I blog about the Little Rascals Day Care case -- the East Coast version of McMartin -- and other episodes from the "satanic ritual abuse" panic of the 1980s and early '90s. littlerascalsdaycarecase dot org .... The last still-incarcerated victim of the panic is Andrew Junior Chandler, a day-care bus driver in Madison County, N.C., sentenced to consecutive life sentences in 1987. The Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic is the latest to take on his case, but exoneration has been sisyphean....
"Unless you have very particular interests or spend time around me, you were wrong."
— Or, you read the headline and are old enough to remember the trials.
I suspect that to people old enough to be newsreaders then, that these are *not* forgotten. I think I've seen QAnon compared to them. But I suppose they aren't referenced as much as other things from then.
So why aren't they talked about more? Here's an alternate hypothesis: they're too big. If you compare something to this, you're implying a huge violation and a completely made-up scare. It's not something to use if you think something is overblown or possibly false. And you can look pretty ridiculous making the comparison if what you compare it to turns out to have any merit whatsoever.
I'm hardly sure about this—either that people remember or it or that this is why it isn't brought up much—but that's my guess.
There are still some people around who believe that Satanic Ritual Abuse is real. I ran into one of them when he was a kooky candidate in an election (that I was also involved in) a few years ago and he was such a scary weirdo that I have been keeping tabs on him ever since to make sure I stay well out of his way.
Following that stuff from him (I'd prefer not to state his name so this comment won't appear in his egogoogle), I ran into stuff about Wilfred Wong, a minor character in the 1980s-1990s Satanic Panic, who was recently convicted of kidnapping a child who he had convinced himself was a victim of Satanic abuse.
So this hasn't completely gone away, it's just not credible with anyone but weird God botherers any more.
Is it weird that I literally only know this case because Dean Koontz used it in a novel I read a million years ago and I looked it up way back then to see if he'd made it up? lol
Things like the Satanic Panic are useful to remember whenever we find ourselves caught up in the cause or crisis of the day. Other examples include Eugenics as civil policy, and medical practices like lobotomization.
I was pretty well-informed about the Satanic Panic despite being a 90's kid. IIRC it got thrown around as a CW talking point in the 00's New Atheism era, used as an example of the dangers of religion. I was pretty surprised when I mentioned it to my mother and she had no recollection of it.
I read about "false memory syndrome" in Skeptical Inquirer magazine. So I do know about the Satanic ritual abuse panic. And yes, the whole thing was horrible and ruined lives.
I blog about the Little Rascals Day Care case -- the East Coast version of McMartin -- and other episodes from the "satanic ritual abuse" panic of the 1980s and early '90s. littlerascalsdaycarecase dot org .... The last still-incarcerated victim of the panic is Andrew Junior Chandler, a day-care bus driver in Madison County, N.C., sentenced to consecutive life sentences in 1987. The Duke Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic is the latest to take on his case, but exoneration has been sisyphean....
"Unless you have very particular interests or spend time around me, you were wrong."
— Or, you read the headline and are old enough to remember the trials.
I suspect that to people old enough to be newsreaders then, that these are *not* forgotten. I think I've seen QAnon compared to them. But I suppose they aren't referenced as much as other things from then.
So why aren't they talked about more? Here's an alternate hypothesis: they're too big. If you compare something to this, you're implying a huge violation and a completely made-up scare. It's not something to use if you think something is overblown or possibly false. And you can look pretty ridiculous making the comparison if what you compare it to turns out to have any merit whatsoever.
I'm hardly sure about this—either that people remember or it or that this is why it isn't brought up much—but that's my guess.
There are still some people around who believe that Satanic Ritual Abuse is real. I ran into one of them when he was a kooky candidate in an election (that I was also involved in) a few years ago and he was such a scary weirdo that I have been keeping tabs on him ever since to make sure I stay well out of his way.
Following that stuff from him (I'd prefer not to state his name so this comment won't appear in his egogoogle), I ran into stuff about Wilfred Wong, a minor character in the 1980s-1990s Satanic Panic, who was recently convicted of kidnapping a child who he had convinced himself was a victim of Satanic abuse.
So this hasn't completely gone away, it's just not credible with anyone but weird God botherers any more.
Is it weird that I literally only know this case because Dean Koontz used it in a novel I read a million years ago and I looked it up way back then to see if he'd made it up? lol
This is why god made bayes theorem :)
Things like the Satanic Panic are useful to remember whenever we find ourselves caught up in the cause or crisis of the day. Other examples include Eugenics as civil policy, and medical practices like lobotomization.
A provocative take on how "believe the women" produced "believe the children".... https://www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org/?p=1228
This happened in my hometown as well (in the mid 1990s!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenatchee_child_abuse_prosecutions
I was pretty well-informed about the Satanic Panic despite being a 90's kid. IIRC it got thrown around as a CW talking point in the 00's New Atheism era, used as an example of the dangers of religion. I was pretty surprised when I mentioned it to my mother and she had no recollection of it.
I read about "false memory syndrome" in Skeptical Inquirer magazine. So I do know about the Satanic ritual abuse panic. And yes, the whole thing was horrible and ruined lives.