
that kind of stuff. They're like, that actually is real,
And ironically, we have a lot of laws protecting people
who do that, but we have laws that step up
the punishment for satanic abuse even though that doesn't exist.
And that one really changed the tide of how people

(45:24):
saw the satanic panic. Well yeah, and then experts later
came out and said as far as the uh, physical abuse,
and the doctors who testified at trial, like the type
of physical abuse these kids were enduring. They were like
a layman could look at a child and and say, wow,
what happened to this kid? But you will obviously never

(45:46):
be able to reproduce because you're totally mangled. Not this
like ambiguous like, well, yeah, I think that seems like
they had some marks where they could have been, you know,
molested or something like. It would have been so obvious
because these allegations were so far out there. And of
course years later they say this. At the time, everyone

(46:07):
was drinking the flavor aid you know, nice the blood
drenched flavor aid and insult to injury that same media.
All of a sudden, the hot story became the outrage
that was Satanic panic, and what a bunch of crap
that it was. So now let's cover that story in full,
even though he had a lot to do with it. Yeah, um, so, Chuck,

(46:29):
why did people drink the flavor aid? Like? What was
the immediate reason for the Satanic panic? Well, you found
this great article, which one I found a lot of
great articles, the three uh satanic ritual abuse as Oh yeah,
this sociological article. Yeah, that was good. Um. They have

(46:49):
a few reasons um as subversion ideology, as rumor panic,
and as contemporary legend. And the subversion ideology I thought
was super into thing. I didn't even know what that was.
I hadn't heard of it before you. They define it
as a culturally constructed myth that gives shape informed the
feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about the future that our

(47:10):
experienced between periods of rapid, unpredictable social change. Right, So,
so we're anxious. We're not even necessarily conscious of our anxiety,
but we just we don't feel quite right that everything's changing.
We don't know what's going on, so what's yeah, what what?
What exactly is making us nervous? Oh? How about that
group over there, Satanists. Before it was Jews, and before
that it was Christians. Now it puts a face to

(47:33):
this underlying sense of dread we feel because the times
are a changeing exactly, and it gives us a um
an outlet at the expense of other people. But that's
the with the subversion ideology. The hallmark characteristic of it
is that that that other group takes everything we hold
dear and values the opposite of it. So Satanists they

(47:55):
use upside down crosses and evil is what's really good?
And um it was. It's a classic example of subvers
subversion ideology. Well, and one thing I thought was really
interesting in here is um they contend And I'm sure
it's true that subversion ideology actually ends up having a
stabilizing effect because people didn't go, oh, okay, well, that's

(48:15):
why I'm so upset and worried and anxious is because
of the Satanists, not what's really going on, which is
the end of the millennium apparently. Yeah whatever, That was
another explanation I ran across is that it was millennial anxiety. Um.
There is also know that another one you said, moral
or rumor panic um, which we touched on before. But

(48:37):
basically that is this idea that, um, it's just buying
into a rumor and like really really buying into it.
And the way you buy into it is because all
of a sudden, um, professional psychiatrists and psychologists and law
enforcement people and people in the newspaper are talking about
this stuff like it's fact. And with that, because we
trust these people as being smart, intelligent people, it becomes

(49:00):
fact in the eyes and the minds of just normal people,
and that gives it veracity in and of itself. Once
people start believing something as fact without any proof, you
are rumor panic has just set in well, and ironically
to them, it seems like the more out there the
panic is, the more readily it's believed, because that the

(49:21):
old like who would make something like that up right,
a three year old might being coaxed by police and
her parents and her shrink. And then the last one
is an urban legend, which we talked about before, but
this sociological article pointed something out that I hadn't thought
of that Um, urban legends deal in metaphors, even though
we don't think of them as metaphors. So in this case,
the children that were being abused by Satanists were a

(49:44):
metaphor for our future, and children are a future. Just
go ask Whitney Houston, can't it's true, um. And then
as people start to buy into it, it becomes a
rumor panic, and you can dress it up with some
version ideology. So in the end, the mcmartin's, I don't
think they ever well, I think they need I think

(50:05):
they were in jail here and there while the trial
was going on. Yeah, but they were never prosecuted, but
never successfully prosecuted. The Kellers were eventually exonerated, but they
spent twenty one years in prison. Their life was ruined,
twenty one years in prison each based on these false
I have to say, if you want to read one
of the better articles I've ever read, it's called The
Innocent and the Damned. It's from Texas Monthly. He was

(50:27):
written in while this Satanic panic is going on, But
somehow Texas Monthly took a critical eye to this stuff.
Really good article. I thought this was so fascinating because
as crazy as it seems now. And like I was
saying at the very beginning, like how in the world
in the nineteen eighties did we buy into this like
it was Salem, Massachusetts. Uh, when you look at the

(50:51):
reasons behind it, it was like the perfect storm coalescing. Uh,
it sort of makes perfect sense when you look at
everything behind it. It does, but doesn't it Also, like,
even even even if you take into account that you're
using hindsight and that the perspective that's afforded by that,
the gullibility that's it that is involved in a moral

(51:12):
panic is it's just it's saddening that Edward Burns would
have been all over this. Oh yeah, well he fomented
those kind of things. Um, yeah, yeah, it's sad. Also,
if you want some yucks, go look up law Enforcement
Guide to Satanic Coults on YouTube hit the video series.

