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SYSK Selects: The 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980s · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello everyone. It is Saturday, and that means it's time
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Speaker 1: for a Saturday Stuff you Should Know select episode. As
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Speaker 1: you know, Josh and I curate these each week. We
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Speaker 1: take turns going back through the archives and picking out
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Speaker 1: some of our favorite episodes. And boy, oh boy, that
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Speaker 1: I love this one from January two, sixteen, the Satanic
0:18
Speaker 1: Panic of the nineteen eighties. We lived through it, we
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Speaker 1: talked about it. It's pretty amazing stuff. Check it out
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Speaker 1: right now. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production
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Speaker 1: of our Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to
0:36
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charlot to be Chuck Bryant,
0:40
Speaker 1: uh and this is stuff you should ail. Satan Man
0:46
Speaker 1: that would have gotten you locked up a New years ago. Yeah,
0:50
Speaker 1: so I want to go ahead and say that I
0:52
Speaker 1: would like to do one on Satanism. Yeah, for sure,
0:55
Speaker 1: the religion misunderstood may include the Church of Satan or
0:59
Speaker 1: maybe those are two separates. Uh um. And the PMRC
1:06
Speaker 1: is that the TIPPERD Core organizes. Yeah, I just this.
1:10
Speaker 1: This brought back a lot of memories because we lived
1:12
Speaker 1: through the Satanic Bannock for sure, and I remember it
1:15
Speaker 1: very distinctly, like, oh, I can imagine young Baptist, I
1:19
Speaker 1: was afraid. I can imagine I was very scared. Um.
1:24
Speaker 1: I remember like growing up thinking, you know, some of
1:27
Speaker 1: the big kids are sacrificing things in the woods. Yeah,
1:30
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Um, which is I mean like that was
1:32
Speaker 1: just part of your normal, everyday thing, like walking around
1:35
Speaker 1: thinking that was happening. But um, it turns out in
1:38
Speaker 1: retrospect it was all almost entirely made up. Yeah. There
1:42
Speaker 1: was also and imagine every neighborhood or town had this
1:48
Speaker 1: with THEO was off Memorial Drive. That was Satan house
1:52
Speaker 1: where supposedly devil worshipers. Yes, yeah, yeah, did you have
1:56
Speaker 1: one in your town? Yeah? Yeah, It's so funny to
1:59
Speaker 1: me to think about that now. They were probably just nice,
2:01
Speaker 1: normal people. It's probably some old, uh shut ins, some
2:06
Speaker 1: old folks, elderly folks who just couldn't get out of
2:08
Speaker 1: the house much, all right. They murdered anybody for years.
2:10
Speaker 1: You ever noticed you never see anyone. Yeah, it's kind
2:13
Speaker 1: of old, kind of dilapidated or run down because they're old. Uh.
2:18
Speaker 1: And we want to issue a big c a here, parents,
2:22
Speaker 1: This is got some pretty grizzly stuff in it. You
2:25
Speaker 1: probably don't want your kids listening to this, even though
2:27
Speaker 1: it was all made up. Uh yeah, but there's some
2:32
Speaker 1: detail in some of this that's I found myself even going, oh,
2:35
Speaker 1: we have to say that. So yeah, just it's rated,
2:40
Speaker 1: are maybe even X for content? I'm thinking, Chuck, we
2:44
Speaker 1: should put together the times America lost its mind? Sweet Yeah,
2:49
Speaker 1: include this UM dissociative identity disorder, UM deep programming, could
2:55
Speaker 1: deep program Salem Witchcraft trials. Mccarthier him, McCarthy ism. That's right.
3:02
Speaker 1: We're going to do it one of these days, will
3:03
Speaker 1: actually put some of these sweets together. Yeah, he mente right, Okay,
3:09
Speaker 1: thanks man for letting off the hook. Um. But I
3:12
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys have picked up on it
3:14
Speaker 1: or not, but I keep saying like that never really existed.
3:17
Speaker 1: It wasn't actually true, It wasn't real. This whole idea
3:22
Speaker 1: that we're talking about from the roughly the mid eighties
3:26
Speaker 1: till about the mid nineties, about a ten year period,
3:30
Speaker 1: America as a whole was gripped by again, there's no
3:37
Speaker 1: other way to put it, Satanic panic. This idea that
3:40
Speaker 1: there were cults of Satan worshippers who were very widespread,
3:47
Speaker 1: more than you would think who were abducting, killing, raping,
3:52
Speaker 1: molesting our children, mutilating animals, and who had been doing
3:56
Speaker 1: it for a very long time in America was just
3:59
Speaker 1: now waking up to this reality. It's your teachers, it's
4:03
Speaker 1: the cops, even the mayor of your town. There's a
4:07
Speaker 1: battle between good and evil very much going on right now,
4:11
Speaker 1: and somehow, some way, and people are still studying this.
4:15
Speaker 1: Um America clomped onto this idea and ran with it
4:21
Speaker 1: like it was for real. The idea that they were murderous,
4:26
Speaker 1: child molesting satanic cults operating almost openly in the United
4:32
Speaker 1: States was a very deep and widespread belief, not just
4:36
Speaker 1: among religious people, although they were at the forefront of
4:39
Speaker 1: this um, but among people who were writing academic papers
4:45
Speaker 1: and creating television shows and the news. Um. It was
4:51
Speaker 1: people in the courts were subscribed to this. It was
4:54
Speaker 1: just it was a it was what's called a moral panic. Yeah.
4:58
Speaker 1: And when I was reading this, even I lived through it,
5:00
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, how in the world did this happen
5:03
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. Nineteen eighties, not the sixteen forties, right,
5:08
Speaker 1: not hundreds Uh. And it turns out there's a lot
5:12
Speaker 1: of reasons why and we gotta go back in time
5:15
Speaker 1: a little bit to touch on the early reasons you
5:17
Speaker 1: gotta go back in time. So this was that's a
5:22
Speaker 1: vur Way Back Machine theme song. That was just too
5:25
Speaker 1: darn loud. What I was continuing with the back of
5:29
Speaker 1: the Future references, what was too darn loud. Remember Huey
5:32
Speaker 1: Lewis when he auditioned, he said, I'm sorry, that's just right,
5:37
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for that. Uh. And by the way,
5:40
Speaker 1: this is not just the United States. Apparently it was
5:43
Speaker 1: in the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and South Africa
5:46
Speaker 1: still has a cult crimes division. Yeah, I believe it.
5:50
Speaker 1: So um. Robert Lamb wrote this article of stuff to
5:52
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Uh. And we're gonna be drawing from
5:55
Speaker 1: other articles as well, which will name drop along the way.
5:59
Speaker 1: I guess one from Slate that was good. Boom, there's
6:02
Speaker 1: some name dropping. I've got one for you. I'll hit
6:05
Speaker 1: it up later. So part of the groundwork was laid
6:08
Speaker 1: for this in ancient history. Uh. And Robert does a
6:12
Speaker 1: good job in pointing out that there is long, especially
6:15
Speaker 1: when it comes to Christian theology. Long been a divide
6:18
Speaker 1: between us and them. Heaven and hell, two sides, good
6:23
Speaker 1: and evil, good and evil, light and dark. I was
6:26
Speaker 1: going to repeat that too. What else, Uh, Yin and
6:30
Speaker 1: Yang Ye's super Christian? No, actually that I think Yin
6:33
Speaker 1: and Yang worked together, right, Sure, yeah, we should do
6:38
Speaker 1: one on Yin Yang. But a lot of people, Um,
6:40
Speaker 1: it's not just Christians, chuck, there's humans subscribe to it
6:44
Speaker 1: in group out group mentality. Yeah. Absolutely, Like I took
6:47
Speaker 1: an anthropology class once and the professor was like, try
6:49
Speaker 1: to go a day without using words like us, them,
6:53
Speaker 1: We yeah, they, It's impossible, virtually impossible. Politics. That's just
6:58
Speaker 1: the way our minds go in group out group And
7:00
Speaker 1: our group is safe and good. Their group is potentially
7:04
Speaker 1: threatening and possibly bad. We don't know. Absolutely. So throughout
7:08
Speaker 1: history this has come up again and again and again,
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Speaker 1: and innocent people have been persecuted for doing nothing at all.
7:15
Speaker 1: One good example are the Jewish people. Um. Christians accused
7:19
Speaker 1: Jews in fourteen seventy five of using blood for kidnapped
7:24
Speaker 1: Christian children and rituals, which is pretty ironic because the
7:28
Speaker 1: Romans just a few hundred years before had accused the
7:31
Speaker 1: Christians of bathing and dining and feasting on baby's blood.
