Satanic panic

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 pertained to 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 Tate–LaBianca murders committed by cult members in the Manson Family which consisted of "mostly lonely teenagers from broken homes". 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 cannibalism 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. people accused of being witches were stated to be working for Satan and burned at the stake 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 "elaborate satanic rituals". As the torture reached a climax, a portal to hell opened and Satan himself appeared, only to be driven away by the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael. Explanations for a lack of any evidence of abuse on Michelle's body were that it had been miraculously removed by St. Mary. Not explained was testimony from Michelle's father and two sisters, contradicting the memoir, as well as a 1955/56 St. Margaret's School yearbook. The yearbook includes a photo taken in November 1955 showing Michelle attending school and appearing healthy, when according to Pazder's book Michelle spent that month imprisoned in a basement. On the basis of the book's success, Pazder developed a high media profile, gave lectures and training on SRA to law enforcement, and by September 1990 had acted as a consultant on more than 1,000 SRA cases, including the McMartin preschool trial. Prosecutors used Michelle Remembers as a guide when preparing cases against alleged Satanists. Michelle Remembers, along with other accounts portrayed as survivor stories, are suspected to have influenced later allegations of SRA, and the book has been suggested as a causal factor in the later epidemic of SRA allegations. The early 1980s, during the implementation of mandatory reporting laws, saw a large increase in child protection investigations in America, Britain, and other developed countries, along with a heightened public awareness of child abuse. The investigation of incest allegations in California was also changed, with cases led by social workers who used leading and coercive interviewing techniques that had been avoided by police investigators. Such changes in the prosecution of cases of alleged incest resulted in an increase in confessions by fathers in exchange for plea bargains. Shortly thereafter, some children in child protection cases began making allegations of horrific physical and sexual abuse by caregivers within organized rituals, claiming sexual abuse in Satanic rituals and the use of Satanic symbols. These cases garnered the label satanic ritual abuse both in the media and among professionals. Childhood memories of similar abuse began to appear in the psychotherapy sessions of adults. In 1983, charges were laid in the McMartin preschool trial, a major case in California, which received attention throughout the United States and contained allegations of satanic ritual abuse. The case caused tremendous polarization in how to interpret the available evidence. After three years of testimony, McMartin and Buckey were acquitted on 52 of 65 counts, and the jury was deadlocked on the remaining 13 charges against Buckey, with 11 of 13 jurors choosing not guilty. Buckey was re-charged and two years later released without conviction. Conspiracy theories In 1984, MacFarlane warned a congressional committee that children were being forced to engage in scatological behavior and watch bizarre rituals in which animals were being slaughtered. Shortly after, the United States Congress doubled its budget for child-protection programs. Psychiatrist Roland Summit delivered conferences in the wake of the McMartin trial and depicted the phenomenon as a conspiracy that involved anyone skeptical of the phenomenon. By 1986, social worker Carol Darling argued to a grand jury that the conspiracy reached the government. Her husband Brad Darling gave conference presentations about a Satanic conspiracy of great antiquity which he now believed was permeating American communities. In 1985, Patricia Pulling joined forces with psychiatrist Thomas Radecki, director of the National Coalition on Television Violence, to create B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). Pulling and B.A.D.D. saw role-playing games generally and Dungeons & Dragons specifically as Satanic cult recruitment tools, inducing youth to suicide, murder, and Satanic ritual abuse. Other alleged recruitment tools included heavy metal music, educators, child care centers, and television. In 1987, Geraldo Rivera produced a national television special on the alleged secret cults, claiming "Estimates are that there are over one million Satanists in [the United States and they are] linked in a highly organized, secretive network." Psychotherapists who were actively Christian advocated for the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID); soon after, accounts similar to Michelle Remembers began to appear, with some therapists believing the alter egos of some patients were the result of demonic possession. Clinicians, psychotherapists and social workers documented clients with alleged histories of SRA, though the claims of therapists were unsubstantiated beyond the testimonies of their clients. featuring a broad array of vague symptoms that were ultimately common, non-specific and subjective, purported to be capable of diagnosing SRA in most young children. • In 1987, writings on the phenomenon appeared in the United Kingdom along with incidents featuring