So there was an existent mythology regarding Satanism and Black Masses that had been passed down for hundreds of years, and a mythology that was primed for an American cultural milieu whose traditions had disintegrated during the sixties and whose conspiratorial suspicions were largely confirmed through the seventies. As Jeffrey Victor points out, “Threat rumors about satanic cults are, therefore, metaphors for a dangerous heresy which threatens the legitimate moral order of American society, and which is causing the destruction of American values.”43 Victor also notes that during these times of difficulty, it is often deeply held mythological sources to which we turn for answers. “In the cultural heritage of all societies, there exists a ready-made explanation of the origins and workings of the evil which threatens to undermine the most cherished values of a society. Anthropologists call this culturally inherited explanation of evil, a ‘demonology.’ ”44 Similar to the Salem witch-hunt, the Satanism scare was a public reaction that turned to long-held European mythologies to explain the cultural breakdown of traditions. Satanism and demonology were Christian concepts that began in Europe and migrated to the United States, bringing with them a “culturally inherited demonology.”
The fundamentalist Christian community was also primed for the panic, as Bill Ellis points out in his work, Raising the Devil. Ellis traces some of the seeds of the panic to the development of the Pentecostal movement in Christianity, which emphasized speaking in tongues while being “filled with the Holy Spirit,” which, essentially, amounted to an individual being willing to be possessed by a spirit. This was an effort to gain supernatural contact with God and thereby confirm an individual’s or group’s beliefs. However, Ellis notes that confirming one’s belief system does not have to be limited to conferring with God. Ultimately, conferring or gaining contact with demons or Satan has a similar effect; by confirming the existence of Satan, one also confirms the existence of God. This can be accomplished through various means, including exorcism and the use of spirit contact rituals such as a Ouija board. “…Both activities are alike in their goals—to allow participants to participate in the Christian myth directly. In most denominations, believers are passive, with acts of power—prayer, healing, the consecration of the Eucharist—reserved for priests and other institutionally designated specialists. Bible reading and reflection on doctrinal issues may satisfy many believers, but others seek a more direct experience of the divine.”45 The satanic panic was adopted and driven largely by Christian fundamentalist and Pentecostal organizations. Furthermore, Pentecostalism had its beginnings in work of Kurt E. Koch, who emphasized deliverance from demonic possession. For him, physical and mental ailments stemmed from occult and demonic influence, and thus, people had to be delivered from evil through the power of Christ in order to be healed. This is strikingly similar to some of the origins of the European witch-hunt, where people believed unexplainable disease and tragedy were the result of a witch’s curse. Oddly enough, Koch was born and raised in Germany and developed his theories there, where more witches were convicted and killed during the European witch-hunt than in any other European country. Koch’s focus on deliverance through exorcism opened the door to obtaining direct contact with the supernatural through both demonic and godly sources. His beliefs and teachings planted the seeds for the Pentecostal movement, which found a home in the United States.
There was a mythological, legendary, and theological source for belief in Black Masses, child sacrifice, and satanic conspiracies; the mythology had been passed down for centuries and had become firmly rooted in the American Christian consciousness. Because the things described in these rituals were so profane and so obscene, they acted as a catalyst for unquestioning belief and an assurance that there is true good and there is true evil, thus making the idea of these happenings all the more believable when the medical, media, psychiatric, and law enforcement institutions all began to say that the United States was under siege by a conspiracy of Satan-worshippers. McGrath states that there was never any evidence found indicating actual satanic practices; however, that issue will be addressed in a later chapter.
There have been many books written about this period of time and the satanic panic, largely because it seemed to be an anathema to science, modernism, tolerance, and justice, and, as such, a variety of social and legal causes for this panic have been documented. Malcolm McGrath focuses on the psychotherapeutic influences, Jeffrey S. Victor takes a look at the fundamentalist Christian right, Bill Ellis discusses the legendary lines of Satanism, and Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker look at the social-political climate and legal changes that led to the incarceration of innocent men and women.
While belief in satanic ritual was buried in the subconscious of U.S. culture, it needed a catalyst to bring it to the forefront and create a panic. While I have focused on scientific and technological breakthroughs as possible sources for paranormal upheaval, the catalyst for the satanic panic was different. Its origins lie in the institutionalization of beliefs based on “experts” in the field of psychology and therapy. While the JFK assassination and the conspiratorial mindset created by the flying saucer invasion called into question the idea of “expertise,” the satanic panic was the ultimate betrayal of the public by a cabal of experts who institutionalized belief in a satanic world conspiracy centered around child abuse, murder, pornography, and power. This belief made careers and fortunes for those who preached its merit on the basis of their expertise; meanwhile, lives were ruined. While there were many roads leading to the panic that have been analyzed in a number of books, they all point to one catalyst that really started the ball rolling—a little book entitled Michelle Remembers.