7:36
Speaker 1: Us and them once again, baby's blood it's to go
7:38
Speaker 1: to thing for vilifying an out group. Oh yeah, but
7:43
Speaker 1: you'll see baby's blood in a lot of these cases
7:46
Speaker 1: because that's I guess, the hardest blood to get ahold of.
7:50
Speaker 1: It's expensive blood and the most grizzly witchcraft everyone. Of
7:54
Speaker 1: course we did we do one on the Salem witch
7:56
Speaker 1: trials or just McCarthy ism. We did one, I believe. Yeah, well,
8:00
Speaker 1: let's say we have, and if we haven't, we will
8:03
Speaker 1: like remember on like them being high on air. Goot, yeah,
8:09
Speaker 1: we did something like that. Okay, alright, So fifteenth century
8:13
Speaker 1: you had witchcraft persecutions all over Europe, innocent women being killed, drowned, burned,
8:22
Speaker 1: you name it. Um. And of course none of this
8:25
Speaker 1: was true in all cases. Uh. When it comes to art,
8:29
Speaker 1: they laid the groundwork. And the nineteenth century, the French
8:32
Speaker 1: Romantic artist loved painting stuff about Satan and witchcraft and uh.
8:40
Speaker 1: By the nineteen twenties in the West, we had a
8:45
Speaker 1: pretty firm established groundwork for believing in things like demons
8:52
Speaker 1: and Satan and a fiery hell. Uh and people who
8:57
Speaker 1: who worshiped this Satan yeah, and a this the weird
9:00
Speaker 1: thing is Chuck, is there's this still to this day,
9:03
Speaker 1: there's this idea that at some point back in antiquity
9:07
Speaker 1: at least, there were devil worshippers who like killed for Satan,
9:12
Speaker 1: and all of this was born out of whole cloth,
9:14
Speaker 1: fabricated from people who are doing the religious persecution along
9:19
Speaker 1: the way and the people who are being tortured to
9:21
Speaker 1: confess into this kind of stuff. It was all just fabricated.
9:26
Speaker 1: But the fact that it was old, the fact that
9:28
Speaker 1: it was sensational, and the fact that it had been
9:31
Speaker 1: repeated so many times it gained traction to become this,
9:35
Speaker 1: to gain this idea that it is historical fact. At
9:38
Speaker 1: some point people just take it as fact. But it's
9:41
Speaker 1: not true. No, it's not true. It's never been satanic
9:44
Speaker 1: Satanic death cults in the United States or anywhere else. Right,
9:48
Speaker 1: these people have never existed. Now that is not to
9:51
Speaker 1: say that people haven't killed in the name of Satan
9:53
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but there's never been any kind
9:56
Speaker 1: of Satanic death cult ever in the His tree of
10:00
Speaker 1: the world as far as we can ever tell. It's
10:02
Speaker 1: all made up, right, And we want to go further
10:05
Speaker 1: by saying that these people who have killed in the
10:08
Speaker 1: name of Satan are actually an example of life imitating art.
10:13
Speaker 1: They're inspired by the the fictitious myth because they're gullible
10:17
Speaker 1: and buy into it just as much as the people
10:19
Speaker 1: who think that this stuff is out there too, Like
10:21
Speaker 1: Richard Ramirez, Sure, and he was driven by Satan or
10:25
Speaker 1: something like that. There was a girl in the eighties
10:27
Speaker 1: in Georgia who supposedly killed a friend, um and then
10:31
Speaker 1: performed a Satanic Ritchell. It's like this stuff did happen,
10:35
Speaker 1: but it happened as a result of the Hysteria movie.
10:38
Speaker 1: It is a positive feedback absolutely. Uh So, now we're
10:42
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century and the roots of Satanic panic
10:45
Speaker 1: can be found all throughout the entertainment industry. Books. There
10:50
Speaker 1: was one in ninety seven by Herbert Gorman called The
10:54
Speaker 1: Place called Dagon, which was very influential and radical at
10:58
Speaker 1: the time. Uh. Complete fiction, of course, but that doesn't, um,
11:04
Speaker 1: doesn't stop it from establishing firmer roots that this could
11:07
Speaker 1: be a thing. Right, That's something that kind of keeps
11:10
Speaker 1: coming up again and again. Um. A movie or a
11:14
Speaker 1: work of fiction will establish some storyline, and then somebody
11:18
Speaker 1: will have read it and told a friend about it
11:20
Speaker 1: or something like that, and then it becomes a game
11:22
Speaker 1: of telephone along the way, somebody stopped saying I read
11:26
Speaker 1: in this work of fiction or I saw in this
11:28
Speaker 1: movie this happened. Instead it becomes this happened to a
11:32
Speaker 1: friend of mine's sister. Yeah, which we'll get to. Urban
11:35
Speaker 1: legend is one theory, of course. Uh, and I know
11:38
Speaker 1: we did a podcast on that. Uh. A couple of
11:42
Speaker 1: movies came out, One horror film called The Devil Rides
11:44
Speaker 1: Out with the Great Christopher Lee because he was in
11:47
Speaker 1: every weird movie. He was great man, he was the
11:50
Speaker 1: tall man and fantasm Right now, who's that then? Because
11:55
Speaker 1: really was sure? Was he? Oh no, that's angus somebody,
11:58
Speaker 1: You're right? Christopher Lee was the from like the Wicker Man,
12:01
Speaker 1: and I mean dozens and dozens of horror movies. Play
12:05
Speaker 1: Dracula a lot. Rosemary's Baby also came out that year,
12:09
Speaker 1: which was way more mainstream, big, big hit, great movie.
12:13
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, really good. Still very creepy movie with Mia
12:17
Speaker 1: Farrow and Cassavettis and Charles CrowdIn. Weirdly, I guess it's
12:21
Speaker 1: not weird, but I dis associate him with comedy. Yeah,
12:25
Speaker 1: but he always plays a straight man, so he could
12:27
Speaker 1: go back and forth. Yeah, he could could straddle worlds.
12:30
Speaker 1: So those movies were were huge as far as planning,
12:34
Speaker 1: and you know of course other things like The Omen
12:36
Speaker 1: and The Exorcist, and it was just it was just
12:40
Speaker 1: a big time for talking about Satan and movies. Yeah,
12:43
Speaker 1: it's very popular. What's interesting is you can trace it
12:46
Speaker 1: back to and initially that um book the place called
12:50
Speaker 1: Dagon which inspired HP Lovecraft. Yeah that started at all.
12:53
Speaker 1: Basically Uh, music of course, which if we ever do
12:57
Speaker 1: one on the PMRC will get to that, and backmasking
12:59
Speaker 1: more heavily. But uh, satanic imagery and everything from like
13:03
Speaker 1: Iron Maiden to King Diamond and Judas. Remember they got
13:09
Speaker 1: hauled in the court for back masking man people I know.
13:14
Speaker 1: And h then you have some real life things, real
13:17
Speaker 1: life occult like Alistair Crowley and Anton LaVey who really
13:22
Speaker 1: didn't help quell satanic panic fearce if anything that helps
13:26
Speaker 1: set the stage. Now, dressing up like with candles and
13:30
Speaker 1: and being naked with like cloaks and pentagrams isn't gonna
13:35
Speaker 1: make people feel any better, but that's what they're doing.
13:38
Speaker 1: And if you will, like I said, we'll do on Satanism.