broadly similar accusations such as the Cleveland child abuse scandal; allegations of SRA in Nottingham resulted in the "British McMartin", advised in part by the British journalist Tim Tate's work on the subject. • In 1989, San Francisco Police detective Sandi Gallant gave an interview with a newspaper in the United Kingdom. At the same time, several other therapists toured the country giving talks on SRA, and shortly thereafter SRA cases were reported in Orkney, Rochdale, London, and Nottingham. • In 1992, charges were laid in the Martensville satanic sex scandal; charges were overturned in 1995 on the grounds of improper interviewing of the children. • A wave of SRA accusations appeared in New Zealand in 1991, and in Norway in 1992. • In the mid-nineties in Egypt, tabloids such as Rose Al Youssef started publishing articles about an alleged subculture of Satan worshipping and rituals spreading among the teens and youth of the middle and upper-middle class and associating it with heavy metal music, bands, symbolism, and graffiti. The original article published on 11 November 1996 was written by Abdallah Kamal, but soon other writers and journalists, including Adel Hammuda and others. The public intrigue eventually led to the security apparatus raiding the homes of some young people in the music scene and their friends, confiscating posts and tapes and CDs, forcing short hairstyles on them and subjecting them to religious reformation sessions, before releasing them, but the scare continued to be stirred from time to time until the mid-2000s, and became books and talk shows. • In 1998, Jean LaFontaine produced a book indicating allegations of SRA in the United Kingdom were sparked by investigations supervised by social workers who had taken SRA seminars in the United States. • In 2021 and 2022, two consecutive reports by Swiss Television journalists Ilona Stämpfli and presented evidence that conspiracy theories closely related to the Satanic panic were still held by various groups and individuals in Switzerland, among them teachers, psychotherapists, high-ranking police officers, and a senior physician of Clienia, the largest private psychiatric clinic group in Switzerland. As a reaction to the first documentary, two of the interviewed teachers as well as the senior physician were let go by their employers. Skepticism, rejection, and contemporary persistence Media coverage of SRA began to turn negative by 1987, and the "panic" ended between 1992 and 1995. The release of the HBO made-for-TV movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial in 1995 re-cast Ray Buckey as a victim of overzealous prosecution rather than an abusive predator, and marked a watershed change in public perceptions of satanic ritual abuse accusations. In 1995, Geraldo Rivera issued an apology for his 1987 television special which had focused on the alleged cults. In 1996 astrophysicist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan devoted an entire chapter of his final book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark to a critique of claims of recovered memories of alien abductions and satanic ritual abuse, citing material from the newsletter of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. By 2003, allegations of ritual abuse were met with great skepticism, and belief in SRA was no longer considered mainstream in professional circles; although the sexual abuse of children was and is a real and serious problem, allegations of SRA were essentially false. Reasons for the collapse of the phenomenon include the failure of criminal prosecutions against alleged abusers, a growing number of scholars, officials and reporters questioning the reality of the accusations, and a variety of successful lawsuits against mental health professionals. Some feminist critics of the SRA diagnoses maintained that, in the course of attempting to purge society of evil, the panic of the 1980s and 1990s obscured actual child-abuse issues, a concern echoed by author Gary Clapton. In England, the SRA panic diverted resources and attention away from proven abuse cases; this resulted in a "hierarchy" of abuse in which SRA was the most serious form, physical and sexual abuse being minimized and/or marginalized, and "mere" physical abuse no longer worthy of intervention. As criticism of SRA investigations increased, the focus by social workers on SRA resulted in a large loss of credibility to the profession. SRA, with its sensational narrative of many victims abused by many victimizers, ended up robbing the far-more-common and proven issue of incest against children of much of its societal significance. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect devised the term religious abuse to describe exorcism, poisoning, and drowning of children in non-satanic religious settings in order to avoid confusion with SRA. Some groups still believe there is credence to allegations of SRA and continue to discuss the topic. Publications by Cathy O'Brien claiming SRA was the result of government programs (specifically the Central Intelligence Agency's Project MKULTRA) to produce Manchurian candidate-style mind control in young children were picked up by conspiracy theorists, linking belief in SRA with claims of government conspiracies. A Salt Lake City therapist, Barbara Snow, was put on probation in 2008 for planting false memories of satanic abuse in patients. One notable client of hers was Teal Swan. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), a professional nonprofit organization, is known for its advocacy of contemporary narratives surrounding alleged satanic conspiracies. Historically, the organization has convened annual conference presentations dedicated to the exploration and discussion of these topics. The far-right conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon, which originated on 4chan in 2017, has adopted many of the tropes of SRA and Satanic Panic. Instead of daycare centers being the center of abuse, however, liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking government officials are portrayed as a child-abusing cabal of Satanists. ==Definitions==

