There is, if you will pardon the pun, a new witch hunt in progress in our society. Like its predecessor the Red Scare, which saw an insidious conspiracy of communists attempting to take over society fifty years ago, this new conspiracy theory has been given credence by the media, social workers, police and a variety of self appointed experts and authorities. It claims that their is a satanic conspiracy in North America to murder and abuse children. It seldom needs any real evidence for this, mere conjecture will do.

A recent example is the Martinsville case in Saskatchewan, where several police officers as well as a family that ran a baby-sitting service were accused of mass child abuse. As soon as the story broke there were rumors and allegations that these people were Satanists. As the case came to court these satanic allegations were dropped, but the damage had already been done.

Who raised this allegation? It was a born again preacher from the Chaplains office at the University of Saskatchewan. He had his own agenda, and whether there were facts or empirical evidence for these allegations were irrelevant, he had his faith that such a conspiracy exists. Where there is child abuse there is ritual abuse where there is ritual abuse there are Satanists, is the logic of the evangelical fundamentalist Christians promoting this conspiracy theory.

The right wing fundamentalist Christians claim that thousands of children and men and women have been abused and murdered in North America by an organized Satanic conspiracy. Even though there is no evidence for this claim it persists. It is even taken seriously by psychologists, therapists and some feminists, which is a frightening thought, who have sanitized the conspiracy theory into what they call 'ritual abuse'.

Ritual abuse claims that there are generational families of Satanists who breed children to serve the devil , to be the object of sexual abuse and torture and finally to be human sacrifices. The fact that some serious therapists believe these claims comes from the whole victim industry that has grown up around the question of sexual abuse these past twenty years. So insistent that we believe the victims those working in this field take all claims at face value.

The claims of a satanic conspiracy, and generational breeding by Satanic families, cannot be proven empirically. Once the light of a full investigation into the facts begins, no such conspiracy is ever found. Claims that victims have been murdered does not produce any evidence of bodies or grave sites. Failing to produce such evidence does not deter the conspiracy theorists, they simply claim that these well organized Satanists have a traveling incinerator to dispose of the bodies.

Where did this all begin? In Canada of course in the early 1980's with the release of a book called Michelle Remembers. You've probably seen it if you haven't read it. Claiming to be an actual study of repressed memories of a woman from a Satanic family in Victoria B.C., the book gives all the basic allegations that would appear again and again over this past decade. Michelle Smith who claims to have experienced satanic ritual abuse was a manic depressive. She turned to a lay catholic therapist and psychologist Lawrence Pazder, formally of Edmonton, who used hypnosis as therapy. The two not only wrote Michelle Remembers but have gone on to get married and travel the talk show circuit promoting their satanic conspiracy theories. Ten years later and the book is largely discredited, but its effects are still being felt.

Why a satanic conspiracy theory? Simply because as we entered the 1980's we began, and rightly so, to take issue with wife abuse and child abuse. These issues had been family secrets for years, but the laws changed thanks to the feminist movement, and society began to view abuse as a serious crime. At the same time the media began to focus on the massive amount of runaways in North America, and of course there was more media coverage of missing children. Enter the fundamentalist backlash. As the so called moral majority began to influence politics in the Reagan years, they had to come up with solutions to these problems. Since the family was the keystone to their religious and political revival they had to sanitize the family since it was pretty obvious that the family in North America was producing battered women and sexually abused children. So rather than admitting the family was a patriarchal authoritarian institution set on self destruct, as Wilhelm Reich would say, the fundamentalists said the problem was the product of a satanic conspiracy, the family or its members were devil worshippers.

At this same time two other events were happening. Daycare had become a major issue, as both parents had to work to make ends meet. Virulently opposed to the idea of daycare, or even women working, the right wing fundamentalists, targeted the feminist movement as the problem. It not only attacked the idea of state supported daycare as anti-family (read anti-father knows best) but began to promote the idea that these were recruiting centers for pedophiles. Worse yet these pedophiles were part of a nation wide satanic conspiracy.

The second coincidental event was the birth during the Seventies and Eighties of a new pagan movement promoting the religious rights of witches, pagans, neo-pagans and yes even some legitimate Satanists like Anton LaVey's Church of Satan or its offshoot the Temple of Set.

These later groups probably had no more than 300 members between them, and were legitimate religious societies in the US. However the growth of paganism, now with hundreds of groups, circles and organizations with thousands of members in North America, its progressive views towards women and the ecology, and its demands for religious recognition were seen as threat to the right-wing moral majority types.

Of course then there was the rise of the Gay movement, as well as feminism. All these progressive groups attempting to demand their human rights sent the right wing into a tail spin. So they launched a campaign to save their version of the family, to counteract the progressive aims of daycare, religious freedom and gay and women's rights by consciously creating a conspiracy theory that would fit their needs. Viola, the Satanic Panic began.

For an excellent book on this subject, that is very up to date and deals with these accusations and demolishes them one by one read:
The Satanic Panic; Creation of a Contemporary Legend. By Jeffrey S. Victor. Published by Open Court Books, 1993. Victor is a professor of Sociology at SUNY.