Remembering What Never Happened

Summary

Podcast Summary: Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Episode: Remembering What Never Happened

Introduction

Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, hosted by Christianity Today, delves into the infamous Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s in America. This episode, titled Remembering What Never Happened, explores the origins, key figures, and devastating consequences of the hysteria that led to wrongful accusations, failed convictions, and the destruction of innocent lives. Through detailed narratives and expert insights, the episode seeks to understand how fear and misinformation overshadowed reality, diverting attention from genuine moral and spiritual issues within society and institutions.

---

1. The Genesis of Satanic Panic: Jay's Journal and Beatrice Sparks

The episode begins by examining the publication of Jay's Journal, a book edited by Beatrice Sparks, which purportedly chronicled the troubled life of Alden Barron, later renamed Jay. Sparks aimed to use Jay's story to prevent teen suicides and shed light on the struggles of adolescence.

• Rick Emerson, author of Unmask Alice, critiques Sparks’ approach:

  “She definitely had the raw material there to make a compelling, honest, authentic, and respectful... there was no need to fabricate things.”
  (05:53)

Despite the genuine hardships Alden faced, Sparks infused the narrative with sensational elements such as occult practices and supernatural events, deviating from Barron's actual experiences.

---

2. Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith: The Evolution of Repressed Memory Theory

The story transitions to Lawrence Pazder, a psychologist who played a pivotal role in the Satanic Panic through his work with Michelle Smith. Pazder advocated for the theory of recovered memory, which posits that traumatic experiences can be repressed and later retrieved through therapy.

• Lawrence Pazder discusses his work with Smith:

  “The evidence is clear that this came from an experience that Michelle had... it's a story of hope.”
  (05:53)

Michelle Smith, under Pazder’s care, began to recall vivid memories of satanic ritual abuse during her childhood. Her accounts included horrific details such as animal sacrifices and supernatural rituals, which Pazder presented as genuine memories rather than creations of therapy-induced imagination.

• Michelle Smith recounts her experiences:

  “Because of the lack of cooperation that I exhibited, they placed me in a car and literally drove it over the side of a cliff with me in it. I survived that.”
  (16:17)

Pazder’s methods, though intended to heal, contributed significantly to the spread of Satanic Panic narratives by validating and disseminating unverified and exaggerated accounts of abuse.

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3. The Influence of Media and Cultural Shifts

The episode highlights the role of media and cultural shifts in fueling the Satanic Panic. The late 20th century saw an increase in horror media, conspiracy theories, and a heightened fear of the occult, which created a fertile ground for panic to take root.

• Beatrice Sparks contextualizes the era:

  “Zombie invasions, supernatural thrillers, slasher films, you name it. People are watching horror of one kind or another now more than ever.”
  (33:50)

Additionally, historical events such as the increased awareness of the Holocaust and the emergence of pro-life movements intertwined with the Satanic Panic, further intensifying fears of hidden evils within society.

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4. The McMartin Preschool Case: A Case Study in Mass Hysteria

One of the most infamous examples of the Satanic Panic was the McMartin Preschool case. The episode details how unfounded accusations of satanic ritual abuse led to one of the longest and most expensive trials in American history.

• Beatrice Sparks narrates the escalation:

  “The McMartin story began about a year earlier... the police found nothing resembling a tunnel.”
  (34:36 - 35:09)

Despite the absence of physical evidence, the Manhattan Beach Police Department's aggressive and coercive interviewing techniques with children resulted in over 300 charges against daycare staff. The methods used were later criticized for being suggestive and leading, causing false testimonies.

• Michelle Smith criticizes the interrogation process:

  “They'd push a few times and Bobby would continue to say no. Then they'd say, but wait a minute, Johnny has already told us that this happened.”
  (38:27)

Ultimately, most defendants were acquitted due to the lack of credible evidence, but the damage was irrevocable. Innocent individuals spent years in prison, and the daycare’s reputation was destroyed.

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5. Legal and Ethical Fallout

The McMartin case exposed significant flaws in the legal system's handling of allegations without substantial evidence. The prosecution's reliance on coerced testimonies led to wrongful convictions and highlighted the dangers of mass hysteria influencing judicial processes.

• Ira Reiner, Los Angeles District Attorney, reflects on the case:

  [Referencing resigning and supporting defense]
  (43:32 - 43:40)

Post-trial analyses by child psychologists and legal experts confirmed that the investigative techniques were highly coercive, leading to unreliable and fabricated testimonies from children.

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6. Long-Term Implications and Regret

The episode underscores the long-term psychological and social impacts on those wrongfully accused and the children involved. Even after acquittals, the stigma and emotional trauma endured by the accused and their families were profound.

• Fran Keller, wrongfully convicted in a similar case, shares her relief upon exoneration:

  “We're together, we're alive. We thank God every morning we wake up together.”
  (45:50)

Moreover, the episode reflects on how the Satanic Panic diverted attention from real societal issues, such as actual instances of abuse, and allowed satanic narratives to overshadow legitimate moral and ethical concerns within communities and institutions.

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7. Reflections on Gender and Power Dynamics

A significant portion of the discussion centers on gender dynamics, particularly how women’s mental health issues were pathologized and used to justify extreme measures against perceived threats. The episode explores how societal expectations of women as emotional pillars made deviations from expected behavior more susceptible to being labeled as pathological or indicative of deeper evils.

• Mike Kosper discusses societal expectations:

  “We are simultaneously expecting more from them. And when they don't deliver at our expectations, we name them as somehow inferior.”
  (30:08 - 31:12)

This framework not only facilitated the spread of Satanic Panic narratives but also perpetuated stereotypes and injustices against vulnerable populations.