The term satanic ritual abuse is used to describe different behaviors, actions and allegations that lie between extremes of definitions. In 1988, a nationwide study of sexual abuse in US day care agencies, led by David Finkelhor, divided "ritual abuse" allegations into three categories—cult-based ritualism in which the abuse had a spiritual or social goal for the perpetrators, pseudo-ritualism in which the goal was sexual gratification and the rituals were used to frighten or intimidate victims, and psychopathological ritualism in which the rituals were due to mental disorders. Subsequent investigators have expanded on these definitions and also pointed to a fourth alleged type of Satanic ritual abuse, in which petty crimes with ambiguous meaning (such as graffiti or vandalism) generally committed by teenagers were attributed to the actions of Satanic cults. By the early 1990s, the phrase "Satanic ritual abuse" was featured in media coverage of ritualistic abuse but its use decreased among professionals in favor of more nuanced terms such as multi-dimensional child sex rings, ritual/ritualistic abuse, organized abuse or sadistic abuse, From a law enforcement perspective, an intergenerational conspiracy dedicated to ritual sacrifice whose members remain completely silent, make no mistakes and leave no physical evidence is unlikely; cases of what the media incorrectly perceived as actual cult sacrifices (such as the 1989 case of Adolfo Constanzo) have supported this idea. This lack of a single definition, as well as confusion between the meanings of the term ritual (religious versus psychological) allowed a wide range of allegations and evidence to be claimed as a demonstration of the reality of SRA allegations, irrespective of which "definition" the evidence supported. Acrimonious disagreements between groups who supported SRA allegations as authentic and those criticizing them as unsubstantiated resulted in an extremely polarized discussion with little middle ground. The lack of credible evidence for the more extreme interpretations often being seen as evidence of an effective conspiracy rather than an indication that the allegations are unfounded. The religious beliefs or atheism of the disputants have also resulted in different interpretations of evidence, and as well as accusations of those who reject the claims being "anti-child". Both believers and skeptics have developed networks to disseminate information on their respective positions. One of the central themes of the discussion among English child abuse professionals was the assertion that people should simply "believe the children", and that the testimony of children was sufficient proof, which ignored the fact that in many cases the testimony of children was interpreted by professionals rather than the children explicitly disclosing allegations of abuse. In some cases this was simultaneously presented with the idea that it did not matter if SRA actually existed, that the empirical truth of SRA was irrelevant, that the testimony of children was more important than that of doctors, social workers and the criminal justice system. ==Evidence==

The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a study led by University of California psychologist Gail Goodman, which found that among 12,000 accusations of ritual or religious-linked abuse, there was no evidence for "a well-organized intergenerational satanic cult, who sexually molested and tortured children," although there was "convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say they are involved with Satan or use the claim to intimidate victims." The evidence for SRA was primarily in the form of testimonies from children who made allegations of SRA, and adults who claim to remember abuse during childhood, that may have been forgotten and recovered during therapy. With both children and adults, no corroborating evidence has been found for anything except pseudosatanism in which the satanic and ritual aspects were secondary to and used as a cover for sexual abuse. Despite this lack of objective evidence, and aided by the competing definitions of what SRA actually was, proponents claimed SRA was a real phenomenon throughout the peak and during the decline of the moral panic. Despite allegations appearing in the United States, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, no material evidence has been found to corroborate allegations of organized cult-based abuse that practices human sacrifice and cannibalism. Though trauma specialists frequently claimed the allegations made by children and adults were the same, in reality the statements made by adults were more elaborate, severe, and featured more bizarre abuse. In 95 percent of the adults' cases, the memories of the abuse were recovered during psychotherapy. For several years, a conviction list assembled by the Believe the Children advocacy group was