(51:35):
Yeah so weird. I'm glad to know that you had
a Satan house in your neighborhood too. I think everybody
did or rumors that, like somebody found a cat with
its head cut off in a panagram and he's like,
oh that happened because I'm ten, Which is okay if
you're ten, But if you're fifty, it's not okay, especially
if you're the local prosecutor. Uh. And it also one
last thing, Chuck, it makes you wonder what moral panics

(51:56):
are we working on right now? What's this ancient history?
You know? Uh? If you want to know more about
moral panics and specifically the Satanic panic, you can type
those words into the search part how stuff works dot com.
Since I said search parts time for listener mail. Here's
what I predict because that some people are going to
write in and say, dudes, we're in the middle of

(52:19):
another moral panic right now and it is blank vocal fry.
Perhaps some lady called me the fry master and the
emailed you see that. No, I didn't. She was like,
Chuck always uses vocal fry. And then when I listened
to my voice, I'm like, I totally do, but totally
I've noticed it a lot more since we um uh

(52:41):
said that episode. Yeah, yeah, whatever, I'm being me. Yeah, man,
you should. I'm a trend center. I'm gonna call this.
Um oh, guys sitting straight on these grocery store donations. Okay,
hey guys, a long time listener, love you guys. Never thought, uh,
this would be the reason I have to each out
to you at the end of the podcast on Tuesday. Um,

(53:04):
he said, I don't know which podcast it was. At
the end of the recent podcast, actually had to stop
and say no because my friends Josh and Chuck didn't
just do that and told people not to donate a
dollar to buy the little hot air balloons at the
grocery store because the company then uses those donations to
get text credit. This is absolutely not true. That is

(53:25):
not true what I said. He says, I have actually
been working with Children's Miracle Network hospitals in Connecticut for
about twenty years. And by the way, when I said
the balloons, I forgot that was Children's Miracle Networks specifically.
I used to do a lot of work with them
in l A on video shoots. No, of course not.
It's They're amazing. You're like, it's the shamrocks. I have

(53:47):
a problem. I know. I just felt terrible after that,
so um. He says. Our corporate partners do not get
text credits for donations made by their customers. In fact,
many of our corporate partners ring these donations through their registers,
so the donation shows on the customer's receipt. Allowing it
them to use that for their taxes. What a quick
fun fact about the Miracle Balloon UM that I reference

(54:09):
is that the first one ever sold the entire world
was that a small diner in downtown Middletown, Connecticut to
Roy Come in nineteen six. I thought he's gonna say
like nineteen not four. Uh. Soon after that, UM, the
Miracle Balloon became a multinational program that raises money for
more than one seventy local children's hospitals across the US

(54:31):
in Canada, and its creator became very, very rich. As
I mentioned, I've been doing this job for about twenty years,
and I have to tell uh that I always say
I have the best job in the world. I get
to work with amazing people like my co workers and
all of our partners, and I get to work for
the most inspiring people, our patient families. Please help me
get this corrected. The stuff you should know, legion, don't worry,

(54:53):
as I love you guys. That is from Scott uh
organ Eck, the director of Children's Racle Network Hospitals. While
from the Horse's Mouth or a director, Yeah, so I
don't We're gonna have to look into this a little Further,
I think we got other people that said that's not true,
and other people said it is true for Children's Miracle Network.

(55:14):
I'm sure he knows what he's talking about, but there
are all kinds of things that done it too. And
it's also probably not a liar. I don't know. He
seems like a regular guy, not a Satanic, which a
will be user. No, not at all in any way,
so we'll we'll look into it. It certainly did not
mean to disparage the No. I didn't in there, and
I mean, if that's the way it works, I retract that,

(55:35):
but I need to look into it a little more first,
all right, the jury's out. Um, thank you very much.
Was his name, David. David, You're awesome. Thank you for
the work you're doing too. If you want to get
in touch with us to set us straight, we love that.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast to house Stuff Works dot com, and as always,

(55:58):
join us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
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com h