No one knew that under their neighbors’ sweet gentle smiles was something so bad it took years to finally start talking about it. The Satanic Panic was a mass panic that affected Canada and some of the U.S. in the 1980s. The Panic gained attention because of the book Michelle Remembers, published in 1981, about a girl who was a victim of satanic ritual abuse. This led to a great number of accusations, one being the McMartin case in which a preschool was put on trial for allegedly ritually abusing their students; another case was the Martinville case which was about a daycare that ritually abused their kids. The book Michelle Remembers informed the public about satanic rituals, but also contributed to many false accusations of such. The Satanic Panic was a mass panic that originated in Canada and spread to the U.S. The Panic centered on communities concerned with groups that worshiped the devil in a ritualistic way, especially ones with kids as their main focus for victims. CBC News states that the Panic claimed that satanic messages are in music such as heavy metal meant to “affect the young,” and that games such as Dungeons and Dragons would …show more content…
The McMartin preschool trial took place in Manhattan Beach, California where a 39-year-old psychotic mother accused Virgina McMartin, ‘the owner of the preschool,’ her daughter, her two grandkids, and three other teachers of molesting her 2-year-old child. The Council of Institutional Investigators, also known as the CII, interviewed the children who went to the preschool. The CII claimed that “more than 90% of the 400 preschoolers experienced sexual abuse” New York Times stated the kids used dolls to show the CII what had happened to them and due to the book Michelle Remembers sexual and ritual abuse was just starting to be talked about and people all around the world did not know quite yet how to handle