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Satanic Panic · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:20
  Welcome to Why We Do What We Do. I am your fervently terrified host
• 0:25
  Abraham and I am your Bible thumping host Shane. Or Psychology podcast in October.
• 0:31
  We're a horror specifically themed psychology podcast. So we're on episode three of
• 0:38
  this year's collection of spooky themed episodes, So Spooky, so Scary. I'm
• 0:44
  working on the notes for the last episode the series. And there is an
• 0:47
  official philosophy about the thing called spooky non agentism which we're going to talk about,
• 0:52
  which is like cool. I was like, that's an official title,
• 0:54
  and I'm like, I'm so glad that we're studying something that actually has spooky
• 0:59
  in the title. That's right. Yes, that is a major victory for
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  sure. Yeah. And so this year, what we've been doing, if
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  you haven't been keeping up, is we've been focusing on all things Satan,
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  Satanic, demonic related. Yeah, and today we are talking about the Satanic
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  panic, which is really good alliteration or like that, you know the sound
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  whatever the sound is. I can't remember what that is. I'm not an
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  English major, but you know what I'm talking about. I think it's just
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  a rhyme for that one. Rhyme's work. Yeah, that's good. That
• 1:26
  makes sense. That's the word I'm looking for. Okay. I was like,
• 1:30
  there are lots of different names for things, for sure, and you
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  know, we like acrostic poems sometimes we'll do those, but but I think
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  this was just rhyme. Yeah. Anyway, if you're listening to this on
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  the day that it comes out, there are there are so many things that
• 1:45
  we could acknowledge as holidays, celebrations and major events in the world. And
• 1:49
  if you are joining us on that today, on that day or even afterward,
• 1:53
  you can recognize that today, October eighteenth, is the nash Lit Chocolate
• 2:00
  Cupcake Day and rejoice in the fact that such a day exists. I mean,
• 2:06
  what other holiday do you need? You know. It's also the Day
• 2:09
  of Unity, which sounds nice. I like that idea. Uh huh,
• 2:14
  you said you hate that one. No, I said I need that one
• 2:15
  because you said, what of the hots do you need? So we got
• 2:17
  we got one. Oh yeah, I guess we do need that one.
• 2:21
  Healthcare Aid Day nice, that sounds nice. It's also Katsi Bihu, which
• 2:25
  is the solemn celebration of the beginning of Patti season. So for folks that
• 2:31
  are working in rice patties and in that space. It's the celebration of the
• 2:36
  season's beginning. Oh gotcha. Yeah, it's National Mashed Potato Day. I'm
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  a huge fan of that. Yeah. I think we need that one too.
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  A holiday that we don't need, though, is National Necktie Day,
• 2:46
  and we definitely do not need National No beard Day. That one can maybe
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  go away. That can kick rocks, that can pounder. It's also National
• 2:53
  Speak Up for Victims of Sexual Abuse Day. Definitely need that day to elevate
• 2:58
  those voices. Totally and intrinsically related to our episode for today, So coincidence
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  there. Yeah. Ride to Work Day, so I think they could be
• 3:07
  riding anything a scooter, yeah, bicycle, maybe a train, yeah,
• 3:12
  any of those things work. A horse, a horse, that would be
• 3:15
  interesting. I couldn't imagine riding a horse to work, especially because I do
• 3:19
  inal therapy, so like I'd have to ride my horse to every house.
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  Yeah, it would take so long. Make sure you tie it up to
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  you know, whatever a horse picket there is. Yeah, just just got
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  to watch out for those horse thieves, you know, that's the big thing.
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  It's true. It's also World Menopause Day. Okay, it is Freedom
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  From Bullies Week, which means all bullies take the week off please, maybe
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  the rest of the year, yes, or just take as much time as
• 3:43
  you need. Yeah, the rest of your life. Yeah, the rest
• 3:46
  of your life is fine. It's also National Chemistry Week, so for those
• 3:49
  of you who are in chemistry class and you know, lighting different substances on
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  fire to see those chemical reactions and different color flames. Good for you.
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  Yeah, I like that. It's National Food Bank Week finally an important one.
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  Yes, And it's also National Wolf Awareness Week. Cool. I think
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  for our guests, doctor Andrew Bulla would be a big fan of yes,
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  totally. Well, we're actually talking, as we said, about Satanic themed
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  things and getting into we've sort of followed from this idea of black magic.
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  We've talked about Satanism, now we're talking about the Satanic panic sort of a
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  fallout of all of that. Got to issue sort of a trigger warning at
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  the beginning of this. This is going to have some disturbing content, some
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  descriptions of things that are related to sexual abuse, particularly of children, as
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  well as violence towards children. These are descriptions of things that allegedly took place,
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  and we're not corroborated. Most of this is completely ridiculous, but warning
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  that there are descriptions that might be difficult to hear. Right. Absolutely,
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  I think where we have to start this discussion is in the idea or the
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  kind of the perspective of an US versus them type of mentality, and that's
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  kind of where this starts. So the idea of an US versus them mentality
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  has been kind of baked into our language since as far back as we can
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  trace, since one group of Neanderthals gott into a dispute with another group of
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  the Anderthals over who they had a claim to a delicious strawberry bush or making
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  that up. But that is a thing that has probably happened, is going
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  this is my bush. They want to take your bush. We're not going
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  to let them take your bush. And if you've ever heard something like that,
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  then you know what we're talking about here. Yeah, exactly. There
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  is an in group and an out group. You belong to whatever in group
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  you're in, everyone else is the enemy of that group. We have those
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  words, and that allows us to make a distinction between people as belonging to
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  we're not belonging to groups, and that those groups for some reason matter,
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  and that allows us to have in us versus them, which allows us to
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  have a fear of the other. Even though we are all part of the
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  same species. The things that distinguish us are mostly arbitrary, right, if
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  not entirely arbitrary. We tend to create these dichotomies, whether or not they
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  exist. We have Heaven versus Hell, good versus evil, black versus white,
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  male versus female, capitalism versus communism, doing the right thing versus being
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  rohnd DeSantis. Like, maybe we just create these dichotomies out in the world.
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  Yeah, that last one, though, I think, is uh,
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  that one's pretty clear, Like that's an acceptable dichotomy that we have to recognize,
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  not an imagined one. That one's real. Yeah, yeah, no,
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  that one's pretty tangible. You can see that pretty clearly. And a
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  lot of different things. But throughout our history, basic dehumanization and demonization of
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  others has included the accusation of killing or otherwise harming babies and children as a
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  way to drum up righteous fear and hatred of the outgroup. I think of
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  mod Flanders from The Simpsons, which she's like, well, somebody think of
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  the children like I think of that kind of thing. Yeah, it's always
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  that argument, you know, Yeah, I know totally. You know,
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  I think it's because that children are this vulnerable group. They're a very precious
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  resource that are widely acknowledged throughout human history as being crucial to the survival of
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  a civilization, of our species, of family of bloodlines, et cetera.
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  And so killing or harming children being I think symbolic of one of the most
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  ultimately evil things that you can do. Again, their innocence, their relevance
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  to the future, all of that, and therefore, like the best way
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  to create and demonize another group is to accuse them of destroying that ultimately precious
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  resource, right right, because they can't stoop any lower than that, and
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  so you can legitimately justify the fear of that group. And as you kind
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  of like start to unpack that particular thing, you start to realize how hypocritical
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  people are around that totally. It's going to be shocking when we get into
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  that, I think at the end of the day. Yeah, it's like,
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  doesn't it always feel like you're on the right side when you are being
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  the champion for the voiceless, Like that is the thing like if you are
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  if your side is the champion for the people who can't defend themselves, and
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  you must be good. Yeah, in this case, whether or not you're
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  right that those people even need to fit and that the threat to them is
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  real is unimportant to the distinction of you having the heroic stance of being anti
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  whatever threatens that group. Exactly so. As Christianity was growing in ancient Rome,
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  Romans began accusing Christians of having a secret cultish cabal in which they killed
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  babies and children. And that's from wage makers twenty ten. What a great
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  last name, Wagemaker. Yeah. The church father Tertullian lamented the crimes leveled
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  against them, writing, quote, we are said to be the most criminal
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  of men, the score of our sacramental baby killing and the baby eating that
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  goes with it. Oh, the glory of the magistrate who had brought to
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  light some Christians who had eaten up to date one hundred babies end quote sounds
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  intense. That was the Christian Church. Again, they're saying, like,
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  we're being accused of this absolute nonsense, and like, listen to the things
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  they're saying about us. This is crazy. Yeah, that was the Romans
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  accusing the Christians. Now later the Christians are accusing Jews of ritually killing babies
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  in secret, underground demonic gatherings. Uh huh. A Christian Greek democratus wrote
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  that, quote, every seven years, the Jews catch a stranger whom they
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  offer as a sacrifice, killing him by tearing his flesh into shreds end quote.