13:41
Speaker 1: If you look at Satanism, it's it's not let's sacrifice
13:44
Speaker 1: animals and throw blood on each other. It's more like, hey,
13:47
Speaker 1: we're on this earth for a short time, let's party
13:50
Speaker 1: and just live for ourselves. It's more about hedonism and
13:53
Speaker 1: being atheist than some weird dark occult Alistair Crowley was darker,
14:00
Speaker 1: more sure, and Anton LaVey definitely dressed his brand of
14:03
Speaker 1: Satanism up in that kind of like dark theatrics. But
14:07
Speaker 1: the really ironic thing about both of those guys the
14:10
Speaker 1: cult stuff, is that, again it was life imitating art
14:15
Speaker 1: or life imitating fiction. Their ideas of the black mask
14:18
Speaker 1: or the witches Sabbath or wearing pentagrams, all that stuff
14:22
Speaker 1: came out of those witch persecutions from before they were
14:25
Speaker 1: fabricated from a whole cloth. So these guys were tapping
14:28
Speaker 1: into what was already part of the popular culture in
14:32
Speaker 1: the in the way of what people thought of Satanism
14:34
Speaker 1: and Satanic rituals. And we're just basically playing it up
14:37
Speaker 1: to the ante very much so. But two people who
14:42
Speaker 1: are scared to death of the idea that Satan is
14:46
Speaker 1: real and his worshippers are here on earth and are
14:48
Speaker 1: ready to kill you. Those guys scared those people and
14:53
Speaker 1: just proved that this is very real. See look at
14:56
Speaker 1: those two Anton LaVey Alistair Crowley proved of that they're
15:00
Speaker 1: satanic cults exactly. And who knows what's going on behind
15:03
Speaker 1: that big, huge iron wooden door. All right, well, let's
15:07
Speaker 1: take a break here and we're gonna come back and
15:09
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the nineteen seventies um stranger
15:15
Speaker 1: danger panic which factors in story. All Right, it's the
15:34
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and all of a sudden, all you can
15:38
Speaker 1: hear about on the news is our stories about child pornography, rings, murders,
15:45
Speaker 1: child murders, kidnappings, uh, crimes involving children in general, and
15:50
Speaker 1: not just that Chuck. Like at that time, America was
15:53
Speaker 1: really waking up to the um to just how widespread
15:57
Speaker 1: child abuse was the ninety and seventies, which is great, Yeah,
16:02
Speaker 1: it really was, because apparently it took just a couple
16:05
Speaker 1: of doctors to really stand up and be like, I'm
16:08
Speaker 1: not looking the other way again on these unexplained breaks
16:11
Speaker 1: to a child's arm. Um, it's the it's the parents.
16:15
Speaker 1: You're you're breaking your kid's arms, it's abuse. That's wrong.
16:18
Speaker 1: Stopped doing that, and as a result, the government stood
16:21
Speaker 1: up and was like, Okay, we need some laws here.
16:23
Speaker 1: One of the things that they enacted were mandatory reporting laws.
16:26
Speaker 1: If you're a doctor and you notice signs of child abuse,
16:30
Speaker 1: you have to report it. And as a result, in
16:32
Speaker 1: ninety four, child abuse cases went from sixty thousand nationwide
16:36
Speaker 1: to the year two thousand there were three million reported. Right,
16:40
Speaker 1: And it was because of public education, a lot more
16:43
Speaker 1: visibility um and then mandatory reporting laws. But it had
16:47
Speaker 1: this cumulative effect of saying, America, your children are being
16:52
Speaker 1: they're in danger, and you need to do something about it.
16:54
Speaker 1: And this child protection movement grew out of it. Yeah.
16:57
Speaker 1: I also get the sense that pre the late seventies,
17:01
Speaker 1: I think the media it was unsavory to report on
17:04
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, like that's that's that family's business. Yeah,
17:07
Speaker 1: and just period, it's like, no one wants to hear
17:09
Speaker 1: about this stuff. It's awful. Uh. And somehow it got
17:13
Speaker 1: transferred to probably to drive ratings like this is sensational,
17:18
Speaker 1: is what it is. Yeah, anytime America is scared, all
17:21
Speaker 1: you have to do is poke and product and you
17:23
Speaker 1: will get people to watch your TV show. That's right,
17:26
Speaker 1: and it's done very frequently. It's sad and despicable, but
17:29
Speaker 1: it happens a lot. It still does. There's another aspect
17:33
Speaker 1: to this too, Chuck Um with the with the child
17:37
Speaker 1: protection idea. UM. This is also a time the seventies especially,
17:42
Speaker 1: is when it when women started to go back to
17:44
Speaker 1: work after they had kids. Before they may work, and
17:48
Speaker 1: then they would have kids and that was it for
17:49
Speaker 1: their professional career. They would just stay home. There were
17:52
Speaker 1: moms for the rest of their time if they ever
17:53
Speaker 1: worked at all. Originally right now, in the seventies and
17:57
Speaker 1: the eighties, women were having kids going back to work,
18:00
Speaker 1: and as a result, they were having to leave their
18:02
Speaker 1: kids in more and more daycare workers care, and so
18:07
Speaker 1: this idea that their children were being abused or potentially
18:10
Speaker 1: abused really resonated with families where their kids are in
18:13
Speaker 1: daycare and weren't like constantly under their supervision all the time.
18:17
Speaker 1: How well do you know the people watching your kids?
18:19
Speaker 1: How much do you trust them? Are they Satanists? And
18:22
Speaker 1: this this fear took root because of that um collective
18:26
Speaker 1: anxiety at the time, with more and more families putting
18:29
Speaker 1: their kids in daycare, right or they're just latchkey kids
18:32
Speaker 1: a little older who remember during the Atlanta child murders,
18:36
Speaker 1: do you know where your children aren't to where your
18:39
Speaker 1: children are? It was just a time of in a
18:43
Speaker 1: good way, people were more aware of uh than ever
18:47
Speaker 1: of potential dangers for their children. So it's not like
18:50
Speaker 1: it was all bad. But when it goes into panic
18:53
Speaker 1: and well, we'll just see what happened. Yeah, I went
18:57
Speaker 1: from like zero to one twenty and just a couple
18:59
Speaker 1: of second basically. So what happened was during the Satanic
19:03
Speaker 1: panic U Largely it is based around um court cases
19:08
Speaker 1: where largely daycare centers and people who cared for children
19:13
Speaker 1: were now being accused of some of the craziest things
19:18
Speaker 1: you could ever imagine in your entire life. And like
19:21
Speaker 1: you said, one of the reasons this was fueled was
19:24
Speaker 1: very much because parents could relate to it. Uh. I mean,
19:29
Speaker 1: should we go ahead and talk about a couple of
19:30
Speaker 1: these cases. Yeah, um, you know, the whole thing sounds
19:33
Speaker 1: crazy and weird and everything, but just innocuous, I guess
19:40
Speaker 1: until you come across the court cases and then you're like, oh, real,
19:44
Speaker 1: people lost decades of their lives, because of this, because
19:47
Speaker 1: gulibal people were in position of power and lock them up. Yeah,
19:53
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk about the killers. What was the
19:55
Speaker 1: actual This is one in Texas. Yeah, in Austin and Austin, Texas. Uh.
20:00
Speaker 1: Frances and Dan Keller ran a daycare center out of
20:04
Speaker 1: their home and were accused of the following things, among others,
20:10
Speaker 1: drowning and dismembering babies in front of other children, killing animals,
20:14
Speaker 1: dogs and cats in front of children. And baby tigers,
20:18
Speaker 1: baby tigers, that's right. Uh, taking the kids to Mexico
20:22
Speaker 1: to be abused sexually by Mexican army soldiers and then
20:27
Speaker 1: brought back in time for their parents to pick them up.
20:29
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, dressing his pumpkins, this is my favorite.
20:33
Speaker 1: And shooting children in the arms and legs, Putting children
20:37
Speaker 1: into a pool with sharks that eight babies, putting blood
20:41
Speaker 1: in their kool aid, forcing children to carry the bones
20:44
Speaker 1: of of bodies that they had dug up. And this
20:50
Speaker 1: is just a few. And I'm getting most of this
20:52
Speaker 1: from this great Slate article, The Real Victims of Satanic
20:56
Speaker 1: Ritual Abuse s r A by Linda Rodriguez McRobie. So
21:00
Speaker 1: the colors were accused of all this stuff. UM. And
21:04
Speaker 1: here's generally what happens. Robert points out a lot of
21:07
Speaker 1: times it starts with one, UM, perhaps credible case of
21:12
Speaker 1: child abuse, yeah, sexual or otherwise, And then that's snowballs.
21:17
Speaker 1: They tell the parents, maybe this is going on. So
21:20
Speaker 1: they tell the parents, uh, hey, that your child may
21:24
Speaker 1: being may be abused. The parents start looking, They start
21:28
Speaker 1: talking to other parents in that same daycare center. They
21:31
Speaker 1: start looking, they start asking their kids, and at all
21:33
Speaker 1: snowballs into these little preschoolers, basically making stuff up. And
21:38
Speaker 1: not only that, it's like, yeah, yeah, I've heard about that,
21:41
Speaker 1: not just abused, Like it's some Satanists that are like
21:44
Speaker 1: molesting children and murdering them. And the parents are like
21:46
Speaker 1: what or that plays into something they'd already heard on
21:50
Speaker 1: on TV, which we'll talk about the media's role in this. UM.
21:53
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's snowballs and snowballs and all
21:56
Speaker 1: of a sudden, um, once concerned parents get involved, um
22:01
Speaker 1: and start talking to one another. Panicked concerned parents eat Um.