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8. Conclusion: Lessons from the Satanic Panic

Remembering What Never Happened concludes by urging listeners to critically examine how fear, misinformation, and societal pressures can lead to widespread hysteria and injustice. It emphasizes the importance of evidence-based practices, ethical considerations in therapy and legal proceedings, and the need to address genuine moral and spiritual challenges without succumbing to baseless fears.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Rick Emerson on Beatrice Sparks’ approach:

  “There was no need to fabricate things.”
  (05:53)

• Lawrence Pazder on Michelle Smith’s experiences:

  “It challenges where psychiatry is, where our beliefs are... a story of hope.”
  (05:53)

• Michelle Smith describing her trauma:

  “They placed me in a car and literally drove it over the side of a cliff with me in it. I survived that.”
  (16:17)

• Beatrice Sparks on media influence:

  “Zombie invasions, supernatural thrillers, slasher films, you name it... About all of the horror we are confronting.”
  (33:50)

• Michelle Smith criticizing interrogation:

  “They'd push a few times and Bobby would continue to say no...”
  (38:27)

• Fran Keller on release:

  “We're together, we're alive. We thank God every morning we wake up together.”
  (45:50)

• Mike Kosper on societal expectations of women:

  “We are simultaneously expecting more from them... name them as somehow inferior.”
  (30:08 - 31:12)

---

Final Thoughts

This episode of Devil and the Deep Blue Sea serves as a potent reminder of the catastrophic effects unchecked panic and fear can have on individuals and society. By revisiting these dark chapters, the podcast encourages a more informed, compassionate, and rational approach to addressing moral and spiritual challenges in contemporary society.

Transcript

[Mike Kosper]

Thank you for listening to the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. The best way to support this podcast.

[Rich Perez]

Is by subscribing to Christianity Today. As a Listener, you get 25% off.

[Mike Kosper]

Your subscription and unlimited access to a platform that elevates the stories and ideas of the Kingdom of God. Claim this special [e-mail] deepblue sea that's orderct.com deepbluec all one word.

[Rich Perez]

Subscribe today and become part of conversations that matter.

[Rick Emerson]

There's no denying that how our cities and neighborhoods are shaped have a deep impact on our lives. Even more so, the design of our neighborhoods reflect our values. So who gets to shape them? You see, while it's easy to recognize a city, identifying a just one is more challenging. The urban landscape tells a story of who's prioritized and who's marginalized, what's deemed worthy of investment, and what's considered expendable. In this podcast series, we'll explore the relationship between race and place, and together in conversation with neighbors and experts, we'll unravel the threads that shape life in our cities. I'm Rich Perez and this is this great and complicated place. Join us on Spotify, itunes. Wherever you listen to podcasts, subscribe today and join the conversation.

[Beatrice Sparks]

We'll see you there.

[Mike Kosper]

This is CT Media.

[Rich Perez]

A note to listeners this story contains sensitive content including sexual abuse, child murder.

[Mike Kosper]

And dark spiritual themes, and may not.

[Rich Perez]

Be suitable for all listeners.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Want more? Devil in the Deep Blue Sea every other Monday at 9pm Eastern. Any week when we aren't dropping a new episode, we're going to be live on the CT YouTube channel and the Devil in the Deep Blue Sea Facebook page for Q and A, ask questions, hear behind the scenes stories, meet special guests, and dive even deeper into the madness of the Satanic panic. And if you're a member of the Facebook group, you can send your questions in advance. Check out our links in the show.

[Michelle Smith]

Notes.

[Beatrice Sparks]

In Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Utah sits the grave of Alden Barron. Carved into the tombstone is a poem he'd given to his mother not long before his death. It's titled Portrait of a Child and reads, the child was innocent, not knowing how well his life was spent, might find himself only too soon old bent if he had known the changes, the wrong decisions made in youthful haste. Might the small smile visible in his eyes have been displaced, even erased? Alden died by suicide in 1971. According to his family, he was a brilliant, angsty teenager. He had a troubled relationship with a girlfriend, struggled with his Mormon faith, was Curious about Eastern religion, the suicide devastated them. In 1973, Alden's mom read an article in the newspaper about Beatrice Sparks, a fellow Utah native who had edited and published Go Ask Alice, the book about teen runaways. She reached out to her, told her Alden's story, told her she had his journals. Maybe Sparks could tell Alden's story too, keep his memory alive and maybe help another family prevent another teen suicide. Sparks agreed. She changed Alden Barrett's name to Jay and published it as Jay's Journal. In her introduction to Jay's Journal, Beatrice Sparks writes, the voice of every kid hooked on drugs, alcohol or the occult joins the sad chorus. Not me. I didn't think it could ever happen to me. I was sure I could handle it. Here's Rick Emerson again, the author of Unmask Alice, the book that tells Beatrice Sparks story.

[Lawrence Pazder]

When we get to the story of Alden Barrett and Jay's journal, you know, Beatrice Sparks sort of response, you know, to all of these things, it was always that, I'm doing this for, you know, I'm doing this for the greater good. That was, you know, her response about all of these teenage diaries she supposedly edited. You know, it was that everything I do, I do for young people, I do to help young people and their families and to help them, you know, you know, to navigate these. These problems and to sort of survive these issues. And it's. It's all selfless and it's all to help young people. It's all to help children. And later, when she gets to the story of Alden Barrett, you know, if that had been her goal, again, Alden Barrett's actual life and struggles in death, that is. I mean, that is grist for, you know, a. A compelling and straightforward and, I think, helpful book about, you know, what teenagers sometimes go through and what families go through and what they go through together, and depression and alienation and substance abuse and all of those things, I mean, she definitely had the raw material there to make a compelling, honest, authentic, and respectful in the sense that it was true to the facts story of Alden Barrett. There was no need to fabricate things. And I think part of it was the fact that, you know, it immediately made it more compelling and immediately made it more of a commercial property to add in this. Yeah, this sort of all these insane fabrications about, you know, possessed house cats and a demon named Raoul appearing in your bedroom and all of this. I mean, there was no need to do that.