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  Huh Yeah, I just it just it's I mean, like, come
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  on, take a second to like think about this and how silly it sounds.
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  It's such a weaponized thing, but it's so silly when you think about
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  it. Yeah, it goes further too. So of course, witches were
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  accused of luring children and killing them or cursing them, or killing other children
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  and babies, and ironically, some children were prosecuted for witchcraft and then executed,
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  So there's also that. Yeah, so the people who are who are
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  accusing witches of killing children, those people who are doing that accusing actually accused
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  children of being witches and then killed those children. Like, uhh, the
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  irony, the hypocrisy pretty astounding. I think the level of that, Yeah,
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  it's so absurd. The fever pitch of witch hunting inspired a flurry of
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  creativity about what might look like communion with the demonic forces. They created this
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  idea of a black mass, because this is sort of a bastardization of a
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  Christian mass, you know. The sabot or the Sabbath, black robes,
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  human sacrifice, bestiality, animal familiars, and the torture and murder of the
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  innocent were not actually inspired by some text the Bible or any other folklore precedent.
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  They were essentially cooked up by the executioners, the inquisitors, and then
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  they were sort of confirmed and elaborated upon by the would be victims. Whilst
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  there would be perpetrators of this were being tortured, you know. So they've
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  got these people, they're active and we talked about this when we talked about
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  witches, right, They're actively torturing these people, saying you did this,
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  you did this, and they would try and get these people to confess to
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  it, and eventually when people would break under the pressure and would confess to
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  something that they did not do, and they would elaborate on it again to
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  just make the torture end. Yeah. I mean, all you gotta do
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  is go listen to the False Confessions episode that we did that talks about that
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  exact thing. Like, under duress, people will admit to anything. And
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  if you look at like medieval torture mechanisms, if somebody were literally pulling my
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  joints out of their sockets, I would do anything to make it stop.
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  Like, yeah, absolutely, I would admit. Yeah, you think that
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  I'm boiling children for soup? Sure, just stop stop dislocating my shoulders.
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  It hurts, right, And then ironically they might dismember somebody who never confesses
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  to do anything wrong, and afterward they're all blood out and gone. Then
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  they might say, huh, they may have been telling the truth. Yeah,
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  yeah, how many times does that happen? Oh? God, so
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  many times. Yeah. So art imitates fictionalized life, and this fear was
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  amused for writers, painters, playwrights to write lurid, captivating stories that provoked
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  fear and attention and money from their eager audiences. The fearmongerers created the ideas,
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  the artists turned them into visual representation, and sold those ideas over and
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  over and over again, which is why we have slayers, rain and blood.
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  Yeah. So essentially we got this. I like all these depictions,
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  all these stories like those were just sort of created out of the process of
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  fear and inquisition, and the artists kind of ran with it, like and
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  created these works of art that depicted those stories that people had just created.
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  So this wasn't none of this has ever happened, of course, but it
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  made for great storytelling, and so people are at least a captivating storytelling,
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  and so people were interested in it, and so they made you know,
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  these artists made a living by depicting those sorts of things. And to that
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  point, I mean, like how many folklores were used to like keep people
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  out of certain places or to avoid certain groups. I mean that's like,
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  if you don't know what the boogeyman is, I mean, that's exactly what
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  that is. It's a tale. It's a folklore to like keep children in
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  line. So like this idea of storytelling, essentially coercive storytelling, is established
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  to do just that. It's set up to control certain behaviors and scare the
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  get out of people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this practice is old.
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  This whole idea has been going on for centuries. It is uninspired,
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  dusty nonsense at this point. This is practice of creating this fear. It
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  is how the dim witted gain attention in followers and money by attracting willing believers
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  into fearing some pretend outgroup, and then they get them to form an alliance
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  or they form an alliance with a righteous in group under the banner of heaven
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  and whatever group portrays themselves as the victims and heroes against their common enemy.
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  Then they get their followers to perform just incredible atrocities in the name of their
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  group and under the banner of their cause. Right. So, speaking of
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  some of these groups where we talk about like these these folks that are righteous,
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  they get together just to make some money. Here are some ads.
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  So we've been talking about the history of the practice of essentially creating fear of
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  another out group and sort of finishing up that part of the conversation. These
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  groups that are created to gather people to their cause and sort of get them
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  to go out and do their bidding. It keeps them, It keeps them
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  money flowing, it keeps them in power. They create the fear, they
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  recruit subjects, they take their money, they drum up some fevered belief and
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  whatever conspiracy they're peddling at the time, and then they go out and do
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  real harm and violence. To the accused perpetrators of these supposed crimes. These
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  are pretty much always innocent victims who get caught up in the crosshairs of that
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  group for one reason or another. In the case of the witch trials is
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  sometimes it was personal vendettas in many of these other cases, it's maybe someone
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  who they wanted to sort of take down because they represented success or wealth,
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  and other times it was the exact the opposite is because they represented poverty and
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  desperation, like whatever it might be. They pick their target and they go
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  after them, right, And so you kind of go back to this idea
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  that like thinking of this is like there's a group that's a there's a secret
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  cabal of people doing evil stuff, right, and there's also this this thing
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  that's happening, Like people are afraid and they identify people who might be these
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  evil doers. But if there were a secret caball of evil doers been done
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  destruction and chaos, that's pretty much how we would expect them to operate,
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  is like to go out and do these things that we're talking about, these
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  atrocities, but it's not happening the way that people think it is. So
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  we're sort of up to the point now to where we've gone through the history
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  of this. There are iterations of this. As we said, there was
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  like the Inquisition, there's the witch trials, there's the Romans accused the Christians,
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  the Christians accused the Jews, later the Christians accused the witches, et
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  cetera. It's all gone on. McCarthyism and the Red Scare of like communism
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  was kind of another preceding version of the Satanic panic and another one of these
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  moral panics. A little different. It was more political and governmental than anything,
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  but it was a similar thing of like the Communists doing all these terrible
• 16:08
  things. And I definitely saw some sources where people had at least a notion
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  that Communists were in some way harming babies and children. And you see the
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  same exact narrative in QAnon. It's a modern version of this, where so
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  much of the drain, the swamp rhetoric and all that stuff is coming from
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  this space where apparently celebrities and politicians are just drinking baby adrenal fluid from a
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  board of fetuses. I mean, that is a real thing that QAnon folks
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  believe, is that that celebrities are drinking baby adrenal fluid. Yeah, it's
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  and it's the exact I mean, they're the exact reiterated playbook as has always
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  been in play right, right, it is the same fear of the baby
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  killing and the satanic rituals and alignments, same thing. It is just the
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  newest version of that. And they didn't even change their message. They like
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  it, like it got slightly more scientific by referring to things that like people
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  know more about now, as you said, like with adrenal fluids, I
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  don't know that anybody knew what adrenal fluids were. Yeah, adrenochrome. Yeah,
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  like, yeah, you're right, they call it adrenochrome because it sounds
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  more official, right, Yeah, So they like adopted more modern terms,
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  but they're otherwise in the exact same playbook, point by point that was done
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  during all those other sort of moral panics and scares or again, you're just
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  trying to scare people into joining your cause, they give you your money,
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  they carry out atrocities under your direction, and it's really just gets to the
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  fact that fear is one of the most common ways people manipulate other people into
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  believing them, into doing things for them and to giving them money and believing
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  their cause. You fear of immigrants, fear of LGBTQ people, fear of
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  other races, fear of other religions, fear of being replaced, fear of
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  drugs. If you can convince people they're under threat, you can get their
• 18:00
  money and support. And that is just that is the way that they have
• 18:03
  frequently commonly operated, right And you might be listening to this and going like,
• 18:07
  well, I'm not as susceptible to that, But if you were somebody
• 18:10
  who participated in the DARE program who felt the rising panic after nine to eleven
• 18:15
  when it came to Muslim folks, I mean, all of those are examples
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  of real life things that have happened that have impacted, like, at least
• 18:21
  in the United States, I would say, yeah, like, these are
• 18:22
  things that really happened that we had experiences with that were very easy to get
• 18:26
  caught up in because of all of the fear mongering that goes with it.
• 18:30
  But we're not talking about any of that stuff right now. It's good that
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  it had the precedent. What we are talking about is the fear of Satan
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  himself, and so it's worth going into the very specific things that happened that
• 18:41
  led up to the Satanic Panic in the United States and why this became such
• 18:45
  a dangerous thing during the eighties. Yeah, and we haven't really defined it,
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  and that's because I think the definition comes from the description of it,
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  right. So I think as we describe, like what what happened during the
• 18:57
  Satanic Panic, that'll be the descript of what it is. And we can
• 19:00
  give a summary at the end. But it is worth understanding all the factors
• 19:03
  going on in the United States and around the world that were leading up to
• 19:07
  what was going to become the Satanic Panic. So remember how we talked about
• 19:11
  earlier in this conversation. Artists were cashing in on Satanic fears by using those
• 19:15
  stories to create depictions of arts. Stories, plays, books, etc.