Michelle Remembers was written by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist, Dr. Lawrence Pazder. The book recounts the therapy sessions during which Michelle brought forth long-repressed memories of her abuse at the hands of a satanic cult in Canada. Michelle suddenly begins to remember these incidents following a miscarriage and quickly begins to recount strange, subjective, enigmatic episodes involving her mother and a man named Malachi. Michelle even begins to manifest physical symptoms related to the memories and spends hours in Pazder’s office in tears as the doctor tries to comfort her and encourage her to continue with her memory recovery. The book, poorly written to say the least, paints a picture of a doctor-patient relationship that has stepped far over its boundaries, with Pazder accepting Michelle’s story at face value, spending entire days with her, physically holding her in his arms, and Michelle contacting him while he was on vacation with his family. The doctor’s conclusion that she had obviously been abused by a highly secretive satanic cult appears almost at the beginning of the book narrative, and is, itself, a fair demonstration as to the nature of human psyche to form narratives out of incoherent babble. Pazder takes Michelle’s story without question because of the level of emotion that she experiences during her episodes. However, Pazder was already inclined to believe in such things, as he was heavily involved in the Catholic Church and almost immediately recommended that Michelle confer with a priest. It is also indicative of a poor relationship boundary between psychiatrist and patient in that Michelle had been treated by Pazder for many years prior to these sudden memories. Pazder had lost his objectivity, and Michelle had come to rely solely upon him. The two eventually divorced their spouses and married each other as they went on extended book tours and interviews following the release of Michelle Remembers.
Michelle Remembers was a commercial success and inspired attention-starved women across North America to suddenly come forth with “repressed memories” of satanic ritual abuse. The psychiatric community was quick to take up the cause and institutionalize the belief that satanic groups were organizing to perform sadistic acts on children.
Therapy aimed at recovering repressed memories of childhood abuse exploded in North America during the 1980s, conducted by a wide range of practitioners from qualified psychiatrists and psychologists to self-styled therapists with little more training than
the attendance of a few workshops and seminars. Over the course of the decade, recovered memory therapy took on the appearance of a social movement. Adherents to the movement suggested that abuse and molestation of children was an epidemic in America, citing statistics that suggested that as many as 38 percent of American women were sexually abused by the time they were eighteen.46
Not all the memories of abuse were satanic in nature, but the ones that were captured the media attention and generated rumors, speculation, and fear. It also embedded the idea of organized satanic cults into the American psyche, thus feeding into the Christian mythology already embedded within the general population. Fundamentalist churches seized on the reports as evidence of Satan’s work in the world and as a call to arms for Christians everywhere. In particular, the fundamentalist movement had survivor stories such as Mike Warnke, who claimed to have been a satanic high priest in the San Diego area and who released a book detailing his experiences, The Satan Seller, in 1973. Warnke claimed that drugs, pornography, murder, and mutilations were all being driven by a satanic underground cult that managed to avoid prosecution through bribes to police and public officials. Warnke’s story was taken at face value until 1992, when the fundamentalist Christian publication Cornerstone determined that Warnke’s story could not possibly be true. “After our lengthy investigation into his background, we found discrepancies that raise serious doubts about the trustworthiness of his testimony. We have uncovered significant evidence contradicting his alleged satanic activity. His testimony contains major conflicts from book to book and tape to book, it contains significant internal problems, and it doesn’t square with known external times and events. Further, we have documentation and eyewitness testimony that contradict the claims he has made about himself.”47 Warnke’s ministry had told an entire generation of youth about the perils and practices of Satanism. He also made a bit of money in doing so; his personal salary in 1991 totaled $303,840.48 Having been raised in a fundamentalist Christian church, I personally remember Mike Warnke’s testimony and his stand-up comedy. His videos were shown to the youth of the church for entertainment, education, and to warn about the insidious satanic underground, of which he professed to have been a part. Warnke was a major contributor to the church involvement in the satanic panic during the 1980s.
The media, likewise, needed no help in sensationalizing reports involving occult activities and Satanism. Throughout the seventies and eighties popular attention to these incidents were only increased through the theatrical release of cult-based films and books. Furthermore, there were major murder cases in which the defendants claimed they had been involved with Satanism or committed the act due to satanic influences. Among the more sensationalized were the Richard Ramirez “Nightstalker” case, the Son of Sam case, and the Matamoros Mexican murders, in which a U.S. college student on spring break was ritually murdered by a drug cartel seeking protection from spirits against capture or prosecution. Understandably, these reports generated great concern in the public that actual satanic cults were at work in the United States and internationally.
But the media interest and sensationalism regarding the possibility of satanic practices had always been there, and the Christian church had regularly been warning against the presence of evil cults all throughout the seventies, particularly following Warnke’s story. What truly sparked the panic was the assertion by doctors and therapists in the field of psychiatry that these stories were, in fact, true. They then institutionalized the beliefs by making them both secular and a cause célèbre for championing activists and professionals trying to make a name for themselves. Furthermore, law enforcement was relying on the testimony of “survivors” such as Michelle Smith and doctors such as Lawrence Pazder for advice and education about these cults and their practices.