[Beatrice Sparks]

The book really is full of wild stuff. As Jay gets into the occult. He starts taking on magical powers. Telepathy, curses, levitation even. He and his girlfriend Tina start obscene, violent and sexual behavior. They get married in a graveyard by a satanic priest who sacrifices a kitten while they drink each other's blood. Later, they escalate even more, Roaming the countryside and slaughtering and mutilating a bull. Sparks writes, all the blood was dumped into the tub. And one by one we were baptized in it. Washing the sins and imperfections of our pre o life away. O being the occult. Our heads were anointed with a few drops of the urine we had milked out of the bull's dinghy as he was lying there. Of course, none of this stuff happened. None of it was in Alden Barrett's journal. The book ends with a final note from Sparks to the reader. Dear anybody, nobody, everybody, please let Jay not have died in vain.

[Lawrence Pazder]

I think that there was an element of true believer with her. But I feel like, as is often the case. As is often the case with, you know, as was the case with Linkletter to some degree, as was certainly the case with Nixon. You know, if you are a true believer, I mean, I think the more convinced you are of your own rightness. The more convinced you are of your own infallibility in terms of what you believe and what you deem to be right and wrong, the easier it is to justify any sort of mechanism that allows you to advance that message. You know, it is the classic ends justify the means. And if you are absolutely convinced that what you believe or what you have been told is correct, it becomes really easy to justify anything that gets between you. And disseminating that message as acceptable collateral damage. Like, if you're fighting against Hitler, you're basically, there's, like, no tool that is too far. There's no. There is no tactic that is unacceptable if your battle is against Hitler. And so, you know, I feel like it's not too hard to then jump from Hitler to Satan. Because if anything is. If anything is allowed and permissible in the fight against Hitler, Then by definition, anything must be allowed and permissible in the fight against Satan. It can get away from you pretty quickly, especially if you are convinced of your own rightness. And surrounded by people who are equally convinced of their own rightness.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Jay's journal was published in 1979. About the same time that Mike Warnke, the converted Satanist we met last week, was on the rise. The book was a massive hit. A year later came another book, this one by a psychologist named Lawrence Pasner. It described his work with a patient named Michelle Smith, including his pioneering work on recovered memory, a process where traumatic experiences that had been repressed from the conscious mind could be uncovered through psychotherapy and hypnosis. For Michelle, that meant recovering her childhood memories of violent, sexual and ritualized satanic abuse. That book Michelle remembers was an explosive hit. In the story we've told so far, everything up to this point is really just fuel and kindling piling up over two decades and shaping the moral and spiritual imagination for what was to come, Michelle remembers was the spark that lit the flame. The satanic panic was here. From Christianity Today. I'm Mike Kosper, and you're listening to Devil in the Deep Blue Sea. This season we're looking at the satanic panic and how chasing phantoms distracted us from real devils in our midst. Today's episode remembering what never happened.

[Michelle Smith]

Drawing near.

[Rich Perez]

But you spun around and you never.

[Michelle Smith]

Hear it coming when you're covering up your ear.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Something was wrong with Bertha Pappenheim. She was a woman in her late 20s, and the year was 1880. She'd been spending an enormous amount of time caring for her father, who'd fallen ill during a family vacation. And while she sat at his bedside, she began having a variety of physical and psychological symptoms. Struggles to speak or hear, partial paralysis, hallucinations, overwhelming waves of anxiety and panic. Her diagnosis was common to women in the late 19th century. Hysteria. This was the early days of the study of psychiatry, but the family happened to know a physician who was a friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud. His name was Joseph Breuer. He began long therapy sessions with Bertha that involved putting her under hypnosis and asking her leading questions. Sometimes she'd tell long fairy tales, sometimes she'd bring her hallucinations to life for them, and sometimes they probe into her memory. It was this probing into memory that led Brauer to the conclusion that the source of her psychological struggles was the trauma of watching her father fall ill and sitting at his bedside. Brower reported this to his friend Dr. Freud and reported that having found the source of her trouble and her memories, her symptoms were relieved. Freud relayed her story, referring to her as Freulein Anna O in his book Studies on Hysteria. He would write about her several more times in the years to come. For Freud, she was a near perfect case study in his arguments for psychoanalysis, verifying several of his theories. One incident recounted later, involved the patient experiencing a hysterical pregnancy. Believing that Brauer was the father. He described it as an experience of transference, where a Patient redirects feelings from one experience or relationship toward the therapist. These accounts of Anna oh were studied for decades to follow, becoming part of the foundation for psychoanalysis and the theory of repressed memory. In particular, it was that theory that shaped the work of Dr. Lawrence Pazder, and it determined the course of treatment for his own patient, Michelle Smith, when she walked into the door of his office in 1976. This wasn't the first time that he treated her.

[Rick Emerson]

I knew Michelle very well through four years of therapy.

[Beatrice Sparks]

This is Lawrence Pasder from an interview.

