Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

242 Satanic Ritual Abuse
murders in 1989. Although the Matamoros group
did not actually worship the Devil, it contained
more elements that could be interpreted to fit the
Satanic cult stereotype than Manson—hence its
adoption as a primary example by believers in
Satanic ritual abuse.
All of these factors contributed to the emergence
of a significant antisatanist literature within
the conservative Christian subculture. The first
important book containing the personal confessions
of an alleged ex-Satanist was Mike Warnke’s
1972 The Satan Seller, which went on to sell
hundreds of thousands of copies. Warnke, who
asserted that he had been a Satanic high priest,
claimed he had attended secret strategy meetings
with, among others, Anton LaVey and Charles
Manson. As noted by Christian writers Bob and
Gretchen Passantino, “the Satan Seller’s two chief
contributions to the development of Christian
sensationalism concerning Satanism were, first,
widespread conspiracy theories; and, second, the
incorporation of the earlier trend to use unsubstantiated
personal experience stories as ‘proof’ of
one’s assertions regarding the occult.” It is interesting
to note that the first edition of The Satan
Seller, which was published well before the
Satanic panic of the 1980s, fails to mention child
abduction, child sacrifice, or child pornography
rings—all of which would become central to the
stereotype of Satanic cults in the following
decade. In fact, when the SRA scare first broke,
Warnke initially admitted on Christian television
that he was unaware of child sacrifices. However,
after this aspect of the Satanic conspiracy became
dominant in the public’s mind, he changed his
tune and began to claim that “devil cults” yearly
sacrifice some 2 million children.
Though Warnke’s book would eventually
inspire many imitators, the threshold book that has
been identified as the key publication setting the
Satanic panic into motion was Michelle Remembers.
This work, purporting to present a true story based
on the recovered memories of Michelle Smith,
provided the remaining components of SRA ideology,
namely the key concept of Satanic ritual abuse,
plus a paradigm for recovering repressed memories
of such abuse through what became known as
recovered memory therapy.
Michelle Remembers described extreme physical
and sexual abuse supposedly subjected upon
Smith when she was a child. The horror story she
told from her psychiatrist’s couch struck such a
cord that the Vatican investigated her claims and
Hollywood offered her a movie contract. Dedicated
to His Satanic Majesty from the age of five
by her own mother, Smith claimed to have
witnessed murder, extreme debauchery, the mutilation
of animals, and the sacrifice of babies. She
was forced to eat worms and drink blood. As
noted by Bruce A. Robinson, the chief architect
behind the Ontario Consultants for Religious
Tolerance,
she described the perpetrators as Satanists
who believed that the pain inflicted upon
their victims increased their magical powers.
The group also allegedly engaged in human
sacrifice and cannibalism. Michelle
Remembers was the model for a number of
copy-cat books. There were no documented
cases of SRA survivors prior to 1980.
However, many such cases suddenly appeared
in the wake of the success of Michelle
Remembers. Emergent court cases uncovered
abuse situations precisely like (or almost
identical to) Michelle’s. Subsequent
investigations, such as the one conducted by
the authors of Satan’s Silence, revealed that
the book was a hoax. The rituals described by
the coauthor Dr. Lawrence Pazder appear to
have been loosely based on his studies of
indigenous African religions. (Robinson in
Lewis 2001)
Pazder, who apparently coined the expression
“ritual abuse,” left his wife to marry his patient.
Reciprocating, Smith left her husband to marry
her therapist, Dr. Pazder.
Concerned that a network of secret Satanists
might really exist, law enforcement officials began
to take charges of SRA seriously in the 1980s. It
quickly became evident, however, that there was
no hard evidence. Often investigators went to
extreme lengths and great expense to recover
physical evidence. For instance, in the Paul Ingram
ritual abuse case, the forensic archeologist