22:06
Speaker 1: Then people can end up falsely accused of some pretty
22:09
Speaker 1: horrendous stuff. People stopped thinking critically, and UM, you've got
22:14
Speaker 1: problems if you're on the receiving end of finger being
22:17
Speaker 1: pointed at you. Well, yeah, because if you're a parent,
22:19
Speaker 1: your child goes to this daycare center, another parent and
22:22
Speaker 1: the cops come and say, hey, this parents kid was
22:25
Speaker 1: sexually abused. What parents going to be like, Oh, I'm
22:28
Speaker 1: sure it's fine, you're fine, quick complaining, I'm not going
22:31
Speaker 1: to check out my kids. Take a salt tablet um.
22:34
Speaker 1: So so with with with the McMartin case, which happened
22:40
Speaker 1: in um southern California. Yeah, and and actually UM ended
22:44
Speaker 1: up helping turn the tide against this. But the McMartin
22:47
Speaker 1: case and then the Keller case in Texas, both of
22:51
Speaker 1: those were bolstered actually by bad medical testimony by inexperienced
22:57
Speaker 1: doctors who didn't know what they were looking at, who,
23:01
Speaker 1: in their defense a little bit um was the at
23:05
Speaker 1: the time, no one knew no one was looking at
23:07
Speaker 1: little kids like three year olds of vaginas in describing
23:10
Speaker 1: what normal ones looked like. So since you didn't know
23:14
Speaker 1: what to look for, but I thought you were looking
23:17
Speaker 1: for evidence of sexual abuse, anything could conceivably look like,
23:22
Speaker 1: evidence of say, um vaginal trauma or something like that.
23:26
Speaker 1: And in the case of the Kellers, in particular, UM,
23:29
Speaker 1: the little girl who was basically, I guess um accuser
23:34
Speaker 1: zero of this um it was, was examined and found
23:38
Speaker 1: that um her vagina showed some evidence of trauma. Later on,
23:43
Speaker 1: the doctor, after gaining decades of experience, saw that, No,
23:48
Speaker 1: that was totally normal what I saw and is not
23:51
Speaker 1: the it's I basically gave false testimony unwittingly, and I'm sorry.
23:57
Speaker 1: And that was a huge thing because these people were
24:00
Speaker 1: sucked away because of medical testimony. And again, the case
24:03
Speaker 1: against the mcmartin's was also bolstered by bad medical advice
24:06
Speaker 1: as well or bad medical testimony. Yeah. So with the
24:08
Speaker 1: killer case, Uh, the patient or not patient victim zero,
24:12
Speaker 1: Christie Cheviers Chevier, I don't know how you would say.
24:17
Speaker 1: She was three years old, didn't go to the daycare
24:20
Speaker 1: center much, uh, and told her mom that dan Keller
24:25
Speaker 1: had spanked her. That's what started this whole thing. So
24:30
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the mom says, uh, and here's
24:34
Speaker 1: a key fact, you're the mom goes to her therapist. H. Yeah,
24:39
Speaker 1: Donna David Campbell, who the little girl was seeing because
24:42
Speaker 1: she had been acting out. She's like a central figure
24:44
Speaker 1: in this whole thing. This whole who the doctor. Yeah,
24:49
Speaker 1: so they go to her and say, listen, something's going
24:52
Speaker 1: on here. Can you talk to her about it? And
24:54
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, uh, Donna Campbell, Donna David Campbell
24:58
Speaker 1: starts coaxing out all the is really bizarre allegations about
25:03
Speaker 1: what's going on there. Uh. They made us take off
25:06
Speaker 1: our clothes and had a parrot peck us on the pep.
25:10
Speaker 1: That was one that was the earliest accusation that that
25:13
Speaker 1: formed the foundation of this whole case, the basis of
25:16
Speaker 1: the snowball. Yes, so this is this is this is
25:20
Speaker 1: what begins the snowball. This is when the mom goes
25:23
Speaker 1: to the other parents like you hear, what's going on here,
25:25
Speaker 1: look at what's happened to my daughter? And what's really
25:28
Speaker 1: happening here is something called uh. It was part of
25:32
Speaker 1: the recovered therapy recovered memory therapy movement, which was very
25:37
Speaker 1: big at the time in psychology. Basically the idea that
25:40
Speaker 1: we have these repressed memories um that of abuse. Many
25:45
Speaker 1: people do that they have no idea of and it's
25:47
Speaker 1: up to the therapist to bring these out of us. Yeah.
25:50
Speaker 1: That's almost like a separate, intertwined thread to this whole
25:53
Speaker 1: Satanic Panic thing. The Satanic ritual abuse is the recovered
25:56
Speaker 1: memory therapy movement, right, and um was the Satanic Panic
26:01
Speaker 1: can actually trace its roots directly to a book from
26:05
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two by a guy named Mike warren Key.
26:08
Speaker 1: He was a Christian stand up comedian. He also was
26:12
Speaker 1: totally full of it. He wrote a book called The
26:14
Speaker 1: Satan Seller where he talked about his life as a
26:16
Speaker 1: former Satanic cult priest, I believe, and drug dealer. And
26:21
Speaker 1: he was eventually exposed far too late by the Christian
26:25
Speaker 1: magazine Cornerstone as almost entirely fraudulent and made up in
26:28
Speaker 1: just a liar, But his book just sold like wildfire
26:32
Speaker 1: through the Christian fundamentalist community and basically really established the
26:37
Speaker 1: groundwork for the idea that they were Satanic cults operating
26:40
Speaker 1: in the United States. Right. For for the thread of
26:43
Speaker 1: the Recovered Memory um movement that formed part of the
26:48
Speaker 1: Satanic Panic, you can trace that back to a book
26:51
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty called I Think Michelle Remembers Yeah Night.
26:56
Speaker 1: And this was, by the way, I was on the
27:00
Speaker 1: cover of a Christian magazine in the nineteen eighties, Cornerstone Magazine.
27:03
Speaker 1: I thought it was, but it wasn't Guide Posts. I
27:07
Speaker 1: heard of that. That's a that's a big time Christian magazine. Man,
27:10
Speaker 1: that's a cover boy one, what nice? What were you
27:13
Speaker 1: doing on the cover? I was. I was at a
27:16
Speaker 1: church camp one summer and that was just like it
27:18
Speaker 1: was like a four panel cover of just kids having
27:21
Speaker 1: fun at church camp and I was one of them.
27:22
Speaker 1: The May eighty two issue. Man, I hope. I wish
27:26
Speaker 1: I could track that thing down. They'd be great. You
27:28
Speaker 1: if anyone out there has the issue of Chuck on
27:31
Speaker 1: the cover of guide Post magazine from do you remember
27:33
Speaker 1: the year roughly? Uh, it would have been um probably
27:38
Speaker 1: between nineteen eighty five and nineteen eight seven. Okay, we
27:41
Speaker 1: need that everyone. I wanted to post that that cover.
27:46
Speaker 1: That would be awesome. So this book, Michelle remembers, it
27:49
Speaker 1: was a it was just like dropping a bomb in
27:52
Speaker 1: the midst of this everybody. So everyone was transitioning from
27:58
Speaker 1: who can we start pointing at and persecuting now that
28:01
Speaker 1: we've decided the colts are okay and we're gonna stop
28:05
Speaker 1: deprogramming them, who can we do? What can we do next?
28:08
Speaker 1: And this book comes in the midst of that. In
28:10
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and it's a book about a woman named
28:13
Speaker 1: Michelle and her therapist Lawrence passed her. Yeah, he wrote
28:17
Speaker 1: it and he he was he helped her uncover repressed
28:22
Speaker 1: memories of being ritually satanically abused or Satanic ritually abused
28:27
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties in Vancouver. Yeah, he actually ended
28:30
Speaker 1: up marrying her, and he coined the term ritual abuse.
28:33
Speaker 1: That lies directly at his feet. And Uh, this thing
28:38
Speaker 1: had a lot of attraction. I mean, this lady was
28:40
Speaker 1: on Oprah, she did the talk show circuit for years.
28:43
Speaker 1: The guy was used as as an expert witness in
28:46
Speaker 1: court cases like he's. He founded a whole movement in psychology.
28:51
Speaker 1: It was completely debunked. Yeah, and the whole idea is
28:53
Speaker 1: it's based on this premise that if you undergo a
28:57
Speaker 1: traumatic experience, your mind is going to try to repress
29:01
Speaker 1: that memory, but it's gonna have all sorts of horrible
29:03
Speaker 1: effects in your life. You're gonna be an alcoholic and
29:05
Speaker 1: a drug addict and maybe a child abuser and you
29:07
Speaker 1: won't know why, but it's because you were abused as
29:10
Speaker 1: a child, probably by Satanists, and you covered it up.