[Rick Emerson]

In 1980, when she came to me a year after it had been discontinued and went into a very deep level of consciousness and began to relive, essentially to see, to hear, to feel, and to tell me in detail these events for 14 months of what happened to her as a child. It was very difficult for me to decide where it was coming from. I looked to see, was it imagination? Was it hysteria? Where was it coming from? Was it psychosis? I have to say that the evidence is clear that this came from an experience that Michelle had. There has been nothing that I've been able to unearth that says it didn't. And there are many things pointing to the fact that in fact it did. And it challenges where psychiatry is, where our beliefs are, how we work with people. It brings many new horizons, but particularly it's a story of hope.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Here's Michelle Smith from that same interview.

[Rich Perez]

I had left the four years of therapy with Dr. Pastor feeling that I'd basically resolved the issues in my life that I needed to and was going on with my life very happily. When I began to feel, about a year and a half later, an increasing pressure that said there was something there that I needed to tell him, but I didn't know what it was at.

[Beatrice Sparks]

The time, including in this interview with Jack Webster on Canadian television. Pastor denied using hypnosis as part of Michelle's therapy, which was already under suspicion in the 1970s. This was not done under hypnosis, not under hypnosis. Instead, including in this interview and in the book, he describes a therapeutic process that involves relaxing, slowed breathing and probing into the subconscious, which many of his later critics would point out sounds an awful lot like hypnosis.

[Rick Emerson]

All of this was buried past what we call the unconscious into a very deep place. And there was even no evidence of it in the four years I worked for with her at all. It comes from maybe what Jungians call the base of the psyche. It's very difficult, but there's a mystery in it that isn't all explained simply by what I know as a psychiatrist or a scientist.

[Beatrice Sparks]

We'll get to the mystery part here in a second, but let's start by hearing what Michelle says she remembered.

[Rich Perez]

The first thing I remembered was a night when a group of people were gathered to do. I didn't know what they were doing, dances that were not like the dances I was using. They had the walls draped in black, they had set up candles, that kind of thing. And basically what I remembered is quite a struggle that very early got set up between myself and them in that they somehow wanted me to participate in something that I as a child couldn't comprehend. My mother was present, but not in the ceremony, not in the ritual. She wasn't involved in that. Her position seemed to be one of giving me to this group.

[Beatrice Sparks]

As for the overall scope of what.

[Rich Perez]

She remembered, basically what I remembered was a 14 month period of my life at age 5 where I was given to a group of people whom at first I wasn't aware of what they were doing other than to a child. They were adults doing things I couldn't understand. And that frightened me about three months, three and a half months into the remembering, I realized through the ritual and repetition that these people had that they were involved in some type of satanic church.

[Beatrice Sparks]

According to Michelle Smith, this group that was torturing her was trying to get her to submit to them, to become one of them. And she had an intuitive resistance to them that made them torture her to try to get her to give up. Here's one detail that she told often, including in the book.

[Rich Perez]

Because of the lack of cooperation that I exhibited, they placed me in a car and literally drove it over the side of a cliff with me in it. I survived that.

[Beatrice Sparks]

I have to admit I find it kind of comical that she adds the note that she survived the car accident. One would think that was readily apparent since she's sitting here with Jack Webster 25 years later. It's also worth pointing out that a number of journalists and researchers who've attempted to corroborate Michelle's story have been able to find no evidence, no police reports, no medical records, no insurance claims that would back up this story. Though of course her defenders would point out that Satanists are probably really good at covering this sort of thing up. She also describes being witness to animal sacrifice and stuff that's even more grotesque.

[Rich Perez]

They sacrificed animals and they used fetuses of babies in their ceremonies.

[Beatrice Sparks]

This comment is maybe more significant than it first appears. In 1980, the Pro Life movement was Just finding its feet. A year earlier, Francis Schaeffer, the evangelical apologist and leader of labrie, released a film that had a massive cultural impact on behalf of that movement, titled Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

[Michelle Smith]

Family photographs, memories, past and present. Life is a continuum from conception until death. Our society has taken upon itself the right to kill infants born and unborn, if they're unwanted, imperfect, or considered an economic burden. Does our society also take upon itself the right to kill the elderly?

[Beatrice Sparks]

Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority would succeed in getting their nominee, Ronald Reagan, elected to the White House this year as well.

[Michelle Smith]

My answer as to what kind of abortion bill I could sign was one that recognized that an abortion is the taking of a human life.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Now, Pazder and Smith are Canadians, so they're somewhat insulated from the US politics side of this. Though, of course, our cultures are very closely linked, including our media culture, including back then, and the culture of American and Canadian Catholicism and evangelicalism are closely linked as well. So I think it's fair to say that the rising pro life consciousness around religious Canadians was similar to that of Americans at the time. And a big part of the pro life message was to highlight the actual brutality of abortion, the violence done to a fetus. This is true of Schaeffer's film. It's true of Falwell's work as well, the way he'd describe it in sermons. And he'd actually go so far as to sponsor airing a sonogram of an actual abortion on Ted Turner's Superstation in 1985. I say all this because fetuses and babies come up a lot in the satanic panic. Pastor sees the torture that Michelle Smith endured as very intentional and purposeful.

[Rick Emerson]

It was a very carefully organized assault on Michelle on a physical, emotional, intellectual, and finally on a spiritual level. Very organized, very sophisticated. Not Helter Skelter, a little bit of ceremony, a little this. There was a very carefully carried out ritual. The full details of that are in some million and a half words of the transcript. They knew what they were doing. They're not to be confused with the white witches.

[Beatrice Sparks]

By this, he's referring to sort of the granola crystals and peyote witchcraft that emerged in the 1960s and 70s.

