A MOST HAZARDOUS EXPORT

Jul 17
5 min read

You should know about one of Victoria's greatest exports. It's not Nelly Furtado or Taya Valkyrie. No, it's not Emily Carr, either. It's not a person. Victoria, BC is the birthplace of the globe-spanning hysteria now known as the Satanic Panic. Particularly during the ‘80s and ‘90s (objectively the greatest time to be alive), Satan was everywhere. Though things were percolating in the early 1970s, popular culture began consuming an ever-hotter and evermore full-bodied brew of heavy metal music throughout the ‘80s. That genre of music arrived alongside an explosion of slasher/horror films and the notorious and tremendously popular Dungeons & Dragons table-top role-playing game. All of this yielded the greatest mass conversion of pearls to calcium carbonate dust the world has ever seen. Mothers and youth pastors across the English-speaking world, who for 20 years had been complaining of a noticeable decline in faith, were positively certain that godless monsters fuelled on Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Iron Maiden were organizing and coming for their children.

But, as it would turn out, all of that was just the precursor. The full-on panic only erupted after Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist, Dr Lawrence Pazder (a devout Catholic, it might be noted), gifted the world their book Michelle Remembers in 1980 and also the term ritual abuse. Framed as a factual account and backed by Pazder’s credentials, the book described Pazder’s miraculous recovery of Smith’s lost childhood memories — memories of horrific ritual abuse at the hands of a Satanic cult in Victoria, British Columbia, during the 1950s. Specifically, Michelle "uncovered" her terrifying tale of murder, torture, abduction, and molestation. The claims included that she was taken from her family and groomed to participate in an 81-day-long ritual to call forth the devil himself — in which she was locked in a cage with snakes, witnessed the ritual execution of children, and was forced to participate in cannibalism. Michelle also explained to her mental health professional that amidst all this she was also saved by the miraculous intervention of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

Well, in no time, amateurs and experts in the mental health professions were teasing similar accounts (by a strict practice of suggestion and leading questions) out of anyone who would submit to them (or, more often, who would give their children over to such fraudulent, pseudoscientific methods.) And soon more experts, accusers, and books emerged. When Oprah ("My next guest was used also in worshipping the devil, participated in human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism"), Geraldo Rivera ("A Nationwide network of Satanic criminals exists"), ABC’s 20/20, NPR, and others in the amplification sphere noticed the trend and got on the case, things really went off the rails. A whole community of self-described Satanic Ritual Abuse educators and specialists began offering trainings convincing police and other authorities all of this was very real. If they would just look hard enough they would see the whole continent was swarming with baby-eating devil worshippers.

The best part of this whole saga was that in response to the book the Church of Satan and its founder Anton LaVey swiftly brought a defamation suit against Pazder and his publisher, calling Michelle Remembers “defamatory, libelous" and exclaiming that it had resulted in a grievous "loss of reputation." Wanda Slattery, a witch in the Church of Satan, called the account in the book “poppycock” and told filmmakers interviewing her for a documentary on the whole episode, “I cannot believe this story got past an editor’s desk.”

But with so many accounts, so much smoke, there just had to be fires. And so folks were determined to catch and destroy anyone an accuser was happy to point a finger at. To do so would require the most egregious professional and ethical misconduct. Authorities were keen to play their role, drawing up charges and levelling harsh convictions even without any evidence or corroboration of any kind. What’s particularly amazing about this is that accusers’ accounts commonly involved forest ritual sites, elaborate hidden tunnel networks, claims of mass graves, horrific physical injuries, and more; every one of which, by definition, requires an abundance of distinctive physical evidence. None of that existed. And, of course, they arrived at this place because no one cared even to see if any of Michelle's claims even made sense. No one had even thought to see if, for instance, if the mausoleum at the Ross Bay Cemetery, pictured in the book, was even large enough to accommodate an elaborate ritual involving hundreds of people or if this could take place with residential homes close by on three sides. No one thought to check to see if there were police reports, despite many claims of many calls to police. There were none. No one thought to look and see if there was evidence of a fatal car crash up on the Malahat at the time suggested. No crash took place. And what really didn't matter were the first-hand denials of any sort of harm to Michelle according to her siblings and parents.

Given that there was zero physical substantiation of anything in the book or any accusations precipitated by it, folks leaned heavily on their firmly held and entirely blind belief in the evidence-free accounts of accusers and, well, magic. As a result, hundreds of people were rounded up, charged, and convicted, with many locked away without anything approximating proof and therefore securely within, not beyond, a reasonable doubt.

In one famous instance, over 300 charges were levelled against seven defendants. After a seven-year-long trial costing many millions of dollars, no meaningful evidence emerged supporting the original accusations. Still, careers, reputations, lives, and families were destroyed. In another case, in 1993, three teenagers were tried for murdering three other boys, with prosecutors claiming the killings were part of a Satanic ritual resulting from the boys’ interests in metal music and occult imagery. The three were convicted and sat in prison for 18 years despite the case, like many others at this time, being fabricated out of a coerced confession and backed by no physical evidence. They were only released in 2011 after public outcry and new DNA evidence. Four others accused of Satanic Ritual Abuse in 1994 were only finally exonerated and released from prison, because everything brought against them was fiction, in 2016. Instances like this took place across the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, South Africa, and Brazil.

To me, the most salient fact here is that, since the late ‘90s, people have insisted that all of these widespread institutional, professional, legal, and moral failings brought about serious and lasting reforms to the world of psychology, law, and policing. They talk about eliminating poor practices, implementing higher standards for evidence, and providing better training across the board. They even claim as much at present. I don’t see any evidence of any of the above and could argue without trouble that the Satanic Panic, with tepid modifications and rebranding, is going strong today.