29:13
Speaker 1: And you need to go to therapy to have it unlocked,
29:16
Speaker 1: And a lot of people went to therapy and had
29:18
Speaker 1: these memories unlocked, which only proved Pastor's point even further. Right,
29:23
Speaker 1: the problem is is if when they were re examined,
29:26
Speaker 1: they were pseudo memories. Through the power of suggestion and
29:29
Speaker 1: over zealous UM therapists, a lot of people form memories
29:33
Speaker 1: of stuff that never happened. Yeah, the problem is recovered
29:36
Speaker 1: memory therapy. There's little to no scientific evidence that it's
29:40
Speaker 1: a thing at all that people unconsciously repressed these memories. Um.
29:46
Speaker 1: The Royal College of Psychiatrists in Britain, Uh, they have
29:49
Speaker 1: officially banned its members from using it altogether. The British
29:53
Speaker 1: Psychological Society says, you can use it, but you can't
29:59
Speaker 1: draw any prem sure conclusions. You have to have evidence,
30:02
Speaker 1: not just well this is what they said in therapy. Right,
30:05
Speaker 1: So that's a repressed memory that came to the surface. Right.
30:08
Speaker 1: And the A M A. I'm sorry, the A p
30:10
Speaker 1: A and the United States, Uh, their official stance was
30:13
Speaker 1: issued nineteen eighty I'm sorry. N Uh. There's a consensus
30:17
Speaker 1: among memory researches and clinicians that most people who are
30:20
Speaker 1: sexually abused as children remember all or part of what
30:23
Speaker 1: happened to them, although they may not fully understand or
30:26
Speaker 1: disclose it. So a competent psychotherapist is um likely to
30:30
Speaker 1: acknowledge that current knowledge does not allow the definite conclusion
30:34
Speaker 1: without corroborating evidence. So again, the general consensus is that
30:39
Speaker 1: people don't completely unconsciously forget everything that happened. It's virtually impossible. Um.
30:47
Speaker 1: And so there this idea that during therapy, while you're
30:50
Speaker 1: coaxing these memories out, you're actually forming pseudotherapy is backed
30:54
Speaker 1: up by a lot of follow up Researchudo memory pseudo memory, sorry,
30:58
Speaker 1: um is backed up by research. There's a searcher, famous
31:01
Speaker 1: memory researcher named Elizabeth Loftus. She found that participants of
31:06
Speaker 1: the study came to believe that they had done something
31:10
Speaker 1: they hadn't when confronted with witnesses who said that they
31:14
Speaker 1: had done it. That's the real danger in all this
31:17
Speaker 1: sure is that these memories become just as valid as
31:19
Speaker 1: real memories and do damage because they aren't real. And
31:23
Speaker 1: there's actually a real life case that came out of
31:25
Speaker 1: all this who this one was crazy? Paul Ingram. Paul
31:28
Speaker 1: Ingram was a sheriff's deputy um. And he was accused
31:32
Speaker 1: by his young daughter of Satanic ritually abusing her, and
31:37
Speaker 1: that he was a member of a Satanic cult and
31:40
Speaker 1: that um, she had been raped by this cult six
31:44
Speaker 1: to eight hundred times. Um, they had been involved in
31:47
Speaker 1: the murder of twenty five babies at least. And paul
31:50
Speaker 1: Ingram said, I don't remember any of this, but um,
31:56
Speaker 1: you must be right. So I am going to confess
31:59
Speaker 1: he was a true too, wouldn't he. Yeah, he was
32:01
Speaker 1: a fundamentalist um Christian. So he was very much primed
32:04
Speaker 1: to believe that there is um a very a very
32:07
Speaker 1: real Satan roaming the earth. And if his daughter is
32:10
Speaker 1: telling him that he did this, why what what reason
32:13
Speaker 1: does she have to lie? So he actually, I mean
32:16
Speaker 1: he bought into it and took the rap for this
32:19
Speaker 1: even though it never happened. No one ever showed that
32:22
Speaker 1: any of this stuff happened. Yeah, he served his full
32:24
Speaker 1: prisons and it's of twenty years, twenty years and maybe
32:27
Speaker 1: didn't even do it anything. Yeah, But he himself said, well,
32:31
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I did, and I think he
32:34
Speaker 1: fully bought into it over to such a weird reversal
32:37
Speaker 1: in that case, you know, UM should we take another
32:41
Speaker 1: break maybe, so all right, we'll take another break here
32:44
Speaker 1: and talk about the media and then some other theories
32:47
Speaker 1: in cases in satanic panic story. All right, if you
33:06
Speaker 1: were alive during the nineteen eighties and early nineties, which
33:09
Speaker 1: I was, then, you remember Oprah, Haraldouble, Sally, Jesse, Raphael,
33:16
Speaker 1: you name it, every single talk show, Dona Hue doing
33:21
Speaker 1: lots and lots of shows on satanic death cults. If
33:25
Speaker 1: it's two pm on a Wednesday afternoon and you want
33:28
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get America to turn their
33:30
Speaker 1: TV to your station, you would have had a choice
33:32
Speaker 1: of different shows to watch, probably totally yeah, on the
33:36
Speaker 1: same day, right, um, and yeah, everybody did Satanists and
33:39
Speaker 1: Horaldo was the king of this. He actually had a
33:42
Speaker 1: two hour primetime special in called Exposing Satan's Underground and
33:47
Speaker 1: it is on YouTube and I think about teen parts.
33:50
Speaker 1: I watched one of them where he had Assie on
33:53
Speaker 1: and Ozzie's like, uh for Ozzie, he's Ozzie looks like
33:58
Speaker 1: a pre golden girl's door. The is the way he's
34:01
Speaker 1: dressed and done up. It's awesome. But he's like, I
34:04
Speaker 1: don't mean to freak anybody out with music. Um. He
34:09
Speaker 1: doesn't know what to make of this, but was like,
34:11
Speaker 1: as he just sit there, we'll get back to you. Like,
34:14
Speaker 1: but there's this classic line in this right, Haralda goes
34:17
Speaker 1: they're talking about a murder that was carried out by
34:20
Speaker 1: this boy and um, Haraldo says to this copy, goes, detective,
34:26
Speaker 1: you're a cop, not a theologian, but let me ask you.
34:29
Speaker 1: Was this boy possessed? Dead? Serious? And the cop was like,
34:34
Speaker 1: I he had just a little bits like I think
34:37
Speaker 1: that's a state of mind. But yeah, and in that sense, yes,
34:39
Speaker 1: I think he was. Haralda doesn't get what he's looking
34:42
Speaker 1: for out of the guy, so he goes to an
34:44
Speaker 1: actual theologian, a priest. He goes, uh, you know you're
34:47
Speaker 1: you're you're charged with um investigating these cases for the
34:51
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. Do you think that this is a case
34:54
Speaker 1: of possession? He's like absolutely, And harld was like, yes,
34:57
Speaker 1: that's what I was looking for. But that's the level
35:00
Speaker 1: of journalism that people were tuning into on like NBC
35:03
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock for two hours in like the highest
35:06
Speaker 1: rated two hour TV documentary ever and a third or
35:09
Speaker 1: a half of America is like, what idiot believes this
35:12
Speaker 1: is the most entertaining thing I've ever seen. The other
35:15
Speaker 1: half is scared to death and thinks that all of
35:18
Speaker 1: this is totally real. Yeah, you know, it's easy to
35:21
Speaker 1: laugh about now, but shame on all of them. Well,
35:23
Speaker 1: Haraldough came out and said, I want to apologize for
35:28
Speaker 1: that bit of journalism. That was really bad, and I'm
35:31
Speaker 1: sorry for it. But I mean that's how he made
35:33
Speaker 1: his name with stuff like that. Well, he was caught
35:35
Speaker 1: up in the moral panic everyone was doing it. There
35:38
Speaker 1: was a book in children's picture book UM called Don't
35:44
Speaker 1: Make Me Go Back, Mommy Colin, a child's book about
35:47
Speaker 1: satanic ritual abuse to read to your children or if
35:52
Speaker 1: you were a therapist, to use in therapy, right, you
35:55
Speaker 1: know that. Well they also had in many of the
35:58
Speaker 1: court cases a little little anatomically correct rag dolls that
36:02
Speaker 1: they would use in court like you know, show me
36:04
Speaker 1: where you were touched and things like this, which I'm
36:06
Speaker 1: sure that has valid use as well, and you know,
36:10
Speaker 1: like sex abuse cases for sure, but you're like completely
36:12
Speaker 1: poopooing that you have to, um, you have to use that.