[Rick Emerson]

Well, they're a secret organization. They're a secret society. A secret society does not reveal the identity of the people or the ways of their practices. I was familiar with this type of society firsthand in Africa, practicing general medicine there. And if one of the members of that society revealed who he was, he Was killed instantly.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Are you suggesting that her body was taken over by the devil?

[Rich Perez]

No.

[Rick Emerson]

They attempted to try to do that type of thing. But what is essential to understand is that Michelle, as a five year old child, stood up against this. This is not the exorcist which rips you off with fear and makes you feel some evil force can come into a room and take you over. I don't believe that this is the story of a child holding on to what she believed was good inside herself, her innocence. And through that was able to stand up against all that these people could do. And through spiritual interventions.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Michelle explains exactly what these spiritual interventions were.

[Rich Perez]

At one point in this experience, they had become very serious in their spiritual invocation of things. And at one point I was literally being frightened to death. At that moment when I think I was dying, A very soft white light came in envelope, Much like the feeling of being padded with cotton batten. And out of that a woman came and stood beside me and took a hold of my hand, Identified herself as my mare and basically told me to hang on to help me understand the situation I was in and how to get through it.

[Beatrice Sparks]

My mare.

[Rich Perez]

My mare.

[Beatrice Sparks]

The Virgin Mary.

[Rich Perez]

That's right.

[Beatrice Sparks]

How old were you when you had the vision?

[Rich Perez]

Five years old. I didn't know who that was at five. All I knew was this was the first person that had come along in 10 months of my life who cared about me as a person who wanted me to survive, not to destroy me.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Webster, the one conducting the interview, at one point asks if they're both Catholic. Pazder says he's been Catholic his entire life. Michelle Smith says that she converted three years before. One can certainly understand why having a vision like that might drive someone to the Catholic church. But it might also be a clue as to the influence of. Of Dr. Pazder and perhaps even of the relationship that was forming between them. What wasn't disclosed at the time of the book's publication or during the time of this interview Was that Pazder had left his wife and their four children to marry Michelle Smith, A woman who'd been under his psychiatric care for a total of more than five years. This interview took place on October 20, 1980. An article revealing their marriage would actually publish a week later in Maclean's magazine, Highlighting the problematic ethics of both not disclosing the marriage and the idea of a therapist marrying one of his clients in the first place. I'll return to that Maclean's article in a moment. But first, here's Smith describing why they wrote the book and what she hopes comes from it.

[Rich Perez]

To me, the importance is in sharing the information so that maybe we can make some wiser decisions about the kinds of things that go on. Maybe we won't get so easily pulled into cults. Maybe we won't dismiss a child brought into an emergency ward with the kinds of abuses that I suffered. Maybe we won't just dismiss that as a child abuse case, that we will see them at the hands of these people. But more than that, I made a promise to this person who came on mayor that I would share this with as many people as I could, the vigilante. So I'm keeping a childhood promise.

[Beatrice Sparks]

You remember that now, she said to you.

[Rich Perez]

All that I'd seen and heard would I remember exactly.

[Beatrice Sparks]

We'll be right back.

[Michelle Smith]

This episode is brought to you by the Truce Podcast. I'm sure you've been there. You're at an event, a dinner, a small group, and someone says something like.

[Beatrice Sparks]

If you're a Christian, you have to vote Republican. Huh?

[Michelle Smith]

That raises an interesting question. How did evangelicals like me get to the place where we just assumed we'd all vote one way? This season on the Truce Podcast, we're diving deep into the complexity of the 1970s and 80s to understand how evangelicals tied themselves to the Republican Party. It's a story that involves murder, corruption, redemption, and our need to be heard. I'll be talking with celebrated historians like Rick Pearlstein, Pulitzer Prize winners Francis Fitzgerald and Jesse Eisinger, and some of the best guests I've ever had. Truce is the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian church. We press Pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. Subscribe to Truce Anywhere you get podcasts or listen@ trucepodcast.com.

[Beatrice Sparks]

They say a lie gets halfway around the world before the Truce can put its pants on. The challenge for a world confronted by Michelle Remembers is along these lines. It begins, actually with everything that's preceded them from Jay's journal, which was presented as fact, to the Manson family, the invention of lsd, the idea of altered states of consciousness all the way back to the 19th century, the emergence of this theory of repressed memory. Another historical phenomenon that we really can't get into deeply here, but I think plays a part, is that during the Cold War, the bulk of Nazi concentration camps, including all of their primary extermination camps, sat behind the Iron Curtain. While there was a general awareness of the Holocaust and while some scholarship and testimony made its way back to America. It's also true that American culture begins to change once travel restrictions ease. In the 1960s and 70s. President Ford was the first president to Visit Auschwitz in 1975. Billy Graham went there in 1978. The Pope went there in 1979. Scholars, researchers, documentary filmmakers and journalists began applying to come. Too many Holocaust studies books and films follow, exploding the reality of this evil on the American mind. The effect, like so much else, is to shift people's sense of what was possible. No surprise then that Pazder references the Holocaust in this interview, mentioning Auschwitz briefly to talk about the resilience of children in suffering. And maybe that wasn't meant to be manipulative. Maybe Pastor believed Michelle was remembering something, believed that she was telling the truth. And so these images he evokes, it's an effort to say, remember it's possible that this is real. I find that easier to believe in the case of Michelle Smith. According to a recent and fascinating documentary titled Satan wants you, Smith really felt relief from the psychotherapy that she'd experienced a few years before. But she returned in 1976 because of anxiety, depression, and dark, vivid dreams she'd begun having after a miscarriage, something that wasn't disclosed in the book. Meanwhile, according to Pazder's first wife, he'd recently seen the TV movie Sybil and been captivated by stars. Sally Fields as a woman with dissociative identity disorder, what's often colloquially called multiple personality disorder. In the film, she and her psychiatrist form a deep bond, and her doctor helps liberate her through intense sessions involving psychotherapy and regression. Here's Joanne Woodward playing that doctor.