circulated as proof of the truth of satanic ritual abuse allegations, though the organization itself no longer exists and the list itself is "egregiously out of date". Investigations Two investigations were carried out to assess the evidence for SRA. In the United Kingdom, a government report produced no evidence of SRA, but several examples of false satanists faking rituals to frighten their victims. In the United States, evidence was reported but was based on a flawed method with an overly liberal definition of a substantiated case. United Kingdom A British study published in 1996 found 62 cases of alleged ritual abuse reported to researchers by police, social and welfare agencies from the period of 1988 to 1991, representing a tiny proportion of extremely high-profile cases compared to the total number investigated by the agencies. Anthropologist Jean La Fontaine spent several years researching ritual abuse cases in Britain at the behest of the government, finding that all of the cases of alleged satanic ritual abuse that could be substantiated were cases where the perpetrators' goal was sexual gratification rather than religious worship. Producing several reports and the 1998 book Speak of the Devil, after reviewing cases reported to police and children's protective services throughout the country, LaFontaine concluded that the only rituals she uncovered were those invented by child abusers to frighten their victims or justify the sexual abuse. In addition, the sexual abuse occurred outside of the rituals, indicating the goal of the abuser was sexual gratification rather than ritualistic or religious. In cases involving satanic abuse, the satanic allegations by younger children were influenced by adults, and the concerns over the satanic aspects were found to be compelling due to cultural attraction of the concept but distracting from the actual harm caused to the abuse victims. In more recent years, discredited allegations of SRA have been levelled against Jimmy Savile during the posthumous investigation into his sexual abuse of children, as well as against former Prime Minister Ted Heath (who was previously falsely accused of SRA during his lifetime). United States David Finkelhor completed an investigation of child sexual abuse in daycares in the United States and published a report in 1988. The report found 270 cases of sexual abuse, of which 36 were classified as substantiated cases of ritual abuse.—the McMartin preschool trial, the Country Walk case and the murders in Matamoros, by Adolfo Constanzo—ultimately failed to support the existence of SRA. The primary witness in the Country Walk case repeatedly made, then withdrew accusations against her husband amid unusual and coercive inquiries by her lawyer and a psychologist. The Matamoros murders produced the bodies of 12 adults who were ritually sacrificed by a drug gang inspired by the film The Believers, but did not involve children or sexual abuse. The McMartin case resulted in no convictions and was ultimately based on accusations by children with no proof beyond their coerced testimonies. A 1990/1991 survey of clinicians, which reviewed 386 allegations of ritual and 191 allegations of religious abuse, described 10% and under 3% of those allegations, respectively, as unfounded following social service investigation. The Netherlands Dutch investigative journalists from Argos (NPO Radio 1) collected the experiences and stories of over two hundred victims of organized sexual abuse. A hundred and forty victims told Argos about ritual abuse. Six well-known people were mentioned as perpetrators by multiple participants in the investigation, and over ten abuse locations. A warehouse in the Bollenstreek was marked as a location for 'storage' and the production of child pornography. During the investigation the Argos journalists received an anonymous email stating the journalists had to 'beaware' because "they know about your investigation", remarking "they're going to get rid of evidence just like they did with Dutroux". The same day as the journalists received the e-mail, the warehouse in the Bollenstreek burnt down. According to Argos, the damage had been classified so severe by the fire department, that a cause of fire could not be determined. As a response to parliamentary questions following the Argos investigation, Dutch Minister of Justice and Security Ferdinand Grapperhaus said on August 27, 2020, that there would be 'no independent investigation into Ritual Abuse' of children in The Netherlands. The Green Left, the Socialist Party and the Labour Party criticized Grapperhaus for his decision. On October 13, 2020, the Dutch House of Representatives approved a motion in which the PvdA, GL and the SP requested that an independent investigation be conducted into the nature and extent of "organized sadistic abuse of children", bypassing Grapperhaus' original refusal to investigate. In a Skeptical Inquirer article JD Sword discusses the outcomes of a subsequent commission appointed by Grapperhaus and led by Jan Hendriks, professor of criminology from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and associate professor Anne-Marie Slotboom. In December 2022 Hendriks returned a report which found there is no evidence of organized abuse with ritualistic features and “Overall, victims are the only primary source reporting this type of abuse and no support for its existence is found from other sources.” Patients' allegations The majority of adult testimonials were given by adults while they