36:17
Speaker 1: I would imagine you your training in how to do
36:20
Speaker 1: that correctly without inadvertently or advertently leading the child on
36:25
Speaker 1: into creating some sort of pseudo memory. It should be extensive,
36:30
Speaker 1: I would guess, you know, I mean, yeah, So the
36:34
Speaker 1: media was definitely complicit in all this. Really saw that
36:39
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ratings to be had in just
36:42
Speaker 1: fanning the flames of the satanic panic, and I think
36:45
Speaker 1: a lot of people bought into it as well. Um
36:48
Speaker 1: And then so too were things like the um the
36:52
Speaker 1: field of psychiatry and psychology very much complicit in this
36:55
Speaker 1: by allowing repressed memory therapy to really spread as much
36:58
Speaker 1: as it did without any kind of real, um verified
37:02
Speaker 1: research into whether it was real or not. And to
37:05
Speaker 1: defend them a little bit, Robert also makes the points
37:07
Speaker 1: they're probably well meaning, probably thinking they were doing this
37:10
Speaker 1: great work, like helping these kids, but like with no
37:14
Speaker 1: scientific basis whatsoever, right, and lacking a lot of critical
37:19
Speaker 1: thinking too. And they dressed as pumpkins and shot the
37:22
Speaker 1: kids in the arms and the legs. Where are the
37:24
Speaker 1: bullet wounds? How exactly did they get the kids to
37:27
Speaker 1: Mexico and then back to Austin in the average daycare
37:30
Speaker 1: day Secret tunnels, you know, secret tunnels. That was an
37:34
Speaker 1: explanation there was a lot there. There wasn't enough critical thinking.
37:37
Speaker 1: So you can definitely take UM the media, psychology, psychiatry
37:43
Speaker 1: UM and a lot of UM law enforcement investigators to
37:47
Speaker 1: task for this. But really there are a lot of
37:50
Speaker 1: hucksters and frosters making a lot of money as UM
37:55
Speaker 1: satanic experts at the time. Both is like legal UM,
37:59
Speaker 1: legal UH representatives, UM expert witnesses, expert witnesses, authors UM
38:05
Speaker 1: going on shows like Heraldo and Sally Jesse, Raphael uh
38:09
Speaker 1: and those people are really should bear the brunt of
38:12
Speaker 1: this because they were just lying, yeah, lying, lying, lying
38:17
Speaker 1: their faces off UM and and scaring people to death
38:21
Speaker 1: and making a lot of money out of it. Uh.
38:23
Speaker 1: So he said it was widespread. There was a Red
38:25
Speaker 1: Book magazine survey in and this is at the end
38:28
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. Yeah true, UM that found that
38:31
Speaker 1: seventy percent of Americans believed in Satanic ritual abuse. Uh.
38:35
Speaker 1: And in n this is the really scary one. A
38:39
Speaker 1: survey by the American Bar Association Center on Children and
38:43
Speaker 1: the Law found that twenty six a quarter more than
38:47
Speaker 1: a quarter of prosecutors said they handled at least one
38:50
Speaker 1: case involving ritual Satanic ritual abuse during that time period.
38:57
Speaker 1: So UM. Within that time too, there was a very
39:00
Speaker 1: famous case in West Memphis, Arkansas, the West Memphis Three UM,
39:06
Speaker 1: who were very famously exonerated thanks to crack documentary filmmaking
39:11
Speaker 1: UM on HBO's half. As a matter of fact, HBO
39:14
Speaker 1: really led the vanguard against this whole satanic panic. UM
39:18
Speaker 1: they released in UH documentary. I think it was a
39:24
Speaker 1: biopic on the McMartin trial. It wasn't a documentary. I
39:27
Speaker 1: think it was like dramatized, and that really started to
39:31
Speaker 1: change the tide of how academics, intellectuals, and in the
39:34
Speaker 1: media itself saw satanic ritual abuse started to expose it
39:38
Speaker 1: as this is not real. Yeah, and this is after
39:41
Speaker 1: the McMartin trial had been the longest and most expensive
39:45
Speaker 1: trial in the history of the United States. That's right,
39:47
Speaker 1: fifteen sixteen million dollars spent for with zero can convictions
39:53
Speaker 1: because it didn't happen UM. And that case actually was
39:56
Speaker 1: UM started with a woman who believed her child had
39:59
Speaker 1: been sexu abused, and the woman actually sadly went on
40:02
Speaker 1: to die from alcohol poisoning a couple of years later,
40:05
Speaker 1: was schizophrenic. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in
40:08
Speaker 1: that time, and yet nobody stopped and said, oh, well,
40:11
Speaker 1: wait a minute, she was the center of the accusers
40:14
Speaker 1: of all this. Should we take another look at all this?
40:17
Speaker 1: It was like, no, let's spend fifteen million dollars of
40:19
Speaker 1: taxpayer money trying to prosecute these people and get zero
40:23
Speaker 1: convictions out of it. Um, the West Memphis three were
40:25
Speaker 1: successfully prosecuted in Arkansas, I mean railroaded. There is no
40:31
Speaker 1: other way to put this, thanks to something like a
40:34
Speaker 1: false confession by Jesse ms Kelly um, which is mind
40:37
Speaker 1: blowing until you should go listen to our episode on
40:40
Speaker 1: false confessions, which I believe you did that one right. Uh,
40:44
Speaker 1: either that or it was a part of another one.
40:46
Speaker 1: But yeah, we covered that topic for um and and
40:50
Speaker 1: all of that was based on the satanic panic thing
40:53
Speaker 1: as well. Um, but you go. You should definitely watch
40:55
Speaker 1: those again. HBO documentaries Paradise Lost, one, two, and three
40:59
Speaker 1: and the a Um they made the original and Paradise
41:02
Speaker 1: Lost the Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills and I
41:05
Speaker 1: think they thought it was the same guy. Did you
41:07
Speaker 1: see Brothers Keeper the other documentary? Yeah, about the older
41:12
Speaker 1: older brothers. Love that one man. That's the same guy
41:14
Speaker 1: that Brothers Keepers will put him on the map. So
41:17
Speaker 1: I think he thought that Paradise Lost One was just
41:20
Speaker 1: the documentary. And to his credit, Joe biden Burlinger, I
41:26
Speaker 1: think he uh, he really championed this case and followed
41:30
Speaker 1: it to its conclusion over the course of two more
41:33
Speaker 1: documentaries over the years. Yeah, and from what I understand,
41:35
Speaker 1: he changed his mind about the content or the crime
41:39
Speaker 1: mid stream, Like I think, didn't he go there thinking
41:42
Speaker 1: he was just covering the crime, And then when I
41:44
Speaker 1: actually saw what was going on, I was like, whoa, Yeah,
41:47
Speaker 1: I think I think he was. I mean, because of him,
41:49
Speaker 1: they were exonerated ultimately. Yeah, Like he got three people
41:53
Speaker 1: out of prison, one off death row. Yeah, um yeah,
41:56
Speaker 1: hats off. But again, this is part of the Satanic
41:58
Speaker 1: panic scare um and that not that one that kind
42:02
Speaker 1: of came at the end of it. But the McMartin
42:06
Speaker 1: movie on HBO started to change the tide, and so
42:09
Speaker 1: too to the exoneration of a woman named um Margaret
42:12
Speaker 1: Kelly Michael's in New Jersey. Um In. She was let
42:16
Speaker 1: out of prison after it was revealed how coercive the
42:20
Speaker 1: questioning was. Um of the children who ended up accusing
42:24
Speaker 1: her of this, and that was true in every case.
42:26
Speaker 1: It seems like it was. It shed a lot of
42:28
Speaker 1: light onto this and people started going like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wait,
42:31
Speaker 1: this is coercive. Let's look at these other cases. And
42:34
Speaker 1: you go back and look at the transcripts and see like, Okay,
42:38
Speaker 1: these people were basically telling the kids what they wanted
42:41
Speaker 1: to hear. They were using approval whenever the kids said
42:45
Speaker 1: something that that pointed the finger. They were using disapproval
42:48
Speaker 1: when the kids refused to talk or whatever or implicate
42:53
Speaker 1: anyone um. And if you go back and really listen
42:55
Speaker 1: to what the kids are saying, a lot of the
42:57
Speaker 1: times they're like, no, nothing happened. Well, and then they
43:00
Speaker 1: would follow that with are you sure this didn't happen?
