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The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organized abuse, or sadistic ritual abuse) starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and future wife), Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution. Nearly every aspect of the ritual abuse is controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonies of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers, therapists, and social workers who handled allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists, and clients in psychotherapy. The term satanic abuse was more common early on; this later became satanic ritual abuse and further secularized into simply ritual abuse. Over time, the accusations became more closely associated with dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder) and anti-government conspiracy theories. Initial interest arose via the publicity campaign for Pazder's 1980 book Michelle Remembers, and it was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by coverage of the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences as well as through talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers." A 1994 article in the New York Times claims that: "Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any allegations of organized cult abuse". History Origins Among the explanations of why the panic occurred when it did, or "took the shape that it did", include Three films that opened and ran near the beginning of the panic having to do with Satanism, namely Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976). According to scholar Joseph Laycock, patients hypnotized by therapists to recover memories of SRA, often "seemed to be recalling scenes from these films". The reaction against the surge of new religious movements (NRMs) in the 1960s due to both the immigration reform allowing missionaries for Asian religions, as well as new religions, (including the Church of Satan), arising from the counterculture of the baby boomer generation. Sometimes called the "cult wars" or "cult scare". The Tate–LaBianca murders committed by Charles Manson and his cult of "mostly lonely teenagers from broken homes" Mike Warnke's 1972 memoir The Satan Seller, Warnke claimed to have led a group of 1,500 Satanists that engaged in rape and human sacrifice before he converted to evangelical Christianity. A bestseller, that was praised by Moody Monthly and The Christian Century, it told of Warnke's leading a group of 1,500 Satanists in their campaign of rape and human sacrifice and his later conversion to evangelical Christianity. (Two decades later the book was debunked by an evangelical magazine Cornerstone.) Early history Allegations of horrific acts by outside groups, including cannibalism, child murder, torture, and incestuous orgies can place minorities in the role of the "Other", as well create a scapegoat for complex problems in times of social disruption. The SRA panic repeated many of the features of historical moral panics and conspiracy theories, such as the blood libel against Jews by Apion in the 30s CE, the wild rumors that led to the persecutions of early Christians in the Roman Empire, later allegations of Jewish rituals involving the killing of Christian babies and desecration of the Eucharist, and the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries. Torture and imprisonment were used by authority figures in order to coerce confessions from alleged Satanists, confessions that were later used to justify their executions. Records of these older allegations were linked by contemporary proponents in an effort to demonstrate that contemporary Satanic cults were part of an ancient conspiracy of evil, though ultimately no evidence of devil-worshiping cults existed in Europe at any time in its history. A more immediate precedent to the context of Satanic ritual abuse in the United States was McCarthyism in the 1950s. The underpinnings for the contemporary moral panic were found in a rise of five factors in the years leading up to the 1980s: the establishment of fundamentalist Christianity and the founding and political activism of the religious organization which was named the Moral Majority; the rise of the anti-cult movement which accused abusive cults of kidnapping and brainwashing children and teens; the appearance of the Church of Satan and other explicitly Satanist groups which added a kernel of truth to the existence of Satanic cults; the development of the social work or child protection field, and its struggle to have child sexual abuse recognized as a social problem and a serious crime; and the popularization of post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed memory, and the corresponding survivor movement. Michelle Remembers and the McMartin preschool trial Michelle Remembers, written by Canadians Michelle Smith and her husband, psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, was published in 1980. Now discredited, the book was written in the form of an autobiography, presenting the first modern claim that child abuse was linked to Satanic rituals. According to the “memoir”, at the age of five Michelle was tortured by her mother for days in “elabo.... Discover the Clienia popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Clienia books.