Voices of Reason Among The Satanic Panic
Source: Blogspot
It’s characteristic of a witch hunt that skepticism is invariably answered with accusations of complicity in the ever-more horrific acts being perpetrated. Without evidence that stands up to scrutiny, believers resort to shrill denunciations and violence to silence and punish the perceived enemy. The Little Rascals preschool, for example, was repeatedly vandalized during the McMartin trial and was eventually set on fire by an unknown arsonist.
Take that, due process! Source: Vimeo
Others who were caught up in the panic were also subject to threats and abuse. Preschools in the area, which had been accused of swapping children with the McMartins, were forced into closure and bankruptcy.
Employees at these schools were arrested as the net spread ever wider. Attempts at reopening the schools with new staff were discouraged by police and finally frustrated by threats of violence from the community.
Claims of Satanist influence in society grew throughout the 1980s. Rock music was said to be subliminally programming teenagers to commit horrible acts, Dungeons and Dragons was alleged to be a gateway to introduce children to devil worship, and officials were accused of participating in secretive covens across the nation, as if that would be worse than what the government does openly and in broad daylight.
An international network of cultists, with membership in the millions, was said to be trafficking both kidnapped children and, when corresponding numbers of missing kids couldn’t be identified, to be secretly breeding children off the grid for ritual abuse and human sacrifice.
The very lack of evidence for all of these shocking allegations thus became evidence for round after round of even more shocking allegations. Those who sounded a note of caution were sometimes accused of actively participating in the shadowy network of depraved cultists themselves, or of covering for powerful people who were.
Epilogue: Nothing Really Happened
Note to future panic mongers: we live under a system that really doesn’t mind if a few teachers go to jail or a handful of musicians get sued over teenagers’ suicides, but it will break you in half if you accuse powerful people of professional misconduct without the evidence to back it up.
In time, especially after the $15 million debacle of the McMartin trial, prosecutors and grand juries became less receptive to wild accusations of demonic sex crimes. Eventually, the FBI released a report by Special Agent Ken Lanning, which found no substance to any of the accusations. The panic gradually began to subside.
As for the individuals who created, spread, and suffered from the Satanic Panic, their outcomes are a mixed bag. Defendants in the McMartin case, whose lives had been shattered by seven years of official persecution, were reportedly paid $75,000 each by HBO for the 1995 made-for-TV movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial, though they never got so much as an apology.
Their lawyers, Daniel Davis and Dean Gits, continued to practice law, as did former prosecutors Glenn Stevens and Lael Rubin.
Kee MacFarlane continued her work with Children’s Institute International, though the institute no longer interviews children. None of the major players in any of the cases that grew out of the panic were ever fired or prosecuted for the damage they did to innocent people’s lives, though some were sanctioned for unethical conduct.
After reading about the satanic panic of the 1980s, see what life was like inside five of history’s most insane cults. Then, read the awful story of the exorcism of the real-life “Emily Rose.”
