Nonexistence of satanic abuse.
Jeffrey S. Victor (Satanic Panic), Robert D. Hicks (In Pursuit of Satan), Debbie Nathan (essays in Women and Other Aliens and in Richardson), Shawn Carlson et.al. (Satanism in America), Philip Jenkins (Intimate Enemies), and essayists in The Satanism Scare (ed. James T. Richardson, et.al.) all conclude that contrary to popular beliefs, there are no secret satanic cults torturing, molesting, or murdering and eating children. Although these writers come from a variety of disciplines, none are literary or cultural critics. Some have joined the advisory board of the FMS Foundation, while others adopt the tone of an educated intellectual looking at superstitions of the yahoos. None ask why believing in the drooling monsters under the bed has become so ideologically necessary and appealing for so many Americans.
The idea of satanic abuse is a legitimate subject of cultural criticism even if there really are satanic child abusers (Blacks commit crimes, yet portrayals of Blacks as innate criminals are still racist), but if belief in such fables is unfounded, they become even more interesting. Most narratives of satanic abuse have impossible elements that are more or less integral to the plot, and we are asked to accept the improbable (torture, murder, cannibalism) on the same basis as the impossible. Despite the authors' genuine sincerity, all the accounts I have seen can be classed as partly or wholly fictional on the basis of these impossible elements. In addition, the idea of satanic abuse in general is wildly improbable and directly contrary to the way religions and people behave.
Impossibilities in satanic narratives.
The first satanic abuse accounts to emerge, Michelle Remembers (Michelle Smith & Lawrence Pazder) and Satan's Underground (Lauren Stratford) were religious evangelical books that integrate a number of supernatural events (personal appearances by Satan, demonic poltergeism, etc.) into the plot. The popularized case study Lessons In Evil (Gail Carr Feldman) features reincarnation. All three of these books ask us to accept their claims of satanic murder and child eating on the same basis as their claims of miracles--on the word of the satanic victim. Another case study, Suffer the Child (Judith Spencer), simply reports "Jenny's" superstitions without critical comment, just as the author never thinks to interrogate or question Jenny's accounts of satanic abuse.
Most of the narratives, including the largely miracle- free autobiography Satan's Child (Laura Buchanan) contain scientific or medical impossibilities. The acid in gastric juices is not strong enough to cause a serious skin rash, as Buchanan thinks it is (Satan's Child 46). Stratford writes that a healthy teenager became "emaciated," and died of an overdose, after just six weeks of drug use (59), quite a feat. Feldman's patient "Barbara" thinks her mother fed her the rat poison D-Con in an effort to abort Barbara's pregnancy, (176-77), but the symptoms she describes (vomiting) are atypical and inconsistent with the internal bleeding an actual overdosage of Warfarin (D-Con's active ingredient) would cause (Physician's Desk Reference 963-65). Spencer's "Jenny" thinks the satanists routinely tortured her by pulling out her fingernails (300-01), an operation very likely to cause death from shock, and from which her nails would have regenerated poorly and visibly deformed instead of "well manicured" (173). Finally, in Michelle Remembers, satanists use knives to cut dead infants in half and to amputate the limbs of adult corpses like they were slicing bread (Smith and Pazder 162, 198)--deeds that would normally require a bone saw. These events could not have happened, but the satanic victims report them as experiences just as genuine as those of satanic abuse.
The authors of two accounts, Satan's Underground and Michelle Remembers, have been investigated by journalists. Both authors present themselves as only children, with no siblings to help them survive the satanic tortures. In fact, both have older sisters who repudiate their stories (Smith investigated in Grescoe; Stratford in Passantino, et.al) Since Michelle Remembers received an advance (in 1980 dollars) of $100,000 for the hardcover and a quarter million for the paperback, Smith and Pazder may not have been primarily concerned with the truth. In my own examination of the book, I noticed a puzzling inconsistency of dates, as Michelle's remembering begins either in 1976, in 1977, or some time after an earlier regimen of psychotherapy ended in 1977, depending on which page you consult. Evidently Smith and Pazder shifted dates around to fit a numerological scheme (284), then failed to alter all the dates consistently. The investigators of Satan's Underground were thorough, finding that the book has almost no correspondence to the actual events of Stratford's life.
Origins of modern satanic fables.
That Stratford's and Smith & Pazder's evangelical books are the most clearly fictitious is not surprising, since the current fable that there is a secret conspiracy of evil devil worshipers started as Christian fundamentalist propaganda (Richardson, et.al. Introduction). The immense popularity of newly invented or imported religions, called "cults," in the later 1960's and early 70's was seen as a profound threat to Christianity by some Christians, who began turning out anti-cult propaganda. That the newly invented religions included neopagan "witchcraft" and "satanic" churches gave new life to Christian sermons of hellfire and brimstone. Anton LaVey's Church of Satan (founded 1966), among others, could be invoked as definitive proof both of Satan's existence and of the imminent end of the world. These human "satanists" were however unable to live up to the image of demonic evil ascribed to them, and Christians such as Mike Warnke (The Satan Seller, 1972) invented much more satisfying imaginary satanists that could do so (that Warnke's book is fictive is established in Trott & Hertenstein's "Selling Satan").