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  Music were all things that were then inspired and they created those Those got portrayed
• 19:26
  in some religious institutions, some not, but either way, that was the
• 19:30
  way they cashed in. Okay, So that was the thing people did,
• 19:33
  is they used that to write these stories. There was this book called a
• 19:36
  Place called Dagon by Herbert Gorman in nineteen twenty seven. This is a fictional
• 19:41
  novel, a fictional novel about a cult in rural Massachusetts. Now, for
• 19:48
  those of you who the name Dagon sounds familiar, it's probably because this would
• 19:52
  be familiar to love Crafty and fans of HP Lovecraft. This book was influential
• 19:57
  and some of Lovecraft's later right where he did invoke the name of Daygone and
• 20:03
  often many of his stories took place in Massachusetts, right. I mean,
• 20:06
  even like later works by people who were influenced by Lovecraft take place in Massachusetts.
• 20:11
  I mean Lovecraft Country, I believe takes place in like deep Massachusetts.
• 20:15
  So I believe to say, yeah, such a good book. Anyway,
• 20:18
  this kind of stuff is like the beginning what you find of the kind of
• 20:22
  movements of counterculture, right, Hippies and drug use. Like that's an example
• 20:26
  of like a counterculture that people were afraid of. People were afraid of Hippies
• 20:30
  that went from the hippies being peace loving to all of a sudden being the
• 20:32
  Charles Manson type of hippies that were like hurting people like that became like a
• 20:36
  fear mongering thing. Heavy metal is an example of like kind of pulling from
• 20:41
  a lot of this influence where the you know, you saw these tales of
• 20:45
  black robe groups, pentagrams, horns a preoccupation with the dead, and you
• 20:48
  see that kind of ongoing thing, the recurring theme among heavy metal, even
• 20:53
  though now it's a little bit more tongue in cheek. And you also saw
• 20:56
  the rise of atheism. So all of these things were happening around the same
• 21:00
  time, you know, or at least at least the time that we are
• 21:03
  talking about in the eighties, where you know, all this kind of the
• 21:07
  artists that are pulling from the influences and doing that. Leading up to the
• 21:10
  eighties, you had the hippies, you had drug use, you had the
• 21:12
  kind of disenfranchisement of that group. You had heavy metals starting to take the
• 21:15
  rise, and you started to see these rise in atheism. So it just
• 21:18
  made sense that like evil was everywhere. Yeah, it really did. It
• 21:22
  was exactly that it was starting. It was just it looked like the illusion
• 21:27
  of the idea of this like insulated nuclear family was deteriorating rapidly with the rise
• 21:36
  of counterculture. Yeah, you also had other things that were going on,
• 21:38
  like you had Aleister Crowley's Black Masses of the nineteen twenties in London. We
• 21:42
  talked a little bit about black magic and Alistair Crowley in our Left hand Path
• 21:47
  Magic episode, you had Anton Levey's similarly performative Church of Satan that he started
• 21:52
  in San Francisco. You also had simultaneously a rise in religious fervor that was
• 22:00
  going on that was partially in response to the counter culture, the existence of
• 22:04
  the Black Masses and Satanic the Church of Satan in San Francisco. Like,
• 22:08
  there's all these things that were going on here too, right, And then
• 22:12
  on top of that, the rise of toxic conservative ideology and the emphasis on
• 22:15
  that nuclear family really kind of pushed things into this space. But on top
• 22:21
  of that, you had the country going into a recession, women going to
• 22:25
  work, they were leaving children with babysitters. Again, this is specific to
• 22:29
  a period of time in the United States where women were considered homemakers. They
• 22:33
  weren't supposed to be career people. They were supposed to stay home, take
• 22:36
  care of the kids, do all that stuff. Like terrible time for women
• 22:38
  just to kind of like be clear about that. And so the idea of
• 22:42
  kind of going to work made women feel guilty about leaving their kids behind,
• 22:47
  leaving them with babysitters, fearing what might happen to them, Fearing that they
• 22:51
  might be failing to protect their children from other people and those dangers of society
• 22:56
  because they're leaving them with babysitters. I mean, there's a lot of kind
• 22:57
  of like general some general fears around just kind of leaving your kids at home,
• 23:03
  Yeah, and guilt around it because they were supposed to be protecting them
• 23:06
  and they're sort of just trying to learn to trust this brand new system.
• 23:11
  More widespread in that way. So yeah, absolutely, there was also just
• 23:15
  a general fear about the welfare of children. And part of what was going
• 23:18
  on here is that there was for a long time, the idea of sexual
• 23:25
  abuse towards kids was something that wasn't really discussed. Right Again, the whole
• 23:30
  I mean, all of this idea of like this nuclear family and like ever,
• 23:33
  you know, people pull themselves up by their bootstraps and like most people
• 23:37
  are this sort of fit into this cookie cutter life was eroding because that was
• 23:42
  never how things really were, Like that was kind of how it was being
• 23:47
  spun. But that meant that people were not actually talking about the sexual abuse
• 23:51
  that was happening to children. And now in the seventies and eighty, mostly
• 23:53
  the seventies, there was a rise in discussion acknowledging that sexual abuse did happen
• 23:59
  towards children. And this is after many years of denying that it happened,
• 24:03
  or underplane that it happened, saying that it didn't happen, all of that
• 24:07
  sort of thing, and now they're sort of saying, like, actually,
• 24:08
  this is happening, it has happened. We need to acknowledge that that's the
• 24:14
  case, because it's a problem, right, And so then journalists started looking
• 24:17
  for corroborating reports. They started accepting anything that confirmed their bias, which is
• 24:21
  an issue of journalistic integrity. But what they were doing was they were tapping
• 24:23
  into this particular nervousness associated with these rapid changes in culture. They were leaning
• 24:30
  and praying on things like the guilt of leaving your kids behind, the discussions
• 24:34
  of your kids could be in danger. And at the time too, remember
• 24:37
  leading up to the eighties, we're talking late sixties seventies, where there is
• 24:41
  a huge amount of serial killers going on, and like these violent crimes that
• 24:48
  are happening, like most famous serial killers are from the sixties through the eighties
• 24:52
  in the United States at least, right absolutely, and so in the seventies
• 24:55
  there's a lot of fear around this, and especially people like I believe it
• 24:57
  was Richard Ramirez who was like leaning heavily into like like Satan is making me
• 25:03
  do this, and he was like particularly he was known for having particularly gruesome
• 25:07
  crime scenes. Yeah, the news picked that up and was like, oh,
• 25:10
  like this guy loves Satan and look what he's doing, and so all
• 25:12
  of these things like kind of this this nervousness, this fear, this uneasiness,
• 25:17
  I guess, and the culture made it ripe for this kind of growth
• 25:22
  in a type of panic to kind of get back to those more conservative,
• 25:25
  simple roots. There was a basic build up of moral panic going on.
• 25:30
  And another example of this, as I mentioned though, there was this general
• 25:33
  fear of anything drug related. Was you started having the drug wars, and
• 25:36
  there's that whole play called Reefer Madness, which was essentially a just that crazy
• 25:42
  depiction of what someone might do if they got HI. Yeah, I mean,
• 25:45
  it's various stories, it's completely ridiculous, But like that was just an
• 25:48
  example a symptom, if you will, of the general moral panic that was
• 25:52
  building. Right, and then the book Michelle Remembers the true story of a
• 25:56
  year long contest between Innocence and Evil as published in nineteen eighty to just kick
• 26:02
  it off, great, great time in the world. Yeah, this book
• 26:04
  was written by Canadian psychologist Lawrence Pasterer and his patient who was the subject of
• 26:10
  the book, Michelle Smith, who went on to become his wife. We
• 26:14
  don't need to unpack ethics codes there, but like, I don't know,
• 26:17
  that's probably not a good thing. Yeah, the conflict is pretty obvious.
• 26:22
  Yeah, it's pretty pretty clear. Now. The book outlines Michelle's SRA,
• 26:26
  which was a repressed memory recovered through Pasder's therapy, which details Michelle suffering an
• 26:33
  abuse at the hands of a Satanic cult during the nineteen fifties. So that's
• 26:37
  what the book is, kind of a hair and tale of that. Yeah,
• 26:41
  and I realize now we haven't actually stated SRA stands for Satanic ritualistic abuse
• 26:47
  or Satanic ritual abuse. That was a term that gets thrown around a lot
• 26:51
  during the Satanic panic. Now, yes, again, going back to this
• 26:53
  book, Michelle remembers and they're sort of claiming that she had been abused by
• 26:56
  the Satanic cults. Of course, this book comes out and the claims were
• 27:00
  immediately discredited. They were debunked. They were shown to be completely fraudulent.