[Rich Perez]

Marcia became so fearful, she dissociated into.

[Michelle Smith]

Peggy, who wanted to escape with me to Amsterdam to get away from what.

[Rich Perez]

She calls the people. I look at all the faces. Furious, terrified.

[Michelle Smith]

Peggy Sepulchral, little Marcia, Vicki with her social ease and uninterrupted memory. And Sybil.

[Rich Perez]

And I wonder what there was back there that could have caused such a shattering.

[Beatrice Sparks]

It's not hard to imagine pasture wanting to play the same role, Faced with a troubled woman committing an immense number of hours to help liberate her from her suffering. The result was actually an enormous fiction, but one that set off a firestorm. Which actually brings me back to where we began, to Bertha Pappenheim. Because Bertha's story wasn't as neat and tidy as Dr. Freud related it either. Later, researchers would uncover that her therapy sessions with Dr. Brauer didn't end with her fully recovered. Instead, she was deeply struggling, still addicted to Painkillers and living in a sanitarium. It also seems that Freud fabricated the account of her hysterical pregnancy. The good news in her case was that that's not where her story ended. She did eventually make a full recovery. Not only that, she led an extraordinary life. She recognized connections between the prostitution industry, human trafficking, what was called white slavery at the time, and orphans, and launched or supported several organizations to try to help those in need, particularly focusing on Jewish women and children, who were often excluded from aid in existing organizations. I mention all of this to say that while Freud and Breuer reduced her story, that wasn't the end of it. Her actual story is much more interesting. But she's nonetheless prototypical of a certain kind of victim. One who perhaps Michelle Smith was too. Someone whose life was disrupted by trauma and then disrupted again by someone who thought that through hypnotherapy they could play the role of healer. And they seem to have done more harm than good. It strikes me that there's also a gendered element to these stories. What's obvious in Bertha Pappenheim's story is that she was a profoundly capable, intelligent woman. It also seems clear that an experience of trauma disrupted her ordinary life, resulting in psychological distress and real suffering. Freud almost exclusively preserved his hysteria diagnosis for women, pathologizing a whole host of emotions. Anger, depression, grief, anxiety as the result of something going awry in a woman's brain. So grief wasn't simply part of the human experience, something one lives with and works out over time. It's a problem to be solved. I talked to one of my favorite writers and thinkers on the subject of femininity about these stories, Hannah Anderson, and she offered this.

[Mike Kosper]

Some of this may be related to the way women are expected to be the social glue, that they are expected to carry the weight of relationships and emotions and to keep a community together. And so there's this understanding of womanhood that also doesn't have a category for a woman to not be okay in her community. Because it's almost as if we assume that she is going to be more competent in relational emotional health. And so when she isn't, or when she reacts very much the way any human being would react, we judge it more harshly because we expected a certain level of continuity or socialization.

[Beatrice Sparks]

In the case of Michelle Smith, she returned to therapy after a miscarriage, an experience that would cause anyone an enormous amount of stress and grief. And during those therapy sessions, Pastor began her regression therapy, conjuring these dark, satanic fever dreams to explain her emotional distress.

[Mike Kosper]

We live in a society where going from not being a mother to being a mother is supposed to be seamless, and it's not supposed to in any way cause any grief or loss of identity. And it's supposed to be happy. And so something that is natural to anyone transitioning from one season of life to another, a loss of freedom, a loss of identity. With women, we do simultaneously expect them to bear that. And also when they can't, we want to very quickly name it as their problem. So there's this catch 22 where women are supposed to be strong, to carry things, and when they aren't, or when they have very normal human responses to trauma or other events, then we name them as weak. So we are simultaneously expecting more from them. And when they don't deliver at our expectations, we name them as somehow inferior.

[Beatrice Sparks]

To put it another way, is it possible that it wasn't enough for Michelle Smith to be experiencing emotional and psychological stress from a miscarriage? She or Dr. Pastor had to find something larger, something more acute, more painful than the ordinary experience of being human in an ordinary encounter with death? Death itself wasn't demon enough. She needed it to have faces and names. In each of their stories. We're left asking, what perhaps was the real source of their trauma? Who was really victimizing the victims? What starts with Pappenheim finds a new fever pitch with Smith. And in short order, that fever becomes an epidemic. We'll be right back.

[Lawrence Pazder]

Zombie invasions, supernatural thrillers, slasher films, you name it. People are watching horror of one kind or another now more than ever. In other words, horror is having a moment and we are, too. All this interest in the genre might be a reflection of a genuine human need to wrestle with our deep seated fears and anxieties, but it could also represent a society that's simply eroding from within. So fair warning, this podcast isn't just about horror movies. It's about all kinds of horror. An exploration of fear, faith, and stories that scare the hell out of us. Be afraid. Subscribe today.

[Beatrice Sparks]

All right, let's jump ahead to March 22, 1984. Here's a story from the local evening news at KABC in Los Angeles.

[Michelle Smith]

Just kept the bail very high on the six women and one man who were indicted yesterday for allegedly molesting children at a Manhattan beach preschool. The seven individuals, all of them at one time on the staff of the McMartin Preschool, were in court today and in police custody. Since not all of them have attorneys yet they didn't. Enter, please today. But as Wayne Satch reports that defendants will have a difficult time making bail.

