How Canada tricked the world into believing murderous Satanists were everywhere | National Post

It was, quite simply, a case of temporary global insanity. And it all started with a single lurid Canadian book.

“You never see him all at once—he’s always distorted and he’s not quite substantial, more like a vapor … It turns to look at me and it’s all uhhh l-l-l-like all black …I’m scared! Scared. I’m scared!” goes the passage in Michelle Remembers describing Michelle Smith’s encounter with Satan.

Published in 1980 and written by Smith’s psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder, it is the purported “true story” of Smith’s childhood as the prisoner of a Satanic cult in Victoria in the mid-1950s.

The entire book comes from 600 hours of Smith’s testimony in Pazder’s office, delivered in the voice of a child while she was in a trance-like state.

How Canada tricked the world into believing murderous Satanists were everywhere | National Post

UPDATED::Fran Keller's Satanic Conviction Overturned | Houston Press

UPDATE::  Dan, Fran Keller to get $3.4 million in ‘satanic day care’ case

Dan and Fran Keller, who spent more than 21 years in prison after they were accused of sexually abusing children during supposed satanic rituals at their South Austin day care facility, will receive $3.4 million from a state fund for those wrongly convicted of crimes.

Shortly after receiving the news Tuesday, an ecstatic Fran Keller said they will no longer have to live on the brink of destitution, unable to find jobs at their ages and with their convictions, even if overturned by the state’s highest criminal court.

“This means we don’t have to worry about pinching pennies on Social Security, and late bills. It means we will actually be free. We can start living — and no more nightmares,” said Fran Keller, 67.

UPDATE::  A declaration of innocence in Austin ‘satanic day care’ case 

Nearly two years after the state’s highest criminal court overturned the child sexual abuse convictions for day care owners Dan and Fran Keller, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore will file court documents Tuesday declaring them “actually innocent” under the law and dropping pending charges against them.

 

The decision will resolve all outstanding criminal issues for the Kellers, who were convicted in 1992 and served more than 21 years in prison in a case that generated national headlines amid allegations that they performed satanic rituals on the children. The couple, now elderly and described by their lawyer as destitute, has been free on bond since 2013 and will each be able to apply for $80,000 for every year mistakenly spent in prison.

“I believe under the law that I am charged with this responsibility — and it is my personal decision,” Moore told the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV.

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I can't believe that after 20+ years this case is still being written about.  By the sounds of it, we will still be writing about if for years to come:

Unfortunately for the Kellers, an overturned conviction is not exoneration, which prosecutors oppose, though no evidence supports the case against the Kellers. There’s a fine legal distinction at play here, and possibly compensation for the more than 20 years the Kellers spent in prison. In short, the Kellers are no longer guilty of anything, but the charges against them remain in place. For the time being, they are in the position of having to prove their innocence. In other words, they are stuck having to prove, as Fran Keller has said, a negative.

Beginning in 1991, Fran and Dan Keller, who ran a day care out of their Austin home, committed unspeakable acts against their charges — they put one in a swimming pool with a baby-eating shark; they forced the kids to watch as they dismembered an infant;  they flew the children to Mexico, where they were raped by soldiers, before flying them back to the day care in time to be picked up by their parents.

Except, possibly, just maybe, perhaps, none of that ever happened. Incredibly, even though the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday overturned the charges against Fran Keller because of "false evidence," the court denied her claims of actual innocence.

[,,,]
The Kellers were convicted just as the "Satanic panic" — a tide of accusations of ritualized sexual abuse often coinciding with "recovered memories" — was winding down. The Kellers' trial took place two years after the debacle of California's McMartin Preschool trial, the touchstone flagship Satanic panic case that should have put the nail in the coffin of this most unfortunate and embarrassing period of American jurisprudence. But, unfortunately for the Kellers, word hadn't reached Travis County prosecutors in time.

The Kellers appealed, and Fran was released on bond in 2013, at age 63. By that time, Michael Mouw, the physician who testified to the evidence of sexual abuse, had recanted, saying he was mistaken. And it's because of that that the Texas CCA finally tossed Fran's conviction. Not because of the complete lack of evidence of baby-eating sharks.