• 27:04
  But because this was such a thrilling, enticing book at the height of the
• 27:08
  beginning of a moral panic, it didn't matter. Damage was done. The
• 27:12
  book was a best seller and an absolutely ignited a fuse in the festering heap
• 27:18
  of toxic bullshit that had been building for years, resulting in an explosion of
• 27:22
  full blown panic among American families fearing for the children's safety. Right, I
• 27:26
  mean, if you lack critical thinking skills, then this is the scariest tale
• 27:30
  of all. Right, Yeah, But the fact that it was like kind
• 27:33
  of debunked and then people still believe it is not something that is foreign to
• 27:37
  us today in twenty twenty three, unfortunately, not an unfortunate problem that we
• 27:41
  run into. But as the inferno of insanity increased, it was helped along
• 27:45
  by questioning strategies of police, like those folks that were kind of questioning and
• 27:49
  pressuring people, other authority that coerced confessions, church groups, organizing groups of
• 27:55
  vigilant parents to avenge the unclaimed slain and missing children. Unfamiliar it sounds like
• 28:00
  something like Moms for Liberties would do, which those groups, those folks,
• 28:04
  those people that were like taking children and like slaying them and all that did
• 28:07
  not exist, not in the way that they were describing it well, and
• 28:10
  in the missing children didn't exist. There's like nobody's filing missing children's report and
• 28:14
  they're out there looking for missing children, right right exactly. That's that's also
• 28:18
  a thing. And then the unchecked credulity of the media. So this was
• 28:22
  all a problem. In May nineteen ninety five, Twenty twenty hosts Hugh Downs
• 28:25
  opened a segment on double Warship with the line quote, police have been skeptical
• 28:29
  when investigating these acts, just as we are in reporting them. But there's
• 28:33
  no question that something is going on out there, and that sufficient reason for
• 28:36
  twenty twenty to look into it end quote, and then went on to describe
• 28:38
  ritualistic animal mutilations, satanic graffiti, and satanic rock music with hidden demonic black
• 28:45
  mass messages. That sounds really irresponsible, by the way, right. In
• 28:48
  nineteen eighty eight, NBC's Heraldo Rivera famously you know, discredited in a lot
• 28:53
  of his journalistic endeavors, right, not a great reporter, more like a
• 28:57
  no Charlotte and if you will, But to an audience of more than twenty
• 29:02
  million households, described gruesome crimes, showed child testimony of abuse, and interviewed
• 29:07
  Ozzy Osbourne, which I cannot I didn't watch that interview, but watching Ozzy
• 29:11
  Osbourne interviews is a fascinating exercise. Yeah, totally. So. Yeah,
• 29:18
  there's there's just everyone sort of taking at face value whatever ideas, whatever fear,
• 29:23
  whatever panic, whatever is being said. They're like that, you know,
• 29:27
  there's definitely something going on here, Like, that's just not something that
• 29:32
  you should say when there's not definitely something going on, you know, right,
• 29:36
  fact check yourself a little bit, please. I mean, I think
• 29:38
  at the end of the day, it's really important to remember that just taking
• 29:41
  a story and running with it without And that's not to say that like child
• 29:45
  abuse wasn't happening. That's not to say that like children weren't going missing.
• 29:48
  They absolutely were, but in the context of Satanic rituals and the things that
• 29:53
  they are describing here, not at all. Like for the same reason there's
• 29:56
  never been poison in your in you're candy from halliwe and given what we understand
• 30:00
  now about some of the abuse children actually did suffer, for example, at
• 30:04
  the hands of priests, it was very well documented some parents, there was
• 30:10
  some amount of actual perpetrator pointing the finger to deflect attention away from themselves,
• 30:17
  like the people who were actually doing the abuse going out and screaming about the
• 30:21
  Satanic cults, because if people are out hunting for Satanic colts, not looking
• 30:25
  at the people who are doing the accusing. Right, this is also a
• 30:27
  similar practice during the witch trials. Again, and these people who were doing
• 30:32
  the actual abuse were not Satanic. Nope, in many instances they again belonged
• 30:36
  to religious institutions or they didn't, but they didn't belong to any kind of
• 30:41
  Satanic culture or ritual or group of any sort in that nature. So right,
• 30:45
  anyway, this episode is sponsored by you are listeners and our patron supporters
• 30:49
  and apparently these ads. Okay, so we've been building to the Satanic Panic
• 31:03
  sort of events as they took place. So let's go ahead and jump into
• 31:07
  some of the biggest allegations of the Satanic Panic. So remember that what we
• 31:12
  were talking about is kind of a manufactured fear as we go into this.
• 31:18
  Yes, so the mcmartin's preschool in California in nineteen eighty three teachers were accused
• 31:22
  of Satanic ritual abuse for SRA. One parent, Judy Johnson, told police
• 31:26
  that doctors told her that her son had been sodomized. Her son, two
• 31:30
  years old at the time, said that the teaching staff mister Ray, was
• 31:34
  responsible. Yep, Okay, there's too much here to dig into it for
• 31:40
  very long, but suffice it to say that the extent to which this was
• 31:42
  ever actually claimed by doctors is not totally known, and that there weren't any
• 31:48
  clear medical text or descriptions for how to tell whether or not you could look
• 31:52
  at someone and determine if they had been sexually abused at the time that this
• 31:56
  was going on. That's now much more well established now, but back then
• 32:00
  again, the fact that people were admitting that it happened ever, was just
• 32:02
  coming to light, and so there wasn't a lot of clear guidelines, and
• 32:07
  so there was some looking at this and being like, I don't know sure.
• 32:10
  If you think that looks weird, then okay, we agree. What's
• 32:14
  sort of how it when? Right, So she put out the accusation.
• 32:15
  Now the police are like, oh my god, we need to get information,
• 32:20
  and so they sent two hundred letters out to different families specifically saying has
• 32:25
  your child suffered at the hands of mister Ray, the accused, and this
• 32:30
  obviously drastically tainted the investigation before they even started interviewing people like it was basically
• 32:37
  they screwed up permanently in an unrecoverable way. And that specific act I believe
• 32:44
  is now actually taught of a This is what not to do when you're doing
• 32:46
  an investigation. If anybody here is interested in looking at all of the times
• 32:51
  and all of the major things that the police forces have done to mess up
• 32:53
  investigations, you would be shocked at how often it happens. Yeah, it
• 32:58
  is astounding. How many people could have been caught or you know, arrested
• 33:02
  or charged had you know, these forces done you know, any sort of
• 33:06
  like logical detective work. It's real bad. So the other school students were
• 33:10
  taken to the Children's Institute International, where their videotapes quote unquote confessions show how
• 33:15
  wildly inappropriate and misleading the interrogations were. Social worker Kee MacFarlane asked the children
• 33:21
  leading questions such as this quote do you remember the naked pictures? The children
• 33:24
  were lied to and told other children had already confessed to their yucky secrets.
• 33:29
  So the interrogated child needed to speak up to, and they were ridiculed if
• 33:32
  they didn't comply with and agree with the allegations, agreed to the allegations at
• 33:37
  least, and McFarlane at one point called a child a scaredy cat because he
• 33:40
  denied the allegations of abuse. God, that is horrible. Yeah, So
• 33:45
  this social worker was like really pushing them to say that stuff happened. It's
• 33:50
  like basically like like I said, like without giving any context, not just
• 33:52
  not just asking what happens, tell me about what has gone on there.
• 33:57
  It was like, tell me about this specif bad thing that happened, right,
• 34:01
  and then the kids could elaborate on it and then try and coerce them,
• 34:04
  saying like, oh, other kids have already confessed, so you need
• 34:07
  to confess too. And then there was the like if you saying like this
• 34:10
  is a thing that happened, the kid's like, I don't remember that,
• 34:13
  and they're like you're just lying. You're just trying to you know, you're
• 34:15
  being a scaredy cat like trying to like coerce them, like wildly, wildly
• 34:21
  inappropriate. But eventually, because of this, with McFarlane's heavy handed influence,
• 34:25
  children did come up with stories. They came up with stories of being fondled,
• 34:30
  being quote unquote naked movie stars, of being abused in secret underground tunnels.
• 34:36
  And because these are kids who don't understand what's going on, who are
• 34:38
  essentially just trying to, you know, please the interviewee at this case.
• 34:43
  In this case, they told them that there were teachers who could fly.