were undergoing psychotherapy, in most cases they were undergoing therapy which was designed to elicit memories of SRA. The concern for therapists revolved around the pain of their clients, which is for them more important than the truth of their patients' statements. A sample of 29 patients in a medical clinic reporting SRA found no corroboration of the claims in medical records or in discussion with family members. and a survey of 2,709 American therapists found the majority of allegations of SRA came from only sixteen therapists, suggesting that the determining factor in a patient making allegations of SRA was the therapist's predisposition. Further, the alleged similarities between patient accounts (particularly between adults and children) turned out to be illusory upon review, with adults describing far more elaborate, severe and bizarre abuse than children. Bette Bottoms, who reviewed hundreds of claims of adult and child abuse, described the ultimate evidence for the abuse as "astonishingly weak and ambiguous" particularly given the severity of the alleged abuse. Therapists however, were found to believe patients more as the allegations became more bizarre and severe. In cases in which patients made claims that were physically impossible, or in cases in which the evidence which was found by police is contradictory, the details which are reported will often change. If patients pointed to a spot where a body was buried, but no body was found and no earth was disturbed, therapists resort to special pleading, saying that the patient was hypnotically programmed to direct investigators to the wrong location, or the patient was fooled by the cult into believing that a crime was not committed. If the alleged bodies were cremated and police point out that ordinary fires are inadequate to completely destroy a body, stories include special industrial furnaces. The patients' allegations change, and they creatively find "solutions" to objections. Children's allegations The second group to make allegations of SRA were young children. During the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, the techniques used by investigators to gather evidence from witnesses, particularly young children, evolved to become very leading, coercive and suggestive, pressuring young children to provide testimony and refusing to accept denials while offering inducements that encouraged false disclosures. orgies at car washes and airports, children being flushed down toilets to secret rooms where they would be abused, then cleaned up and presented back to their unsuspecting parents (McMartin preschool trial, no forensic evidence was found to support these claims) • Being raped with knives (including a 12-inch blade (Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial; no forensic evidence was found to support these claims) • Ritual murder of babies; children taken out on boats and thrown overboard; trips in hot air balloons; babies were thrown against walls; children were penetrated with knives and forks; the walls and floors of the center's music room were spread with urine and feces (Little Rascals day care sexual abuse trial; no forensic evidence was found to support these claims) • Forced to act in child pornography and used for child prostitution; tortured; made to watch snuff films (Kern County child abuse cases; no child pornography was ever found to substantiate these accusations) • The mentally disabled abuser with Noonan syndrome drank human blood in satanic rituals; abducted the children despite being unable to drive; forced the children to eat urine and feces; abducted the children to secret rooms; committed violent sexual assaults and beatings; killed a giraffe, rabbit and elephant and drank their blood in front of the children. (Faith Chapel Church ritual abuse case; no forensic evidence was found to support these claims) A variety of these allegations resulted in criminal convictions; in an analysis of these cases Mary de Young found that many had had their convictions overturned. Of 22 daycare employees and their sentences reviewed in 2007, three were still incarcerated, eleven had charges dismissed or overturned, and eight were released before serving their full sentences. Grounds included technical dismissals, constitutional challenges and prosecutorial misconduct. ==Skepticism==

As a moral panic SRA and the so-called "Satanic Panic" have been called a moral panic and compared to the blood libel and witch-hunts of historical Europe, Stanley Cohen, who originated the term moral panic, called the episode "one of the purest cases of moral panic". The initial investigations of SRA were performed by anthropologists and sociologists, who failed to find evidence of SRA actually occurring; instead they concluded that SRA was a result of rumors and folk legends that were spread by "media hype, Christian fundamentalism, mental health and law enforcement professionals and child abuse advocates." After skeptical inquiry, explanations for allegations of SRA have included an attempt by radical feminists to undermine the nuclear family, a backlash against working women, homophobic attacks on gay childcare workers, a universal need to believe in evil, fear of alternative spiritualities, "end of the millennium" anxieties, or a transient form of temporal lobe epilepsy. In his book Satanic Panic, the 1994 Mencken Award winner for Best Book presented by the Free Press Association, Jeffery Victor wrote that, in the United States, the groups most likely to believe