Conviction of Things Not Seen: The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cults

[Scrivener7]

3. Wow. There is a lot to unpack in that. The article is unique and correct in that it posits that

in some cases (not the famous ones) the fabricated tales of ritual abuse might be mixed up in the telling about true experiences of - I don't quite know how to say it - "regular" child abuse, and they do need to be investigated.

“The focus on the Satanic or bizarre elements did not prevent investigators from doing their job; it just made it difficult to prove what actually happened,” Lanning says. “Most people would agree that just because a victim tells you one detail that turns out to be true, this does not mean that every detail is true. But many people–and the criminal justice system–seem to believe that if you can disprove one part of a victim's story, then the entire story is false. I believe people should be considered innocent unless proven guilty, but I also believe that a certain number of these cases involved a seed of truth that got buried.”

There's a really problematic paragraph in there, which is this:

“Americans prefer black-and-white problems with simple answers,” Lanning says. “Society seems to especially have a problem addressing any sexual-victimization case in which the adult offender is not completely ‘bad’ or the child victim is not completely ‘good.’ Part of the appeal of Satanic ritual abuse was that when someone we knew molested a child after our protection efforts had failed, it was easier to escape guilt by blaming it on an evil Satanist who was part of a cunning and highly organized group. However, even without the Satanic element, the sexual victimization of children remains a highly emotional issue, with simplistic stereotypes of offenders as evil predators and victims as innocent angels still prevalent and problematic.”

I find this a totally inappropriate way to discuss sexual abuse of children. The predators ARE evil and the victims ARE innocent. To suggest otherwise is disgusting.

The interesting question, which I have still yet to see discussed is, "What is it in us that makes us willing to believe it?" When the McMaster thing broke, I remember that there was NO pushback on it for months. There wasn't a republican/Democratic or religious/non-religious divide. Everyone's reaction was "WTF! WHAT happened? How could that happen?" There will be those here who say, "Oh, I never believed it," but I think that's hindsight. The nation was very credible about it for a long time until the really crazy stories started coming out.

And finally, I do have to say this: if you were a kid growing up in Yonkers, NY in the 70s, you knew about the weird guys in black robes who paraded around Untermeyer Park (now a very beautiful botanical garden, but then an abandoned park full of crumbling, eerie structures), about the old pump house with upside down crosses and pentagrams painted on the walls, and you heard about the frequent findings in the area of german shepherds who had been killed by having their throats cut. And then you were very shocked when Son of Sam turned out to have been a member of that group, and other purported members of the group died very young in violent accidents or murders. It had nothing to do with child abuse, but there was at least one group cosplaying devil worship, and that group was involved in some really terrible things.

(I suspect I will take some heat for this post, but there it is.)