• 34:46
  They witnessed the sacrifice of small animals. They witnessed a goat man chimera,
• 34:52
  so some person who was half person half goat. They witnessed a baby being
• 34:55
  sacrificed. They said they were taken to a graveyard to observe a mutal,
• 35:00
  a corpse being exhumed. They had children being dressed as witches, and then
• 35:04
  those children floating up into the air and flying, Like these are the kind
• 35:07
  of things that you get out of these confessions. How do you take any
• 35:12
  of that seriously? Right? Well, and also too, I mean,
• 35:15
  having kids myself, for sure, they're not going to keep that secret,
• 35:19
  right, Like, there's no way that all of those kids kept that secret
• 35:22
  that for that long. Like, and what I mean by that is,
• 35:24
  I'm not talking about secrets of abuse and stuff. What I'm talking about is
• 35:28
  like if my son was in a preschool and went on a field trip to
• 35:31
  a graveyard. For sure, he would tell me that he went to a
• 35:36
  graveyard. He would let something slip somewhere, Yeah, exactly. He would
• 35:39
  have to be interrogated to find that information out. So unfortunately, several defendants
• 35:45
  were identified and a trial asset until nineteen ninety. This was a seven year
• 35:49
  trial and angry, terrified, vigilante parents and police raided the school and dug
• 35:53
  underneath it looking for tunnels and evidence of wrongdoing. Yes, what did they
• 35:59
  find? Not tunnels because there were no tunnels. No, there was no
• 36:04
  evidence of pornography anywhere. There were no photos or videos, there were no
• 36:07
  like just missing pieces of underwear that were recovered, no blood, no animal
• 36:12
  bones from slaughter, no ash from burn pits, no missing children presumably sacrificed
• 36:17
  or cannibalized, and no evidence of cult activity of any sort. Now,
• 36:22
  some out there will assert that the evidence was simply destroyed, but there's really
• 36:28
  no reason to believe that it was destroyed and also that thoroughly like, that's
• 36:34
  just there's so much evidence for that there would have been something left. Yeah,
• 36:37
  there's just absolutely none whatsoever that's left anywhere, right, and the parents
• 36:42
  in the quote unquote advocates shouted their slogan quote believe the children on the street
• 36:46
  corners and outside of the court proceedings, even in the face of no evidence
• 36:50
  at all. Yeah. So, eventually the charges were dropped against almost everyone
• 36:55
  except Ray, mister Ray and his mother. Single important to note Judy Johnson,
• 37:01
  the mother who kicked off the whole thing. As you recall, she
• 37:04
  was like, you know, took her son to doctors and told them that
• 37:07
  he'd been abused. They went ahead and confirmed this. She accused the school
• 37:09
  of doing it. She was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, although the defense
• 37:15
  was not made aware of this in time to actually use it during the trial.
• 37:19
  Right. So, the jury was deadlocked and no conviction was brought.
• 37:22
  Under pressure from parents, the prosecution tried again, and again the jury was
• 37:27
  deadlocked, and the judge declared that they would not be tried again. So,
• 37:30
  seven years, fifteen million dollars later, this case still holds the record
• 37:36
  for the country's longest and most expensive criminal trial, which is just absurd.
• 37:42
  Yeah, like just thinking of that, Like, they wasted fifteen million dollars
• 37:45
  for what for? Ridiculous magical thinking nonsense. Right, that is so much
• 37:52
  time and lives ruined and trauma inflicted is a result of the interrogations and not
• 37:59
  because of anything that actually happened right at that school. And so the mc
• 38:02
  martins are just one of the most famous cases of the Satanic panic, but
• 38:07
  there were actually hundreds of others, and we'll outline just a couple of sort
• 38:10
  of again major things that happened that it's possible, you know, our listeners
• 38:16
  may or may not have heard of. But I've found some of these interesting
• 38:19
  and at least thought provoking. I think it's worth talking about this because it's
• 38:22
  definitely about the impact that this kind of cultural phenomenon had. Right. So,
• 38:28
  in nineteen eighty five, leaflets began mysteriously circulating that accused the then Procter
• 38:31
  and Gamble today simply known as PNG, as being a Satanic organization. The
• 38:37
  leaflet alleged that their logo of a bearded man looking at thirteen stars was a
• 38:42
  Satanic symbol there at the time, one hundred and eight year old logo.
• 38:45
  And if you see a logo, it looks like just the side of a
• 38:49
  coin. It's a bearded man looking to the left, and there are thirteen
• 38:52
  stars that look like they formed some type of constellation. Well, and they
• 38:55
  were supposed to represent the thirteen original colonies. Was all that? That was
• 38:59
  so right? And it was old like at the time that they did this,
• 39:01
  this was already over one hundred years old. That's symbol of this company.
• 39:05
  So anyway, Procter and Gamble did some impressive damage control. At a
• 39:10
  press hearing, their vice president stated, quote, it's simply not true.
• 39:15
  We haven't the biggest idea how it started. All we know is people are
• 39:17
  believing it. And do you know how hard it is to fight a rumor?
• 39:21
  End quote? And it makes a good point like, once someone floats
• 39:24
  ideas like this out there, it's extremely difficult to do anything about because it
• 39:29
  takes no time at all to start a false rumor. It takes a lot
• 39:34
  of time to debunk it. And people know this. That's why you get
• 39:37
  people who lie and flood out these nonsensical conspiracy ideas because there's no there's no
• 39:45
  limit to how many you can say, and people just gobble it up and
• 39:49
  doing damage control takes a lot of time to deconstruct all the nonsense. Right,
• 39:53
  Absolutely, so P ANDNG sent representatives to church filed lawsuits and pursued court
• 39:59
  cases. One newspaper reported on PNG who sued a couple on Kansas for making
• 40:04
  malicious and libelist statements and called for boycott, and the couple was calling for
• 40:07
  a boycott on PNG products. Turns out the couple was running a competing consumer
• 40:12
  goods company, so maybe they had a vested interest in PNG not doing well.
• 40:16
  And we don't know if they started the leaflets, but they definitely tried
• 40:21
  to capitalize on the momentum because again, it did well for them financially.
• 40:24
  So it's possible that part of the campaign that started against them was done by
• 40:29
  some rival people or groups of people or something like that. Corporate espionage.
• 40:34
  Yeah, now there's more. In the late sixties and seventies, there was
• 40:37
  also some rise and panic around the idea of aliens and UFOs and that sort
• 40:43
  of thing. It's your episode about that from last year. As well as
• 40:45
  as part of this were these cattle mutilations, which many people will likely have
• 40:50
  heard of now in Minnesota, there were two prisoners who tipped off investigators that
• 40:54
  the mutilations were part of a satanic ritual of a group of hell oriented quote
• 41:01
  unquote hell oriented biker cult gang people and the hell oriented might be my favorite
• 41:12
  adjective ever. Right, that's pretty good. All right, So here's the
• 41:16
  result of what happened, because these prisoners told the investigators in Minnesota about the
• 41:22
  hell oriented biker cult. First of all, there was a Satan themed biker
• 41:27
  gang like that actually did exist, or at least they sort of. They
• 41:30
  made logos to that effect and maybe even called themselves like Satan's Crew or something
• 41:35
  like that, but there was no evidence at all that they actually participated in
• 41:38
  any cattle mutilation, so any charges that were leveled were dropped, many of
• 41:43
  them. The investigations just petered out and there was no further follow up on
• 41:46
  it. Another is that the two prisoners asked to be moved to different jails
• 41:52
  because they feared retribution for ratting out the people of this biker gang. And
• 41:57
  the third thing is both prisoners escaped from their new prison signments once they moved,
• 42:01
  so I can imagine what their motives were. Yeah, that sounds about
• 42:05
  right. You know, I'm reading a book right now on Hell's Angels,
• 42:07
  and some biker names are so dorky, like, you know, it's like
• 42:10
  Satan's buddies, and I don't know biker pals, but like so every now
• 42:14
  and again Hell's Angels will come up and it's like they were kind of scary,
• 42:16
  but not to this level that people talked to them about totally. All
• 42:21
  right, So mike Warnikey, this guy he's a whole thing, is he
• 42:24
  is? He just a whole thing. I was reading about him. I
• 42:28
  was like, God, he might be in a whole episode unto himself,
• 42:30
  because it is uh Man, such a strange somehow. He's like if Larry
• 42:36
  the Cable Guy were worse. Yeah, honestly, Like that says a great
• 42:40
  way to put in. So anyway, this guy had found great success as
• 42:44
  a Christian comedian, which I think it's really funny putting those two things together.
• 42:49
  But it also saw that the Satanic panic was an opportunity to cash in,
• 42:52
  and so he claimed he had been a high ranking official in the Satanic
• 42:54
  Church before finding his way to Jesus. He claimed that the Cattle Mutilations were
• 42:59
  Satanists checking off their grocery list in preparation for the Sabbath, and of course
• 43:02
  it was later revealed they had never been affiliated with any Satanic organization and fabricated
• 43:07
  everything about his claims about Satanists and awing his involvement and all that. But
• 43:12
  the damage was done. People blonded onto his stuff, and he had books
• 43:15
  and specials and all kinds of things that sold really well. I made a
• 43:19
  lot of money over this, exactly. Yeah, made a lot of money,
• 43:22
  all right. In nineteen ninety two, Francis and Dan Keller, who
• 43:27
  ran in Texas daycare, were accused of abusing children by having, among other
• 43:31
  things, a parent peck at their private parts, as well as sacrificing baby
• 43:37
  tigers in Satanic rituals. This is incredibly specific. Yeah, I'm imagining they
• 43:42
  went to a zoo at some point with the kids and then that came out
• 43:45
  shortly after something. But anyway, so here's what happened in this case.