rumors of SRA are rural, poorly educated, religiously conservative, blue-collar families with an unquestioning belief in American values who feel significant anxieties over job loss, economic decline and family disintegration. Victor considered rumors of SRA a symptom of a moral crisis and a form of scapegoating for economic and social ills. According to Mary de Young, the Satanic ritual abuse panic was fundamentally a morality tale in which evil persecutes innocence, and heroic rescuers drive evil away in a persecutor–victim–rescuer triangle. Origins of the rumors Information about SRA claims spread through conferences presented to religious groups, churches and professionals such as police forces and therapists as well as parents. These conferences and presentations served to organize agencies and foster communication between groups, maintaining and spreading disproven or exaggerated stories as fact. Members of local police forces organized into loose networks focused on cult crimes, some of whom billed themselves as "experts" and were paid to speak at conferences throughout the United States. Religious revivalists also took advantage of the rumors and preached about the dangers of Satanism to youth and presented themselves at paid engagements as secular experts. At the height of the panic, the highly emotional accusations and circumstances of SRA allegations made it difficult to investigate the claims, with the accused being assumed as guilty and skeptics becoming co-accused during trials, and trials moving forward based solely on the testimony of very young children without corroborating evidence. No forensic or corroborating evidence has ever been found for religiously based cannibalistic or murderous SRA, despite extensive investigations. The concern and reaction expressed by various groups regarding the seriousness or threat of SRA has been considered out-of-proportion to the actual threat by satanically motivated crimes, and the rare crime that exists that may be labeled "satanic" does not equate to the existence of a conspiracy or network of religiously motivated child abusers. Scholarly and law enforcement investigations Jeffrey Victor reviewed 67 rumors about SRA in the United States and Canada reported in newspapers or television and found no evidence supporting the existence of murderous satanic cults. LaFontaine states that cases of alleged SRA investigated in the United Kingdom were reviewed in detail and the majority were unsubstantiated; three were found to involve sexual abuse of children in the context of rituals, but none involved the Witches' Sabbath or devil worship that are characteristic of allegations of SRA. LaFontaine also states that no material evidence has been forthcoming in allegations of SRA; no bones, bodies or blood, in either the United States or Britain. Kenneth Lanning, an FBI expert in the investigation of child sexual abuse, has stated that pseudo-Satanism may exist but there is "little or no evidence for ... large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice, and organized satanic conspiracies.": that makes the credibility of victims of child sexual abuse questionable. In cases where SRA is alleged to occur, Lanning describes common dynamics of the use of fear to control multiple young victims, the presence of multiple perpetrators and strange or ritualized behaviors, though allegations of crimes such as human sacrifice and cannibalism do not seem to be true. Lanning also suggests several reasons why adult victims may make allegations of SRA, including "pathological distortion, traumatic memory, normal childhood fears and fantasies, misperception, and confusion." ==Court cases==

Allegations of SRA have appeared throughout the world. In 1984, a large scale investigation and prosecution of ritual abuse in Jordan, Minnesota drew national attention for poor investigative and prosecutorial practices. A group of parents named Victims of Child Abuse Laws grew and gained political power. The testimony of children in these cases may have led to their collapse, as juries came to believe that the sources of the allegations were the use of suggestive and manipulative interviewing techniques, rather than actual events. Research since that time has supported these concerns and without the use of these techniques it is unlikely the cases would ever have reached trial. In a survey of more than 11,000 psychiatric and police workers throughout the US, conducted for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, researchers investigated approximately 12,000 accusations of ritual or religious abuse between 1980 and 1990. The survey found no substantiated reports of well-organized satanic rings of people who sexually abuse children, but did find incidents in which the ritualistic aspects were secondary to the abuse and were used to intimidate victims. However, the same researchers also concluded that children usually have the sufficient amount of general knowledge of "violence and the occult" to "serve as a starting point from which ritual claims could develop." ==Dissociative identity disorder==