These imaginary satanists became child abusers in the early 1980's, as numerous psychiatric patients, most of them raised in or converted to Christian fundamentalism, began claiming to have been victimized as children by satanic cults (Nathan, Women 158, Mulhern). Accustomed to real cases of horrific adult mistreatment of children, therapists who would have dismissed stories of demonic evildoers bent on preparing the world for the coming of the Antichrist accepted the same tall tales when they were recast in terms of those demonic evildoers abusing children (especially if they themselves were religious fundamentalists).
Called by more euphemistic, secular names like "cult," "ritual," or most recently "sadistic abuse," fables of satanic abuse have moved far from their fundamentalist origins and are now widely accepted in the New Age culture of therapy, 12 step programs, and self-help. Even some feminists have accepted satanic abuse as an example of male abuse of women and children, to the point that Ms. devoted a cover to the fable, asking us to "BELIEVE IT! Cult Ritual Abuse Exists" (Jan/Feb. 1993 cover).
This widespread belief is based on an uncritical acceptance of the simple and seductive fables told by people in therapy who, usually in a trance state, have recovered "memories" of being tortured by satanists (the unreliability of hypnotic trance memories is discussed in chapter eight). Seduced by the fable's appeal, satanic believers then use faulty reasoning and dubious scholarship to bolster that acceptance. Christian antisatanist propaganda and tabloid or sensational media accounts become reference works. Teenagers' heavy metal fads, designed to offend as many authority figures as possible, become sinister indications of satanism among youth. The occult literature I have read is an indeterminate hodgepodge of poetry, mysticism, and obfuscation, but satanic believers literal-mindedly read murderously sinister intent into it in a way that is not just simplistic but almost simple minded.
Illogic of satanic fables.
All of the critics cited at the start of this section agree that no corroborating material evidence (corpses, gnawed babies) has ever been found, nor, from my own reading, does the occult literature put out by the Church of Satan or other groups, despite antisatanist propaganda to the contrary, endorse, condone, or instruct in methods of torture, murder, cannibalism, or sex with children. Since all evidence indicates there are no baby eaters or manuals for baby eaters today, there certainly could not have been any in the 1950's and 60's, well before the recent occult fad, when many of the now adult satanic victims were supposedly being abused as children. Despite their interest in the sensational, newspapers published in the 1950's never even speculated that such things might happen (Jenkins & Maier-Katkin 137). Simplistic conspiracy theories aside, this total lack of written or physical evidence means that any satanic child abusing groups that might exist must be small, isolated, and maniacally secretive.
Supposing satanic groups that kill and eat infants as a religious rite do exist, such sects must behave like other religions. Most satanic victims agree that satanists have been around for centuries and that satanists are otherwise seemingly normal people who participate in mainstream culture. Since abhorrence of cannibalism and murder are part of mainstream culture, in the time since their sect began the satanists would have changed in response to the world like any other religion, most likely dropping or inventing elaborate excuses for their rites of murder and cannibalism. Like any other religion, they would have schismed into numerous subsects with divergent theologies and rituals (many eschewing murder and cannibalism) and would carefully catechize their children in the proper beliefs. Yet the personal narratives of numerous satanic victims are identical in broad themes and small details, and all include accounts of murder and cannibalism, while most narratives portray satanic rituals as incomprehensible to the child and depict either no or a haphazard catechizing, done through "brainwashing" and torture (again, abhorrent practices in mainstream culture). All published accounts of satanic abuse make the satanists totally inhuman bogeymen rather than believable people with consistent religious beliefs.
Some satanic believers argue that satanic cults are unlike other religions because their members are sociopaths, that is, mentally ill in such a way that they do the opposite of what is socially accepted and expected. While there are a few rare people called serial killers who do rape, torture, murder, and sometimes eat people, they act alone. If the putative groups doing satanic abuse are made up of sociopaths, we must assume the existence of people whose pathology is as great as a serial killer's yet who are willing to interact and cooperate with others. Several of these uniquely pathological individuals must meet to form a single satanic abusing group. Such groups would be extraordinarily rare and small, almost certainly urban, and composed of unrelated individuals (mostly single males). Yet narratives of satanic victims diverge radically from this description, many placing the satanists in small towns, usually with a large "all in the family" cult in which both women and men participate in victimizing their own children.
A group whose worship required rites of torture, murder, incest, and cannibalism of members' children could easily exist only in a culture that considered such deeds normal. In American cultures those deeds are abnormal, abhorrent, and sociopathic; such a group of Americans could not be one of sane people. However, there are not enough sociable serial killers in the world to account for the numerous satanic victims who have come forward in the past fifteen years. Nor do these putative satanists behave at all like people in other criminal organizations. None of them has ever betrayed their group to the press or police out of personal animosity, rivalry for power, or change of heart. In all likelihood, satanic victims are investing their own paranoid fears into an imaginary monster under the bed rather than describing a real religion or criminal group, sane or insane.
Since the existence among us of secret groups of murderous incestuous cannibals is so very unlikely today, such stories would have been ludicrous in earlier times, when the population was lower, urban anonymity was difficult to find and communities were more intimate, and a more than superficial Christianity was compulsory. That such stories did exist from Roman times (and earlier) to the early nineteenth century, as discussed in the next chapter, indicates the extraordinary ideological appeal of this fable of imaginary subversive deviants.