• 43:49
  So they were accused of this. They served twenty one years of a forty
• 43:53
  eight year sentence, and they were not released from prison until two thousand,
• 43:59
  third thirteen, just ten years ago, due to a lack of evidence and
• 44:04
  false testimony that was revealed to have been part of their court proceedings. Just
• 44:08
  twenty one years. Just twenty one years of your life. No big deal,
• 44:10
  you know, a little over two decades that you spend in prison.
• 44:14
  That is why that is drout. Now, no harm done. This ruined
• 44:16
  people's lives. Here's another example in nineteen ninety three, the West Memphis three,
• 44:21
  which in itself deserves its own episode. But like, we're not a
• 44:23
  true we're not a true crime podcast either, so like we recommend going listen
• 44:28
  to some trudion. N Yeah, we're on our way. But if you're
• 44:30
  not familiar with this case, these three teenagers were accused of murdering another kid
• 44:34
  in a satanic ritual. These were like kind of goth metal head kids,
• 44:37
  and one of the kids that's like what the main kind of guy was known
• 44:42
  for being like really confrontational and really sarcastic, and because he didn't think there
• 44:45
  was enough evidence to charge them, he was like, man, this will
• 44:49
  be fine. I'll just be kind of this snot nosed kid. And they
• 44:51
  were sentenced to eighteen years. They went to prison for eighteen years before they
• 44:54
  were released in twenty eleven because of the public outcry and the lack of evidence
• 44:58
  and again fall testimony around that particular crime. Exactly right, And we'll talk
• 45:05
  a little bit more about this false testimony thing because there were so many people
• 45:07
  who confessed. There were so many people who were giving the first hand victim
• 45:12
  statement accounts as evidence that were entered into these courts, and part of why
• 45:16
  this went as far as it did. But the problem here is that like
• 45:21
  this, what comes with these fear based approaches to manipulating people in the rise
• 45:25
  of moral panics is that fear inspired reality with the seeds of sensationalized ideas planted
• 45:32
  and taking root. Some people took the suggestions of fear mongering as inspiration.
• 45:37
  As you mentioned earlier, Richard Ramirez, who is also known as the Nightstalker,
• 45:40
  frequently invoked the name of Satan. Right. The Manson family cult,
• 45:45
  while not a Satanic cult, smacked of the fear of Satanic cults, and
• 45:50
  many of them were accused of being a Satanic cult, which is actually kind
• 45:52
  of ironic because Manson called himself Jesus Christ at one point, right, and
• 45:57
  he listed his religion of Scientology at one point, although I don't think he
• 46:00
  was ever a due paying member of the Church of Scientology. I don't think
• 46:05
  he had money, not a lot. I mean, like yeah, like
• 46:07
  we mentioned before, he tried to pay off his parole officers with monopoly money,
• 46:10
  so he's not like, I don't think he had the funds. Yeah,
• 46:15
  and there are other examples too. But like the fear of this panic
• 46:17
  did inspire some people to go out and do some terrible things, right,
• 46:21
  And if fear is going to inspire you to do anything, it could be
• 46:23
  to listen to these ads. Okay. The major thing to sort of end
• 46:36
  on here is we were talking about is there was so much of what came
• 46:37
  out of this that was like from first witness account testimony, and it's worth
• 46:44
  asking. I mean, obviously there were these situations we saw where people were
• 46:47
  being directly misled into believing things that had happened to them that didn't happen to
• 46:52
  them, Right, But a not insignificant chunk of this came from this practice
• 46:58
  of recovering repress memories, or this whole repressed memory or recovered memory therapy movement
• 47:04
  that took place that overlapped with a lot of what was going on here.
• 47:07
  Yeah, I know we're going to unpack this, but I think the idea
• 47:10
  of a repressed memory is really fascinating because it just it assumes that you have
• 47:15
  like a locked cabinet in your brain that cannot be unlocked, like you've lost
• 47:20
  the key to it, Like it's there and you don't even know where the
• 47:23
  key is because you don't even know that cabinets there, and you like suddenly
• 47:25
  discover it and it's like, oh, here's all these pictures I ever got?
• 47:29
  Oh I found my will you know. Yeah. So, as previously
• 47:31
  stated, with some of the cases that have been since dismissed or commuted,
• 47:36
  there were a large amount of these false confessions, and this was because of
• 47:38
  their surge in this repressed memories thing we talked about that Michelle Remembers book from
• 47:44
  nineteen eighty, like that was real kind of like starting point for this thing
• 47:47
  to really kind of take hold. Yeah. So this was a large movement
• 47:52
  that spanned sort of the seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond. And the
• 47:55
  veracity of this is hazy because, as we discussed around section abuse that had
• 48:00
  been largely taboo and not spoken about until it started being spoken about in the
• 48:05
  seventies. So there was some real sexual abuse cases that were previously unknown that
• 48:09
  just kind of suddenly came to light. And so the sense of there being
• 48:14
  things that were hidden under the surface, and there was real the sense of
• 48:20
  those things being repressed memories. However, sort of capitalized on that to sell
• 48:25
  their idea of repressed memories as being a thing. So I think in order
• 48:30
  to understand this kind of discussion a little bit more, we need to know
• 48:35
  what the word veracity means. So veracity kind of in context, you can
• 48:42
  get that it has to do with the truth. Confirming to facts and being
• 48:45
  accurate is really all it means. Oh, I like that word. That's
• 48:47
  a veracity is a good word. It is a good word. Yeah,
• 48:51
  I like it. So this all seemed to give the impression that that thing,
• 48:54
  that event, had been forgotten and then suddenly remembered, And that is
• 48:59
  kind of the ct of this repressed memory thing. There's a whole cottage industry
• 49:04
  and litigation industry sprung up. It kind of just popped up into existence with
• 49:07
  the credulity granted to the recovered memory therapy. So this starts to pick up,
• 49:13
  This takes route, and now there's an entire big business around repress and
• 49:16
  memories. Therapists could coax people into forming actually traumatic memories of events that never
• 49:21
  took place, but patients believe that they did, which has got to be
• 49:24
  really confusing and kind of like jarring to find out that it actually didn't happen.
• 49:30
  Those memories frequently resulted in court trials and millions of dollars awarded the plaintiffs
• 49:34
  and their lawyers and expert testimony psychotherapists. So it's a real problem. Yeah,
• 49:38
  and well, and you got to imagine if you've convinced someone who didn't
• 49:42
  suffer trauma that they did suffer trauma, that this often resulted in then actual
• 49:47
  emotional trauma that they suffered because they're now living into the reality they have created
• 49:55
  about whatever trauma they believe that they experienced. They never actually experien but now
• 50:00
  they have the feeling that they did and that they were led to believe that
• 50:05
  they suffered. And in addition to that additional whiplash trauma, when it's later
• 50:10
  discovered that the whole thing was a complete sham and they weren't actually repressing those
• 50:15
  traumatic memories, right, Like, just that's a crazy emotional rollercoaster to be
• 50:19
  on, right, Absolutely, it is so sad. And I think that's
• 50:23
  why I kind of always go back to like looking at the evidence, looking
• 50:27
  what the research shows before I adopt a stance on something. In terms of
• 50:30
  like my practice, because there's no research to support any of that stuff,
• 50:36
  right, I mean, to the degree that the APA has largely positioned themselves
• 50:40
  against the idea of repressed memory. With a caveat that quote. Concerning the
• 50:45
  issue of recovered versus a pseudo memory, like many questions in science, the
• 50:50
  final answer is yet to be known, but most leaders in the field agree
• 50:53
  that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of a early childhood abuse
• 50:57
  that has been forgotten can be remembered later. However, these leaders also agree
• 51:01
  that it is possible to construct convincing pseudo memories for events that never occurred end
• 51:07
  quote. So it's basically what they're saying is it's more likely to construct a
• 51:10
  memory that never happened than to recover a memory that was that you had forgotten.
