There’s a “You’re Wrong About” episode about the Satanic Panic.
My memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall that it had something to do with the cultural shift from “child sexual abuse doesn’t happen at all, kids just make up stories” to “holy shit you guys, child sexual abuse is real” and that it was so shocking to people that they had to ascribe it to something otherworldly.
Mix that eagerness to attribute it to Satanic rituals together with the popularity of Freud and the idea of repressed memories, and zero awareness that “memory retrieval” techniques can cause the subject (especially young children) to invent memories, and suddenly you’ve got a deluge of stories about legit new-found instances of child sexual abuse, made-up instances of child sexual abuse, and off-the-rails blood sacrifices for Dungeons and Dragons campaigns all mixed together and presented as one phenomenon.
There’s a “You’re Wrong About” episode about the Satanic Panic.
My memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall that it had something to do with the cultural shift from “child sexual abuse doesn’t happen at all, kids just make up stories” to “holy shit you guys, child sexual abuse is real” and that it was so shocking to people that they had to ascribe it to something otherworldly.
Mix that eagerness to attribute it to Satanic rituals together with the popularity of Freud and the idea of repressed memories, and zero awareness that “memory retrieval” techniques can cause the subject (especially young children) to invent memories, and suddenly you’ve got a deluge of stories about legit new-found instances of child sexual abuse, made-up instances of child sexual abuse, and off-the-rails blood sacrifices for Dungeons and Dragons campaigns all mixed together and presented as one phenomenon.