In short, if your local church, your local newspaper, your doctor, and the police all tell you that something is true and dangerous, are you really going to risk ignoring the warning? As Jeffrey S. Victor points out, nearly all the panics were in rural areas of the United States, rarely in the cities where people were more focused on immediate threats such as robbery, gang violence, and so on. Rather, the satanic panic effected suburbia and the quiet little towns that dot the United States and form the essence of the traditional American dream; and it was here that the fear of satanic cults—an opposition to those American dreams and values—found its home.
The institutionalization of the satanic cult myth truly coalesced around the McMartin Preschool trials. The accusations against the owner and employees of McMartin Preschool in California were first made by Judy Johnson, a woman later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic who could barely form an intelligible sentence and died of alcoholism.49 Due to changes in the existing laws and procedures for police, the job of interviewing the children was turned over to social workers and child therapists, who videotaped the sessions so that the children would not have to be put through the stress of testifying in court. However, the therapists’ tactics left much to be desired by objective standards; they had already solidified their positions in psychiatric and therapeutic circles as “experts” in the field of child sexual abuse. One of the chief therapists was Kathleen “Kee” MacFarlane, who developed the idea of using anatomically correct dolls to interview the children, who had supposedly been abused, without doing any testing on the reactions of non-abused children to the dolls. She also developed and served on the board of many organizations whose designated mission was to protect children from forms of sexual and ritual satanic abuse. MacFarlane’s own Children’s Institute International conducted over four hundred interviews of the children who attended the McMartin Preschool and concluded that a vast majority of them had been sexually molested. MacFarlane went on to testify before Congress that there was a vast underground network in the United States that specialized in sexually abusing children and distributing child pornography—a claim that was later debunked by law enforcement.
Another key player in the McMartin accusations was Dr. Bruce Woodling, who developed untested methods for determining if a child had been sexually molested. His methods were themselves disturbing for the children to undertake. However, he was appointed chief examiner for evidence of rape in Southern California and was called in to examine the children of the McMartin Preschool. Woodling believed that by examining in very close detail marks and fissures on children’s vaginas and anuses, he could determine whether or not the child had been molested, regardless of the child’s testimony. According to his own testimony under cross-examination, he stated, “It is my belief that sometimes children will say that nothing happened because they have a great deal of difficulty talking about the issue…”50 Woodling’s methods were later discredited, but because the field of rape and molestation research was so young at the time, his opinions were given merit. However, it is clear that in many instances, his examinations were far worse than any imagined molestation: “At trial, he repeated his findings while the jury stared at his exhibits: jumbo photographs of the sisters’ vaginas and rectums being pulled open by his fingers.”51
Just as in the European witch craze, the true criminals dabbling in black arts were the accusers rather than the accused. What truly solidified the satanic panic, however, was the newly invented diagnosis of repressed memory disorder (RMD) and resurgence in the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder (MPD). Psychiatrists, academics, and therapists began to claim that a vast network of conspiratorial, underground Satanists were at work in all levels of society and regularly kidnapping, molesting, and sacrificing children to their dark lord. Malcolm McGrath expertly and definitively traces the progression of this diagnosis and its impact on the satanic panic, and documents the ascension of many of the RMD and MPD “experts” into positions of power and prestige in the psychiatric community. Armed with such intellectual firepower, there is hardly any wonder that people began to fear a satanic underground at work in the United States. As these “experts” began to disseminate their opinions and “info
rmation” to law enforcement, the media, and the public, cultural fears based on satanic mythology and religious theology were given the catalyst necessary to create a public panic.
These doctors became heads of organizations and hospitals. They spoke at conferences and symposiums, they offered advice to police and investigators, and they trained new psychiatrists and therapists in their belief systems. Dr. Bennett Braun and his partner, Dr. Roberta Sachs, opened a clinic in St. Luke’s Presbyterian Hospital devoted entirely to multiple personality disorder. They were later successfully sued for ruining people’s lives and leading them to believe, through the use of hypnosis and drug therapy, that they had been abused in satanic ritual abuse cults.
Over the course of [Braun’s] therapy, Anne’s satanic cult story became increasingly detailed. She learned that her family had been part of the cult since 1604; that she had been continually raped and forced to cannibalize her own aborted fetuses; and even that, as an adult, she had been a high priestess of the cult to which she had belonged until the time she entered the hospital. Braun took pains to assure her that implausible as many of the details seemed, such as the idea that she had eaten parts of up to two thousand people a year, they would all eventually make sense. He pointed to the fact that people also denied the Holocaust at first. With Braun’s help, Anne’s story grew into an elaborate conspiracy theory involving AT&T, Hallmark Greeting Cards, the CIA, and eventually the FBI.52
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