Judge Cheryl Johnson was apparently baffled by her colleagues' reasoning — she wrote in a concurring opinion that the court should go ahead and find Keller innocent. (We'd like to see Johnson's rough draft, which almost certainly had to include the phrase "Are y'all fuckin' nuts?")

Fran Keller's Satanic Conviction Overturned | Houston Press

See also:

Is Shaken Baby Syndrome the New Satanic Panic? A New Doc Reveals The Same "Experts" Behind Both | L.A. Weekly

And as devil worshipping charges faded away in the early '90s, the three doctors began promoting a new danger: Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Satanic Ritual Abuse and Shaken Baby Syndrome are more similar than they sound. In both cases, the expert speak for the victim. The discredited Satanic Ritual Abuse cases proved that adults were able to pressure children to swear to all sorts of falsehoods. (One child identified Chuck Norris as his abuser.) The infants and toddlers who are alleged victims of Shaken Baby Syndrome are either dead, or too young to explain what happened. Thus a doctor's educated opinion becomes crucial—even if that doctor is adhering to incorrect “proof” of abuse.

Northwestern University Law Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer estimates that approximately 95 percent of defendants are found guilty once formally accused of maiming or killing babies through violent shaking, and that 1,000 innocent people may be in prison right now. Public belief in Shaken Baby Syndrome is so strong that Congress has long deemed the third week of April National Shaken Baby Awareness Week, and 18 states require hospitals to instruct new parents about the threat to infants from Shaken Baby Syndrome.

In The Syndrome, Goldsmith reveals that the doctors who frothed up Satanic Panic moved on to shape the next crisis. Chadwick, Reece and Jenny have all served as advisors to, or on the board of directors of, the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome in Farmington, Utah. They've defined new medical terminology in medical books which they've promoted to doctors, hospitals, and law enforcers. With hundreds of doctors following their lead, Goldsmith's documentary argues, the three helped trigger a surge of Shaken Baby Syndrome prosecutions — convictions now increasingly discredited by multiple media investigations, outspoken scientists and doctors, and attorney-led innocence projects that seek to free condemned baby shakers from U.S. prisons.

“When I put it all together, it was like being electrocuted,” says Goldsmith. “It's pretty damning.”

[,,,]

The Syndrome interviews several medical experts who openly dispute the once-undisputed Shaken Baby Syndrome theory. Three major skeptics are Dr. Patrick Barnes of Stanford, who once believed it and now testifies in court against it, Dr. Ronald Uscinski of Georgetown who decries the hysteria as “pure Hell,” and pathologist Dr. John Plunkett, who tested bio-mechanical dummies to determine how much shaking was needed to scramble the brains of an infant or toddler.

Plunkett's findings have sparked a growing acceptance that the thin science underlying Shaken Baby Syndrome theory is wrong. For one, the three hidden symptoms such as blood behind the eyes can't be created without causing whiplash to the neck. Yet, The Syndrome points out that there has never been any serious neck damage in any of the Shaken Baby Syndrome cases, according to records from hundreds of prosecutions.


[,,,]
It's important to pin down exactly what Plunkett and the other experts do and don't believe. They do believe that child abuse exists. They do believe that shaking babies is injurious. They don't believe that the definition and diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome is accurate or useful. And they don't believe that everyone convicted of it is guilty, or got a fair trial in court or the media.

Dr. Jenny admits during a lecture in the documentary that “the assumptions we're making really cannot be validated at this time by the scientific literature.” Adds Chadwick, “Let's let it be controversial for awhile — until we find better data.”

Is Shaken Baby Syndrome the New Satanic Panic? A New Doc Reveals The Same "Experts" Behind Both | L.A. Weekly

Satanic child abuse claims are almost certainly based on false memories | Chris French | Science | The Guardian

If the situation is different this time and there exists forensic evidence to support the claims being made, it is vital that such evidence is passed to the police as soon as possible. But this looks unlikely. As Lumbasi says in the Scottish Express, “In most cases, we can’t blame the police for not taking action. If they have no actual evidence such as names, times or places to go with, what can they do?”