43:03
Speaker 1: Are you sure this didn't happen? You're not supposed to
43:05
Speaker 1: do that, and you're certainly not supposed to put people
43:07
Speaker 1: in prison for half of their lives. Well, and you're
43:09
Speaker 1: especially not supposed to do that to a kid who's
43:12
Speaker 1: highly suggestible and wants to please, because most kids want
43:15
Speaker 1: to please. And when you look at some of these allegations,
43:20
Speaker 1: it sounds like if you asked a three year old
43:22
Speaker 1: to make up what they think ritual abuse would be.
43:26
Speaker 1: Here's here's what a kid would say. Yeah, they locked
43:28
Speaker 1: us in a closet with spiders and snakes. Yeah, they
43:31
Speaker 1: put us in a pool with sharks that ate babies,
43:33
Speaker 1: and they fed us baby parts. So. UM, the real
43:36
Speaker 1: death knell of the Satanic ritual abuse scare came UM
43:43
Speaker 1: with a meta survey for UM, the National Center and
43:46
Speaker 1: Child Abuse and Neglect. And this study it contacted UM prosecutors,
43:54
Speaker 1: regular lawyers, social workers, psychologists, I think that was it,
43:58
Speaker 1: thousands and tens of thousands of them across the country.
44:01
Speaker 1: Ended up whittling it down to a sizeable sample and
44:05
Speaker 1: found UM all sorts of things. Specifically, what they found
44:10
Speaker 1: is there was no evidence whatsoever of any Satanic cults
44:14
Speaker 1: operating anywhere in the U s or a single crime
44:16
Speaker 1: carried out by a Satanic cult. That said that they
44:19
Speaker 1: found a couple of UM crimes that were carried up
44:22
Speaker 1: by people allegedly in the name of Satan, but that
44:25
Speaker 1: these were most likely inspired by the Satanic panic itself
44:28
Speaker 1: and solo affairs. That's what Yeah, that's what That's what
44:32
Speaker 1: I'm saying, UM. But they had had it was in
44:35
Speaker 1: a satanic cult by any means UM. They also found
44:39
Speaker 1: in this study that children um of the ages that
44:45
Speaker 1: that where they would go to daycare, weren't capable of
44:48
Speaker 1: forming the type of accusations against satanic ritual abuse um
44:54
Speaker 1: that people have been convicted of. That clearly, the adults
44:57
Speaker 1: were the ones who were channeling themselves through their children
45:02
Speaker 1: to accuse these people. The kids were saying things like
45:05
Speaker 1: they locked us in a closet with spiders and snakes.
45:07
Speaker 1: They weren't saying like they carved open a baby and
45:11
Speaker 1: um sexually abused it and then we all drank its
45:14
Speaker 1: blood while everyone's wearing black ropes. They're they're not sophisticated
45:18
Speaker 1: enough to think that kind of thing. So the study
45:19
Speaker 1: also proved that too. And then ironically, the same survey
45:23
Speaker 1: found plenty of evidence of religious based crimes, including murders
45:28
Speaker 1: carried out things like exorcisms that went too far. That
45:32
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. They're like, that actually is real, And ironically,
45:36
Speaker 1: we have a lot of laws protecting people who do that,
45:40
Speaker 1: but we have laws that step up the punishment for
45:44
Speaker 1: satanic abuse even though that doesn't exist. And that one
45:48
Speaker 1: really changed the tide of how people saw the Satanic panic.
45:51
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and then experts later came out and said
45:53
Speaker 1: as far as the uh physical abuse, and the doctors
45:58
Speaker 1: who testified at trial, like the type of physical abuse
46:02
Speaker 1: these kids were enduring, they were like a layman could
46:05
Speaker 1: look at a child and and say, wow, what happened
46:09
Speaker 1: to this kid? But you will obviously never be able
46:12
Speaker 1: to reproduce. Yes, you're totally mangled. Not this like ambiguous like, well, yeah,
46:17
Speaker 1: I think that it seems like they had some marks
46:20
Speaker 1: where they could have been, you know, molested or something like.
46:24
Speaker 1: It would have been so obvious because these allegations were
46:27
Speaker 1: so far out there And of course years later they
46:30
Speaker 1: say this. At the time, everyone was drinking the flavor aid,
46:34
Speaker 1: you know, nice, the blood drenched flavor aid and insult
46:39
Speaker 1: to injury that same media, all of a sudden, the
46:43
Speaker 1: hot story became the outrage that was Satanic panic, and
46:46
Speaker 1: what a bunch of crap that it was. So now
46:49
Speaker 1: let's cover that story in full, even though we had
46:51
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it. Yeah, um, so, Chuck,
46:54
Speaker 1: why did people drink the flavor aid? Like, what was
46:57
Speaker 1: the immediate reason for the satanic panic? Well, you found
47:03
Speaker 1: this great article which one I found a lot of
47:06
Speaker 1: great articles the three uh Satanic ritual abuse as Oh yeah,
47:11
Speaker 1: this sociological article, Yeah, that was good. Um. They have
47:15
Speaker 1: a few reasons um as subversion ideology, as rumor panic,
47:21
Speaker 1: and as contemporary legend. And the subversion ideology I thought
47:25
Speaker 1: was super interesting. I didn't even know what that was.
47:27
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of it before you. They define it
47:29
Speaker 1: as a culturally constructed myth that gives shape and formed
47:32
Speaker 1: feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about the future that our
47:35
Speaker 1: experienced between periods of rapid, unpredictable social change. Right, So
47:40
Speaker 1: so we're anxious. We're not even necessarily conscious of our anxiety,
47:44
Speaker 1: but we just we don't feel quite right. Everything's changing
47:46
Speaker 1: and we don't know what's going on. So what's yeah,
47:48
Speaker 1: what what? What exactly is making us nervous? Oh? How
47:51
Speaker 1: about that group over there, Satanists? Yeah, basic Jews, and
47:55
Speaker 1: before that it was Christians exactly. Now it puts a
47:57
Speaker 1: face to to this underlying sense of dread we feel
48:01
Speaker 1: because the times are a changeing, exactly, and it gives
48:03
Speaker 1: us a um an outlet at the expense of other people.
48:06
Speaker 1: But that's the with the subversion ideology. The hallmark. Characteristic
48:11
Speaker 1: of it is that that that other group takes everything
48:15
Speaker 1: we hold dear and values the opposite of it. So
48:19
Speaker 1: Satanists they use upside down crosses and evil is what's
48:23
Speaker 1: really good, and um it was. It's a classic example
48:27
Speaker 1: of subverse subversion ideology. Well, and one thing I thought
48:30
Speaker 1: was really interesting in here is, um, they contend. And
48:33
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's true that subversion ideology actually ends up
48:36
Speaker 1: having a stabilizing effect because people then go, oh, okay,
48:40
Speaker 1: well that's why I'm so upset and worried and anxious
48:44
Speaker 1: is because of the Satanist, not what's really going on,
48:47
Speaker 1: which is the end of the millennium apparently really yeah whatever.
48:51
Speaker 1: That was Another explanation I ran across is that it
48:53
Speaker 1: was millennial anxiety. Um. There is also know that another
48:58
Speaker 1: one you said, moral or rumor panic, yeah, um, which
49:01
Speaker 1: we touched on before. But basically that is this idea
49:04
Speaker 1: that um, it's just buying into a rumor and like
49:08
Speaker 1: really really buying into it. And the way you buy
49:10
Speaker 1: into it is because all of a sudden, um, professional
49:13
Speaker 1: psychiatrists and psychologists and law enforcement people and people in
49:17
Speaker 1: the newspaper are talking about this stuff like it's fact.
49:21
Speaker 1: And with that, because we trust these people as being smart,
49:23
Speaker 1: intelligent people, it becomes fact in the eyes and the
49:27
Speaker 1: minds of just normal people, and that gives it veracity
49:31
Speaker 1: in and of itself. Once people start believing something as
49:35
Speaker 1: fact without any proof, you are rumor. Panic has just
49:39
Speaker 1: set in well, and ironically to them, it seems like
49:41
Speaker 1: the more out there the panic is, the more readily
49:45
Speaker 1: it's believed, because that the old like who would make
49:48
Speaker 1: something like that up right, a three year old might
49:51
Speaker 1: being coaxed by police and her parents and her shrink.