• 51:15
  Yeah, And generally speaking, it's well understood now in psychology that not
• 51:19
  only are we unlikely to suppress traumatic events, those are actually likely unfortunately memories
• 51:25
  that tend to stay with us long. Like more than almost anything else,
• 51:29
  they tend to be particularly sticky memories because of the nature of the trauma,
• 51:35
  like, we tend to hold on to that, and it shapes a lot
• 51:37
  of our experiences moving forward, Like I imagine that for some people, they
• 51:42
  would say, I wish I could forget this thing that happens to me,
• 51:45
  but they can't. Like, traumatic memories are actually much more likely to stick
• 51:47
  around more intensely because they're bad. And on top of that too, I
• 51:52
  mean, I think it's important to note that, like, trauma is very
• 51:55
  complex, and I think every person that experiences a certain trauma like has different
• 52:00
  experiences with that. But basically, like what we're saying is that while trauma
• 52:05
  itself is this really complex kind of unique thing and every individual has like different
• 52:08
  ways to cope and manage and work through it, this idea of repress memories
• 52:12
  is not a thing, not a thing in the way that it was used,
• 52:15
  and certainly not a thing in the way that it was weaponized against people
• 52:20
  through the lens of this satanic ritualistic stuff. And we've been needing to do
• 52:24
  I think, full unpacking of repressed memories by themselves and that whole concept.
• 52:29
  And so I think there's going to be people I read the you know,
• 52:31
  I see the YouTube comments, and people who extract one little piece of something
• 52:36
  we've said and extrapolate that into something that we completely didn't say or even allude
• 52:42
  to. Right, But if what you're hearing in this is that we're saying
• 52:45
  that people do not experience forgetting traumatic memories, that's not what we're saying.
• 52:52
  Obviously, forgetting happens for a variety of reasons. We've even done a whole
• 52:55
  episode on forgetting, and that's It's not to say that everyone will remember every
• 53:00
  traumatic thing that's ever happened to them. You very well might forget some things.
• 53:06
  Sure, The idea of a repress memory actually is this idea of like,
• 53:09
  our unconscious mind is pushing an explicit memory into an unattainable space so that
• 53:16
  it cannot cause us trauma. There is no evidence for that whatsoever. It
• 53:20
  doesn't make conceptual sense, doesn't make philosophical sense, it doesn't make realistic sense,
• 53:25
  it doesn't make common sense, and you can't there's no evidence for it
• 53:30
  anywhere. So like, although we can certainly help recover memories that have been
• 53:34
  lost due to forgetting, for various reasons that can happen. Things can be
• 53:37
  lost due to brain trauma, Things can be lost due to other circumstances et
• 53:42
  cetera, drug use, other traumas like there's various reasons that things might be
• 53:45
  forgotten and that those memories could potentially be recovered. The idea of our unconscious
• 53:52
  mind repressing a memory so it can't cause us further trauma does not make any
• 53:55
  sense, and I believe that that is antithetical to a scientist approach to understanding
• 54:00
  psychology and memory in general. I like it good point. Well, we
• 54:05
  should probably give everyone a little bit of a break from my tirades. You
• 54:08
  know, every once in a while you just need a palet cleanser from my
• 54:10
  voice. And that palate cleanser might be worse than my voice, which would
• 54:15
  be ads. Or maybe not, maybe my voice is perfectly soothing and enjoyable.
• 54:27
  Let's talk about another group of people that were explicitly affected by both satanic
• 54:31
  panic and explicitly the repressed recovered memory movement. Yes, so we are here
• 54:37
  to talk about the Ingram. So Paul Ingram was accused by his daughters of
• 54:40
  sexual abuse as part of satanic rituals, in which he was accused of raping
• 54:45
  his daughters hundreds of times, as well as beastiality and other other crimes.
• 54:50
  Their revelation came from recovered memory therapy. Okay, so going back to kind
• 54:53
  of the recovered memory stuff that that was the big business back then, Paul
• 54:57
  was also subjected to recovered memory therapy, to which he began to believe in
• 55:00
  and confess to these crimes. The mother was also later implicated. Okay,
• 55:06
  this is a very long, giant, complicated story with a well documented timeline
• 55:10
  we're not going to go into. So I'm going to try and sum it
• 55:13
  up as quickly as I can. First, the daughter's claims were both contradictory
• 55:16
  and inconsistence. They claimed things that literally could not have happened because one contradicted
• 55:22
  the other. And they also again there was never any evidence to back up
• 55:25
  any of the things that they said. They made claims about them being like
• 55:30
  in a force to participate in a group ORG type thing where they were videotaped.
• 55:34
  There was never any videotape. There's never any photographs. There's never any
• 55:37
  blood, Zeman hair, clothing, anything that indicated any of this. There's
• 55:42
  never fingerprints. They also, of course had other satanic rituals similar to the
• 55:45
  school that they claimed, where there was like bones and sacrifices and bestiality,
• 55:51
  but they never found bones, they never found animal remains, They never found
• 55:53
  paraphernalia, they never found any allusions to Satanic anything at all. Right,
• 55:58
  and this family was like they were a religious family. They were seen as
• 56:02
  being this exemplary archetype of the perfect, like a nuclear family, you know.
• 56:10
  The husband and wife, one employed. I think the mother was a
• 56:15
  homemaker, but I don't recall exactly. The father was like a deputy with
• 56:19
  the police. The kids did great in school, white picket fence, the
• 56:22
  whole nine yards. Everything was great. And then it comes out that like
• 56:25
  there was actually that they were secretly the Satanic group the whole time. So
• 56:29
  I think part of it was the contrast was alluring to people. But then
• 56:34
  because they were so caught off guard, Paul was eventually convinced he did these
• 56:38
  things and you can then confess to it. Right. Paul was eventually released
• 56:43
  in two thousand and three after serving his sentence. But the fact that he
• 56:46
  had to spend any time in jail for something that he very likely did not
• 56:50
  commit, any sort of crime he did not commit, I think is pretty
• 56:53
  telling of kind of the impact of this type of Satanic panic in this false
• 56:58
  memory, the repressed memory thing. Yeah, there's another thing that we have
• 57:00
  to talk about. It's called Don't Make Me Go Back Bomby a child's recollation
• 57:04
  of Satanic abuse, which I mean on the surface that is immediately like as
• 57:08
  a human being, that makes you scared for that child. If that were
• 57:13
  like, if you didn't look beyond what that title was. Yeah, but
• 57:16
  this book was a child's picture book depicting images of abuse and brutal sacrifice done
• 57:21
  during Satanic rituals. This was commonly found at therapists office and police stations and
• 57:25
  it was often used to help coke out description and confessions from the child victims.
• 57:30
  But it's often led to again false confessions because a lot of times in
• 57:36
  those discussions, these types of books, these types of questions that are asked
• 57:39
  during these tend to prime potential victims to answer a certain way and to please
• 57:45
  the investigators and whatnot. Yeah, it gives them like a thing to say
• 57:47
  when they didn't have something to say before. Right, And again like this
• 57:51
  wasn't based on anything, This wasn't like a real live account. It was
• 57:53
  like it was this totally non evidence based thing that nevertheless was being used as
• 58:00
  sort of a guide and handbook for people to investigate these When when there was
• 58:05
  no evidence, So it was just more problematic paraphernalia in the Satanic panic,
• 58:09
  right exactly. The other thing to consider is, like there were other things
• 58:13
  going on. So in nineteen seventy eight, there was the Jonestown massacre.
• 58:16
  Again wild story probably deserves its own full length episode. Over nine hundred people
• 58:22
  died in this massacre, three hundred of which were seventeen or younger. And
• 58:27
  this was a religious extremist group, not a Satanic religious extremist group, a
• 58:30
  Christian religious extremist group. So like, there were versions of this that were
• 58:36
  going on that were like there was no evidence of Satanic Panic happening, and
• 58:39
  there were actual children dying in these other extremist cults. We had talked about
• 58:44
  doing an episode on cults in general, and what you find is most of
• 58:47
  them come from a theistic like a place where the leader is either a child
• 58:52
  of God connected to God some version of God, right, never Satan,
• 58:57
  Like it's never it's never Satan that's leading the cult. Yeah, I think
• 59:01
  it actually kind of kicks us off nicely into our takcom point. I think
• 59:05
  if I were to describe the Satanic Panic, because we didn't, we sort
• 59:07
  of just talked about what happened during the Satanic Panic. It was a period
• 59:12
  of time during which heightened fear of these supposed Satanic cults resulted in people who
• 59:20
  were prosecuted and imprisoned for engaging these rituals. But there was never any evidence
• 59:25
  at all. So there was a ton of money and time and investigation spent
• 59:30
  looking into this, and as far as we can tell, there has never
• 59:35
  been any Satanic cult that has ever carried out ritualistic sacrifice, particularly of other
• 59:39
  humans ever in the world, as far as we know, Like it's that
• 59:44
  clear, Like that's where we're at with the evidence, is that there is
• 59:47
  no evidence that that has ever taken place. It just made me think that,
• 59:51
  like this is the kind of episode that reiterates why reading and critical thinking
• 59:58
  it's such an important skill to have totally, just because it's so easy to
• 1:00:02
  take something and run with it as like, especially when it's a scared tactic.