Keep in mind as you're reading this article that French is raising doubts about the specific claims made by the charities. These claims state that satanic abuse, involving child and animal sacrifice and other extreme behaviors, is rife in Scotland and has been for decades. Very similar to claims that were widespread in the US in the 1980s and 90s (the Satanic Panic) but were never substantiated with physical evidence. Instead, there is strong evidence to support the idea that the claims were either based upon the use of inappropriate dubious memory recovery techniques or inappropriate child interview techniques

“EXCLUSIVE: Charities claim that the satanic abuse of children is rife” screamed the headline in the Express on Sunday earlier this month. The piece reports that two charities, Kilmarnock-based Break the Silence and Dundee-based Izzy’s Promise, believe satanic abuse to be rife in Scotland and that it has been for decades. They say children are forced to take part in satanic rituals involving the sacrifice of babies and the making of snuff movies. According to Kate Short of Break the Silence, “Victims are so brainwashed they don’t dare to speak out.” These are obviously extremely serious allegations – but are they true?

A similar, although more detailed, story ran on the same day in the Scottish Express. Both stories point out that Police Scotland has said it is taking the allegations “incredibly seriously”. Following the Jimmy Savile child sex abuse scandal, it would be very surprising if they had said anything else. We now know that many of Savile’s victims had complained of being abused at his hands at the time the abuse was taking place and that they were ignored by those in authority. That this happened is a disgrace and the result was that Savile was free to abuse dozens, possibly hundreds, more victims.

Have complaints of extreme satanic abuse been routinely made over the years and similarly ignored or suppressed by the authorities? A comment from Short suggests otherwise. She is quoted as saying that “survivors often suppressed their memories of such harrowing childhood events and therefore the specific details are vague, meaning they can be written off as suffering from of ‘false memory syndrome’ or mental illness.”

Similarly, Joseph Lumbasi, project coordinator with Izzy’s Promise, states that, “People who talk to us are relating us their experiences from when they were maybe just eight, nine or ten – kids really.” In other words, it appears highly likely that many of these claims are based upon “recovered memories”. As I have written in the past in these pages, the use of various dubious techniques by therapists and counsellors aimed at recovering allegedly repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse can often produce detailed and horrific false memories.
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In fact, there is a consensus among scientists studying memory that traumatic events are more likely to be remembered than forgotten, often leading to posttraumatic stress disorder. So despite widespread acceptance among the general public, legal professionals, and those working in mental health, the very notion of repression as described by Short is doubted by the majority of memory researchers.

The sad truth is that we have been here before. On 13 March 1990, the headline of the Daily Mirror read, “Kids forced into satan orgies”. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had reported that satanic abuse was widespread in the UK.

Satanic child abuse claims are almost certainly based on false memories | Chris French | Science | The Guardian

Mazes, Monsters, Charlatans, Satan and Suicide: A Short History of the Satanic Panic - disinformation

A flashback to the 80s and the mentality that originally sucked me in and nearly destroyed my life. A bit of Jack Chick and his Chick Tracts, the James Dallas Egbert III mess, Patricia Pulling, "former" Satanists John Todd and Mike Warnke, even Tipper Gore gets a mention among others.  A good primer on the history!

One of my favorite pieces of Satanic Panic-era propaganda has to be Jack Chick’s “Dark Dungeons” religious tract. One of hundreds of such tracts created by evangelist Chick, “Dark Dungeons” is the story of two young women led astray by the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. One of them, Marcie, commits suicide after her thief character “Black Leaf” dies and the other, Debbie, is initiated into witchcraft after her cleric character Elfstar advances to eighth level. As the diabolical Dungeon Master “Ms. Frost” leads Debbie further from the loving arms of Jesus, her mysterious friend “Mike” pops up to tell her that she’s in grave danger. Following a visit to a mustachioed minister, Debbie repents and burns all of her D&D materials instead of saving them to sell on eBay in twenty years when she needs beer money.

Gamers, as well as most people with an ounce of sense, see “Dark Dungeons” for the hysterical kitsch it is, and rather than angering D&D players, it mostly amused them. I know my group loved it (“Where’s the real spells?” “No, Black Leaf!”) when we were kids. My parents didn’t buy into the Satan rumors that surrounded the game, or anything else I liked. Not all of my friends were so lucky: They had to hide fantasy novels, D&D manuals, heavy metal albums and other “Satanic” materials to keep them from being burned or thrown away by their parents. Others suffered in far worse ways: They were sent to camps for “troubled youth” or private Christian schools.

Mazes, Monsters, Charlatans, Satan and Suicide: A Short History of the Satanic Panic - disinformation