49:54
Speaker 1: And then the last one is an urban legend, which
49:56
Speaker 1: we talked about before, but the sociological article pointed something
49:59
Speaker 1: out that I hadn't thought out of that, UM. Urban
50:01
Speaker 1: legends deal in metaphors, even though we don't think of
50:04
Speaker 1: them as metaphors. So in this case, the children that
50:07
Speaker 1: were being abused by Satanists were a metaphor for our future,
50:11
Speaker 1: and children are future. Just go ask Whitney Houston. You
50:15
Speaker 1: can't it's true, um. And then as people start to
50:19
Speaker 1: buy into it, it becomes a rumor panic and you
50:21
Speaker 1: can dress it up with some version ideology. So in
50:25
Speaker 1: the end, UH, the mcmartin's I don't think they ever well.
50:29
Speaker 1: I think they never prosecuted. I think they were in
50:32
Speaker 1: jail here and there while the trial was going on. Yeah,
50:34
Speaker 1: but they were never prosecuted, but never successfully prosecuted. The
50:37
Speaker 1: Kellers were eventually exonerated, but they spent twenty one years
50:41
Speaker 1: in prison. Their life was ruined, twenty one years in
50:44
Speaker 1: prison each based on these false accusations. I have to say,
50:46
Speaker 1: if you want to read one of the better articles
50:48
Speaker 1: I've ever read, it's called The Innocent and the Damned.
50:51
Speaker 1: It's from Texas Monthly. Was written while this satanic panic
50:56
Speaker 1: is going on, but somehow Texas Monthly took a critical
50:59
Speaker 1: eye to this stuff. It's really good article. I thought
51:02
Speaker 1: this was so fascinating because as crazy as it seems now,
51:06
Speaker 1: and like I was saying at the very beginning, like
51:08
Speaker 1: how in the world in the nineteen eighties did we
51:10
Speaker 1: buy into this like it was Salem, Massachusetts. Uh, when
51:16
Speaker 1: you look at the reasons behind it, it was like
51:18
Speaker 1: the perfect storm coalescing. Uh. It sort of makes perfect
51:23
Speaker 1: sense when you look at everything behind it. It does,
51:25
Speaker 1: but doesn't it also still like, even even even if
51:29
Speaker 1: you take into account that you're using hindsight, and that
51:31
Speaker 1: the perspective that's afforded by that, the gull ability I know,
51:36
Speaker 1: that's it that is involved in a moral panic is
51:40
Speaker 1: It's just it's saddening. I bet Edward Burns would have
51:44
Speaker 1: been all over this. Oh yeah, well he fomented those
51:47
Speaker 1: kind of things, you know, Um, yeah, yeah, it's sad. Also,
51:52
Speaker 1: if you want some yucks, go look up Law Enforcement
51:55
Speaker 1: Guide to Satanic Cults on YouTube hit the video series
52:00
Speaker 1: Yeah so weird. I'm glad to know that you had
52:02
Speaker 1: a Satan house in your neighborhood too. I think everybody
52:05
Speaker 1: did a rumors that, like somebody found a cat with
52:07
Speaker 1: its head cut off in a panagram and he's like, oh,
52:10
Speaker 1: that happened because I'm ten, which is okay if you're ten,
52:13
Speaker 1: but if you're fifty, it's not okay, especially if you're
52:16
Speaker 1: the local prosecutor. Uh. And it also one last thing, chuck,
52:20
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder what moral panics are we working
52:22
Speaker 1: on right now. It's not like this is ancient history.
52:26
Speaker 1: You know. If you want to know more about moral
52:28
Speaker 1: panics and specifically the Satanic panic, you can type those
52:31
Speaker 1: words into the search bart how stuff works dot com
52:34
Speaker 1: so I said, search parts time for a listener and mail.
52:39
Speaker 1: Here's what I predict is that some people are going
52:41
Speaker 1: to write in and say, dudes, we're in the middle
52:44
Speaker 1: of another moral panic right now and it is blank
52:47
Speaker 1: vocal fry. Perhaps some lady called me the fry Master
52:52
Speaker 1: and an email. Do you see that? No? I didn't.
52:55
Speaker 1: She was like, Chuck always uses vocal fry, and then
52:57
Speaker 1: when I listened to my voice, I'm like, I totally do,
53:00
Speaker 1: but uh, he totally. I've noticed it a lot more
53:04
Speaker 1: since we um uh said that you do that episode? Yeah, yeah, whatever,
53:09
Speaker 1: being me, Yeah, man, you should. I'm a trend setter.
53:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Um oh, guys sitting a straight
53:17
Speaker 1: on these grocery store donations. Okay, hey guys, a long
53:21
Speaker 1: time listener. Love you guys. Never thought, uh, this would
53:24
Speaker 1: be the reason I have to reach out to you.
53:26
Speaker 1: At the end of the podcast on Tuesday, um you said,
53:31
Speaker 1: I don't know which podcast it was. At the end
53:33
Speaker 1: of the recent podcast, actually had to stop and say
53:36
Speaker 1: no because my friends Josh and Chuck didn't just do that.
53:39
Speaker 1: I told people not to donate a dollar to buy
53:42
Speaker 1: the little hot air balloons at the grocery store because
53:46
Speaker 1: the company then uses those donations to get text credit.
53:49
Speaker 1: This is absolutely not true. That is not true what
53:52
Speaker 1: that guy said. He says, I have actually been working
53:55
Speaker 1: with Children's Miracle Network hospitals in Connecticut for about twenty years.
53:59
Speaker 1: And by the way, when I said the balloons, I
54:01
Speaker 1: forgot that was Children's Miracle Network specifically. I used to
54:05
Speaker 1: do a lot of work with them in l a
54:08
Speaker 1: them on video shoots. No, of course not. It's they're amazing.
54:11
Speaker 1: You're like, it's the shamrocks. I have a problem. I know.
54:14
Speaker 1: It just felt terrible after that. So um, he says,
54:16
Speaker 1: our corporate partners do not get text credits for donations
54:19
Speaker 1: made by their customers. In fact, many of our corporate
54:22
Speaker 1: partners ring these donations through their registers, so the donation
54:26
Speaker 1: shows on the customer's receipt, allowing them to use that
54:29
Speaker 1: for their taxes. What a quick fun fact about the
54:32
Speaker 1: miracle balloon um that I reference is that the first
54:35
Speaker 1: one ever sold the entire world was at a small
54:38
Speaker 1: diner in downtown Middletown, Connecticut to roy Comb in nineteen
54:45
Speaker 1: I thought he's gonna say like nineteen not four. Uh.
54:49
Speaker 1: Soon after that um. The Miracle Balloon became a multinational
54:52
Speaker 1: program that raises money for more than one seventy local
54:55
Speaker 1: children's hospitals across the US in Canada, and its creator
54:59
Speaker 1: became very, very rich. As I mentioned, I've been doing
55:03
Speaker 1: this job for about twenty years, and I have to
55:04
Speaker 1: tell uh that I always say I have the best
55:07
Speaker 1: job in the world. I get to work with amazing
55:09
Speaker 1: people like my co workers and all of our partners,
55:11
Speaker 1: and I get to work for the most inspiring people
55:14
Speaker 1: are patient families. Please help me get this corrected. The
55:17
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, legion, don't worry. I still love you, guys.
55:20
Speaker 1: That is from Scott uh organ Eck, the director of
55:25
Speaker 1: Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Wow from the horse's mouth or
55:29
Speaker 1: a director? Yeah, so I don't. We're gonna have to
55:32
Speaker 1: look in this a little further. I think we got
55:34
Speaker 1: other people that said that's not true, and other people
55:37
Speaker 1: said it is true for Children's Miracle Network. I'm sure
55:40
Speaker 1: he knows what he's talking about, but there are all
55:42
Speaker 1: kinds of things that done it too, And it's also
55:44
Speaker 1: probably not a liar. I don't know. He seems like
55:47
Speaker 1: a regular guy, not a Satanic ritual abuser. No, not
55:52
Speaker 1: at all in any way, So we'll look into it.
55:55
Speaker 1: I certainly did not mean to disparage the no I
55:58
Speaker 1: did there, and I mean, if that's the way it works,
56:00
Speaker 1: I retract that, but I need to look into it
56:02
Speaker 1: a little more first, all right, the jury's out. Um,
56:05
Speaker 1: thank you very much. What was his name? David? David,
56:08
Speaker 1: You're awesome. Thank you for the work you're doing too.
56:10
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us to
56:12
Speaker 1: set us straight, we love that. You can tweet to
56:14
Speaker 1: us at s y s K podcast. You can join
56:17
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.
56:19
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at
56:22
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, join us
56:24
Speaker 1: at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know
56:27
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56:31
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56:34
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56:37
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