CONTENT WARNING: This week's episode contains mentions of child abuse, animal mutilation, suicide, and more.

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing the Satanic Panic, which spanned the 1980s and into the 1990s here in the United States. It was a phenomenon that alleged that mass child abuse across the United States all had ties back to satanic cults. This phenomenon originated with the 1980 publication of a book titled Michelle Remembers in which a woman wrote of her journey of undergoing memory therapy and alleging that she had discovered repressed memories of years of satanic ritualistic abuse. This moral panic was exacerbated a few years later in 1983 when a woman here in California accused her son’s preschool, the McMartin Preschool, of abusing him. The McMartin Preschool trial would become the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American History.

Over the course of the Satanic Panic, these satanic ritual abuse theories would extend to alleging that teachers were engaging in human sacrifices, that McDonald’s was funding the Church of Satan, that listening to rock music was a sure sign that you were a devil worshipper, and so much more.

People would serve time behind bars for the unsubstantiated, alleged crimes, and families would be torn apart forever. At the end of the day, there would be more than 12,000 accusations made across the country with not a single one of them containing verifiable, supporting evidence.

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- Rachel and Leah