[Beatrice Sparks]

The McMartin story began about a year earlier. On August 12, 1983, Judy Johnson, the mother of a McMartin student, called the police to report that her son had been abused at the McMartin Preschool. That phone call would result in one of the longest and most expensive trials in American history. The police investigated and found no evidence. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no evidence from a medical exam or on Johnson's son. But the Manhattan Beach Police Department took an unusual step. In hopes of a breakthrough, they sent a letter to every parent of every child enrolled at the McMartin Daycare. Before I read from that letter, I want to say two things. First, I'll remind you of the warning that preceded our show. We meant it. Second, I'd ask you to imagine yourself in the shoes of the parents of this school, to imagine yourself in the milieu of the moment. The Michelle remembers J's journal milieu, the one where culture warriors are on television pitting politics as a battle of good and evil, and politicians are essentially doing the same. So you're that parent in that moment, and you get a letter from the Manhattan Beach Police Department that includes these two key Please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of taking a child's temperature. Also, photos may have been taken of your child without their clothing. Any information from your child regarding having ever observed Ray Buckey to leave a classroom alone with a child or any nap period, or if they ever observed Ray Buckey tie up a child is important. More than 200 parents received that letter and a frenzy followed. Terrified parents calling the police, calling one another, worried their children might have been victims. In response, the Manhattan beach police recruited the Children's Institute International, a children's advocacy group based in nearby Los Angeles, to help with the investigation. The lead interviewer was a woman named Key McFarlane. In total, CII interviewed approximately 400 children using anatomically correct dolls and puppets. The methods operated on the understanding that children might not recall traumatic events and might require this sort of heavy handed effort to help them. To put it another way, her method was an attempt to deal with repressed memory not with hypnosis, but with persuasive and often coercive puppets.

[Rich Perez]

Mr. Parrott, can you help? Susie, show us what happened to her.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Children were questioned at length. The questions were often leading. Children that didn't report abuse were told that their friends had already told the truth so they could, too. And children who didn't report abuse were often questioned multiple times until they did. The result was near uniformity in the final responses of children. 360 of them reported being victims or witnesses of satanic ritual abuse. Here's Ira Reiner, the district attorney of Los Angeles during the time of the trials, commenting on these techniques after the trial's conclusion.

[Michelle Smith]

What we had here were the social workers and questioning the children, asking very leading and very suggestive questions of the children. They'd have little Bobby sitting there and they'd say to Bobby, did the bad teacher touch you in a yucky way in this place right here? And Bobby would say no. And they would push a few times and Bobby would continue to say no. Then they'd say, but wait a minute, Johnny has already told us that this happened. Now, you're just as smart as Johnny, aren't you? And after a little bit of this, then maybe Bobby would say, okay. He'd nod his head, yeah, it happened that way. What you have here is a situation then, where hundreds of children had been questioned, and then this material is turned over to the district attorney's office. The district attorney then, at that time, without any investigation whatsoever, none at all, turns it over to the grand jury for indictment purposes.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Later analysis of these interviews from a host of child psychologists, lawyers, and experts in law enforcement would also conclude that their techniques were coercive. In the end, the staff of the daycare was charged with more than 300 crimes related to conspiracy and the sexual abuse of children.

[Michelle Smith]

She sat in her wheelchair with teddy bear pins on her blouse and Snoopy earrings on her ears. Virginia McMartin, indicted for child molesting, is in police custody on $50,000 bail. Her grandson, Ray Bucky, once a teacher at the school, held on a million dollars bail. His mother, Peggy Buckey, once the director of the Preschool, held on $350,000 bail. Her daughter, Peggy Ann, 50,000. Teacher Betty Raider, 250,000. Teacher Marianne Jackson, 100,000. Bab Spitler, 125,000. Those high bails had been set when the seven were indicted.

[Beatrice Sparks]

The details of that abuse are extreme, from graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and trauma to wild accusations involving chopping up rabbits or supernatural events. They allege that there was a massive tunnel underneath the preschool where the abuse took place and that the children were witnesses to bizarre satanic rituals and were photographed Naked. You've heard this clip before on our first episode, but it's worth repeating here. It's from a Geraldo special about Satanic activity.

[Rich Perez]

Let's go now to the McMartin Preschool parents who have gathered for us in Los Angeles. You recall that case? Notorious case. I must state for the record, however, that the charges against most of the defendants have been dropped. Charges are still pending against two of them. However, we know that the parents and the children allege child abuse. What is much less known is that they say it was ritual abuse as part of a satanic cult. Whoever is the designated spokesman there, please tell us why you believe this was part of a ritual cult abuse as.

[Michelle Smith]

Part of a satanic cult. Well, the easiest reason to that question, Geraldo, is the fact when the children started talking, they started talking about robes and candles. They described an Episcopal Church. And once they started narrowing that down, you could see that it had to be Satanic. It's very important in satanic religions to have a priest because they truly do believe in power. The difference only between Catholicism and the Episcopal religion is almost done. They both use wine, they both use bread, and so on. The truth about Satanism is they truly do use blood and they mix it with urine. And then they also use the real meat, the real flesh. This is what makes Satanism true.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Some of the most bizarre accusations came from Judy Johnson, the first parent to report abuse to the police. She accused an employee named Ray Buckey of assaulting her son while his head was in a toilet and while wearing a Santa suit and a cape. She also told police that Ray had supernatural powers and could fly. Ultimately, Ray would spend five years in prison awaiting trial. Based on these accusations, his mother, Peggy Buckey, would spend two years in prison before getting bail. Despite the enormous amount of testimony from children, no physical evidence supported their claims. Searches of the McMartin Daycare and the defendants homes revealed nothing incriminating, and the police found nothing resembling a tunnel. A year after their arraignment, 50 McMartin parents undertook the task of excavating the grounds around the preschool and search of the tunnels, but they found nothing. About that same time, Judy Johnson was hospitalized for a psychotic episode. By then, some members of the prosecution had begun to express doubts about the case. One of them, Glenn Stevens, resigned from the district Attorney's office and actually joined the defense team. He had doubts about the CII interrogations of children and the handling of evidence. He also thought the prosecution was withholding potentially exculpatory evidence, like the fact that Judy Johnson's son was unable to identify Ray Buckey in a photo lineup and that Johnson had significant mental health issues. Here's Stevens from shortly after the trials.