SRA has been linked to dissociative identity disorder (DID, formerly known as multiple personality disorder or MPD), with some DID patients also alleging cult abuse. The first person to write a first-person narrative about SRA was Michelle Smith, co-author of Michelle Remembers; Smith was diagnosed with DID by her therapist and later husband Lawrence Pazder. According to Pazder’s then wife, Pazder saw the television film based on the (later discredited) book Sybil about a woman with MPD, and said that he had a similar patient. This was the initial seed of the story that became Michelle Remembers. Psychiatrists involved with the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD, then called the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation), especially associate editor Bennett G. Braun, uncritically promoted the idea that actual groups of persons who worshiped Satan were abusing and ritually sacrificing children and, furthermore, that thousands of persons were recovering actual memories of such abuse during therapy, openly discussing such claims in the organization's journal, Dissociation. In a 1989 editorial, Dissociation editor-in-chief Richard Kluft likened clinicians who did not speak of their patients with recovered memories of SRA to the "good Germans" during the Holocaust. One particularly controversial article found parallels between SRA accounts and pre-Inquisition historical records of satanism, hence claimed to find support for the existence of ancient and intergenerational satanic cults. A review of these claims by sociologist Mary de Young in a 1994 Behavioral Sciences and the Law article noted that the historical basis for these claims, and in particular their continuity of cults, ceremonies and rituals was questionable. However at an ISSTD conference in November 1990, psychiatrist and researcher Frank Putnam, then chief of the Dissociative Disorders Unit of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, led a plenary session panel that proved to be the first public presentation of psychiatric, historical and law enforcement skepticism concerning SRA claims. Other members of the panel included psychiatrist George Ganaway, anthropologist Sherrill Mulhern, and psychologist Richard Noll. Putnam, a skeptic, was viewed by SRA advocates in attendance as using fellow skeptics such as Noll and Mulhern as allies in a disinformation campaign to split the SRA-believing community. A survey of 12,000 cases of alleged ritual or religious abuse found that most were diagnosed with DID as well as post-traumatic stress disorder. A sample of patients diagnosed with DID and reporting childhood SRA also present other symptoms including "dissociative states with satanic overtones, severe post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor guilt, bizarre self abuse, unusual fears, sexualization of sadistic impulses, indoctrinated beliefs, and substance abuse." and SRA a cultural script of the perception of DID. Some believe that memories of SRA are solely iatrogenically implanted memories from suggestive therapeutic techniques, though this has been criticized by Daniel Brown, Alan Scheflin and Corydon Hammond for what they argue as over-reaching the scientific data that supports an iatrogenic theory. Others have criticized Hammond specifically for using therapeutic techniques to gather information from clients that rely solely on information fed by the therapist in a manner that highly suggests iatrogenesis. Much of the body of literature on the treatment of ritually abused patients focuses on dissociative disorders. == False memories ==

One explanation for the SRA allegations is that they were based upon false memories caused by use of discredited suggestive techniques such as hypnosis and leading questions by therapists underestimating the suggestibility of their clients. The altered state of consciousness induced by hypnosis rendered patients an unusual ability to produce confabulations, often with the assistance of their therapists. Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, discusses in his book Try to Remember the developments that led to the creation of false memories in the SRA moral panic and the formation of the FMSF as an effort to bring contemporary scientific research and political action to the polarizing struggle about false memories within the mental health disciplines. According to McHugh, there is no coherent scientific basis for the core belief of one side of the struggle, that sexual abuse can cause massive systemic repression of memories that can only be accessed through hypnosis, coercive interviews and other dubious techniques. The group of psychiatrists who promoted these ideas, whom McHugh terms "Mannerist Freudians", consistently followed a deductive approach to diagnosis in which the theory and causal explanation of symptoms was assumed to be childhood sexual abuse leading to dissociation, followed by a set of unproven and unreliable treatments with a strong confirmation bias that inevitably produced the allegations and causes that were assumed to be there. The treatment approach involved isolation of the patient from friends and family within psychiatric wards dedicated to the treatment of dissociation, filled with other patients who were treated by the same doctors with the same flawed methods and staff members who also coherently and universally ascribed to the same set of beliefs. These methods began in the 1980s and continued for several years until a series of court cases and medical malpractice lawsuits resulted in hospitals failing to support the approach. In cases where the dissociative symptoms were ignored, the coercive treatment approach ceased and the patients were removed from dedicated wards, allegations of satanic rape and abuse normally ceased, "recovered" memories were identified as fabrications and conventional treatments for presenting symptoms were generally successful. ==See also==