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The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s · Stuff You Should Know

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