[Michelle Smith]

She was psychotic when she started the case. She was paranoid. She was schizophrenic. She had delusions.

[Lawrence Pazder]

She reported at one point that her house was. Was somebody came into her house and even molested the family dog.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Judy Johnson died of alcohol poisoning shortly before the case went to trial. On the basis of concerns about the weakness of the case, the district attorney, Ira Reiner, dropped the charges on all but Bucky, and his mother, Peggy Buckey, was acquitted on all charges. Ray Buckey was acquitted on 52 counts, with the jury deadlocked on an additional 13 counts split 7 to 5 in favor of acquittal. Reiner retried Bucky on eight of the 13 counts, citing pressure from parents and the community as his motivation. But the second trial also ended with a hung jury reportedly favoring acquittal again by a large margin. After that, Reiner announced he was dropping all charges. In all, the case stretched more than five years and at the time was the most expensive trial in American history, costing more than $15 million. It was also one of more than 100 investigations into daycares involving accusations of satanic ritual abuse. While it's true that Ray, Peggy and their co workers ultimately walked free, Ray Buckey spent five years behind bars and the McMartin family lost their livelihood. Other defendants in other cases had it even worse. In Austin, Texas, Fran and Dan Keller ran Fran's daycare. They too were accused of satanic ritual abuse in 1991, largely based on the testimony of children that was gathered with similar methods to the McMartin case. Unlike McMartin, the Kellers were convicted and sentenced to 48 years. Later, analysis of the children's testimony and of medical evidence that was deemed inaccurate or mischaracterized led to a groundswell of support for their exoneration. In 2013, they were released on bond after 21 years behind bars. In 2017, the Texas Court of Appeals declared them actually innocent. Here's Fran Keller on the day of their complete exoneration, 25 years after the ordeal began.

[Rick Emerson]

We're together, we're alive. We thank God every morning we wake up together.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Hopefully we'll never be separated again. Of course, it's not just those who are falsely accused in these stories who end up with scars. On January 18, 1990, when a jury declared Peggy Buckey not guilty and delivered that mixed verdict for Ray Buckey, a press conference was held by some of the parents of McMartin children and for the children themselves to speak publicly. By then, these kids were teenagers and they still clearly believed their accusations. Here's a few clips of what they had to say. My stomach just hollowed out. I was shocked.

[Michelle Smith]

I mean, I was beyond tears.

[Beatrice Sparks]

I felt kind of helpless. I mean, like, it was like, really the only thing I could do is just sit there.

[Rick Emerson]

And then that was it.

[Beatrice Sparks]

I mean, like, that was the end.

[Rick Emerson]

Of the six years. I mean, that we had went through, like, such, I don't know, pain.

[Beatrice Sparks]

It's heartrending to me to hear this tape. On the one hand, the evidence seems clear that the stories that they believed were coerced, then repeated a thousand times in interviews, told on television and radio and newspapers, and circulated among each other as friends. It's easy, easy to imagine how a child could become a true believer, this sort of thing. But the press conference itself highlights part of the problem. This media frenzy, the hype around a story that's this dark and salacious.

[Rich Perez]

What do you think went wrong? You all got together this afternoon. Hold it, hold it.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Wait.

[Michelle Smith]

I think there were others who wanted.

[Beatrice Sparks]

To answer that question. That's okay.

[Michelle Smith]

Anybody else who wants to answer that?

[Beatrice Sparks]

No, when you're talking, just get as close to the mic as you can. I know it's hard, but that's how.

[Michelle Smith]

We'Re all picking up your sounds. Anybody else who wants to respond to that particular question?

[Beatrice Sparks]

Once again, we're left to wonder who the victim is and who victimized them.

[Rich Perez]

I was truly shocked to hear the not guilty verdict.

[Michelle Smith]

I mean, just after experiencing what we.

[Rich Perez]

Went through and what our parents and everybody tried to do in the last six years, just, they're free now. And it just was such a shock to hear that they were gonna go free and.

[Beatrice Sparks]

Terrified. Devil in the Deep Blue Sea is a production of Christianity Today. It's hosted and written by Mike Kosper, produced by Mike Kosper and Rebecca Sebastian, with production assistance from Dawn Adams. Sound design and mix engineering by TJ Hester. Sound design, animation and video by Steve Scheidler. Graphic design Nim Ben Rubin, Eric Petrick and Mike Kosper are executive producers of CT Media Podcasts. Matt Stevens is our senior producer producer. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review wherever you listen. It'll help more people find the show. Thanks for listening. Hey, we hope you are enjoying the show. Just so you know, the best way to contribute to the production of this podcast is actually by subscribing to Christianity today using our special link orderct.com DeepBlue Sea listeners like you get 25% off your subscription and unlimited access to the platform that elevates the stories and ideas of the Kingdom of God. That's orderct.com deepblue sea all one word. We look forward to having you join us.