• 1:00:07
  I mean, a lot of the Satanic Panic kind of the core of
• 1:00:09
  it is something that's been done for centuries, and it's effectively an appeal to
• 1:00:15
  emotion. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's really ultimately what it comes down
• 1:00:19
  to. It's an appeal to emotion that drives people who without those critical thinking
• 1:00:22
  skills to go do things that they normally wouldn't do. Yeah. Right,
• 1:00:25
  they're accusing people of things that didn't happen because they are scared that something happened,
• 1:00:30
  or they're convinced something happened through this high falutin fear that they're experiencing.
• 1:00:36
  Absolutely, I don't have any other take on points anything else from you.
• 1:00:38
  The only thing I would say is that as you if you leave this episode
• 1:00:42
  and you feel like they are parallels with things that are happening today in twenty
• 1:00:45
  twenty three, you're right, absolutely, like the extremist group has selected an
• 1:00:50
  other group that is the target of vitriol and blame and all that stuff,
• 1:00:55
  and then you will find that that group that protests too much are typically the
• 1:01:00
  perpetrators. Exactly. Yeah, Yeah, the finger pointing often comes from the
• 1:01:04
  actual guilty party, because again, deflex attention away from themselves before there's suspicion
• 1:01:09
  cast on them, they can get suspicion casts on others. So yep,
• 1:01:13
  exactly. It is a dangerous gamble though. That's why drag queens are often
• 1:01:15
  targeted. That's why LBTTQ folks are targeted, and then you find out that
• 1:01:20
  the Catholic Church is actually the one that's doing most of the work. Not
• 1:01:27
  wrong, You're not wrong. The evidence is there. That's an objective that's
• 1:01:30
  an objective thing. I'm not saying that because of my personal belief. That
• 1:01:34
  is an actual objective thing that we're seeing. Yeah, I mean that's a
• 1:01:37
  I think that's part of it. Is Like if the people who are out
• 1:01:39
  there saying like we need to get rid of drag queens because of abuse to
• 1:01:42
  our children, I'm like, you're not only not protecting the children, you're
• 1:01:46
  making people feel safe when you haven't addressed the problem of times when children are
• 1:01:51
  actually a danger, and so you're actually making the danger more real for them.
• 1:01:55
  Like yep, drag queens are not hurting kids, but other people,
• 1:02:00
  but preachers are. Yeah, and you're not going after them. So like
• 1:02:02
  you anyway, that's a whole other episode. Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
• 1:02:07
  I don't have any more taking points. I'm gonna stop right there. We've
• 1:02:09
  haven't managed to avoid some politics up to this point, but we did so
• 1:02:14
  good. We found our way there. Well, we are going to recommend
• 1:02:17
  some things for you, as we always do it's our weekly recommendation list,
• 1:02:21
  not necessarily things that were from the last week, all though in this case
• 1:02:24
  they are. But first I'd like to acknowledge the people who help make this
• 1:02:28
  show happen, without whom we probably wouldn't be here. This is a group
• 1:02:30
  of Patreon people that we love. It is Mike, m Meghan, Leyla,
• 1:02:35
  Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia,
• 1:02:38
  Brian and Ashley. You guys are the best. Everyone else you may
• 1:02:42
  join that list, and we'd love to say your name too. So if
• 1:02:45
  you can whatever you can give, you get some bonuses by going over there.
• 1:02:47
  We appreciate you all. If you can also support us by simply leaving
• 1:02:50
  us a rating and review, subscribe, follow us on the very social media
• 1:02:53
  platforms. You can follow us on Spotify. We can get us there,
• 1:02:57
  you know, reach out and just tell a friend say something nice. Click
• 1:02:59
  five stars. You can pick up some merch at our merch story for so
• 1:03:01
  Inclined. We got mugs and old shirts and hats and all kinds of things.
• 1:03:06
  Yeah. Addition to that, my crew of incredibly talented, amazing people
• 1:03:09
  includes Justin who does our audio engineering. Emma Wilson, who is our social
• 1:03:14
  media coordinator, And of course, thank you so much today Shane for recording
• 1:03:16
  with me. Hey anytime, and I could do this without my listeners either.
• 1:03:21
  We appreciate you all. So, without further ado, let's go ahead
• 1:03:24
  and talk about our recommendations. Recommendations. I am recommending a movie. It
• 1:03:37
  is a sequel, so if you haven't checked out the first one, you
• 1:03:43
  might want to. The first movie is called Becky, which is a revenge
• 1:03:46
  movie. The way I've described it as is kind of like Home Alone,
• 1:03:51
  but if it were made rated R. The fatal things that happened to the
• 1:03:53
  people in that show that we're done for comedy actually killed people, and we're
• 1:03:58
  not done for comedy but instead for horror effect. Yeah, that's Becky.
• 1:04:01
  So the sequel is called Wrath of Becky, which follows our main character a
• 1:04:04
  few years later. It's fun, it's it's a really fun movie. They're
• 1:04:09
  relatively short, tidy, little hour twenty minute, hour thirty minute dish movies.
• 1:04:13
  I think they're streaming right now on Amazon Prime or some other video platform.
• 1:04:16
  You can find them out there if you look for him, but Becky
• 1:04:18
  and Wrath of Becky. If you're into violent revenge movies that are kind of
• 1:04:23
  sillying over the top, these are a fun way to go. I love
• 1:04:26
  stuff like that. I just love a good revenge movie. I think they're
• 1:04:28
  so fun. In particular, the main person who's exacting revenge is like a
• 1:04:32
  twelve year old girl. Even better, maybe as old as seventeen in the
• 1:04:35
  second one, but young. I like that. That's good, all right.
• 1:04:39
  So my recommendation this week is a Star Wars movie show thing lovely.
• 1:04:45
  I like Star Wars and I am a Star Wars dork, and so I
• 1:04:49
  was a little bit skeptical about this show in particular, even though I like
• 1:04:54
  Rosario Dawson. And that is a show called Ahsoka. It's an eight episode
• 1:05:00
  series, and so the cast is fantastic. Rossari Dawson plays Ahsokatano, who
• 1:05:04
  was if you're not familiar with Star Wars, lore is Anakin Skywalker's padawan,
• 1:05:10
  and so like she's trained directly by Darth Vader before he was Darth Vader.
• 1:05:14
  David Tennant plays a cyborgan or a robot in it, named Hugh Yang.
• 1:05:17
  And this is notably the last performance of Ray Stevenson before he passed away.
• 1:05:23
  Oh okay, and he plays a character named Baalon Skull who is like a
• 1:05:27
  kind of a dark Jedi, like a Knight's of Old type of thing.
• 1:05:30
  Every actor in this show is fantastic. Lars Michelson is Matt's Michelson's brothers in
• 1:05:38
  it as well, and he plays a really great character. Cool. Pyden
• 1:05:41
  Christensen comes back as Anakin Skywalker in some flashbacks. Nice. It is beautiful
• 1:05:46
  and it sets up so many cool storylines like they have to do with like
• 1:05:51
  witches and magic and zombies in the Star Wars world. It is so good.
• 1:05:57
  So anyway, I recommend everybody to go to see it. Just watch
• 1:05:59
  it wherever you can watch it. It's fantastic. All right. We have
• 1:06:01
  Wrath of Becky and Ahsoka for all of you who are wondering what we talked
• 1:06:04
  about. Wrath of Becka being a movie Asoka being the TV show. Yeah,
• 1:06:09
  I think that's all I got. Thank you so much for listening.
• 1:06:11
  If you would like to write in and tell us about your experiences with satanic
• 1:06:14
  panic. I asked around and like people who are like my parents' generation around
• 1:06:17
  the eighties, like they just had no memory of this whatsoever. But yeah,
• 1:06:21
  anyway, we'd love to hear. If you have something to say about
• 1:06:24
  this, you can email us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com. You
• 1:06:29
  can also reach out to us on the various social media platforms. We look
• 1:06:31
  forward to hearing from everyone about that. So you can also tell us about
• 1:06:34
  TV shows and movies that you're currently into. Revenge movies and Star Wars them
• 1:06:38
  TV shows. Yeah, you'd like to recommend look forward to hearing from everybody
• 1:06:42
  who has something to say. If you haven't reached out to us before,
• 1:06:44
  give it a shot. We're friendly, I want to talking to people,
• 1:06:46
  so yeah, of course, yeah, we love hearing from you. I
• 1:06:49
  think that's all. I got. Anything you need to add or that I
• 1:06:51
  forgot before we wrap up today, Shane, No, that covers it from
• 1:06:55
  me. All right, then this is Abraham, This is Shane. We're
• 1:06:57
  out see yea listening to Why we do what we do. You can learn
• 1:07:01
  more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks
• 1:07:09
  for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.