A second helping from Satan: Satanic Injustice

Summary

Podcast Summary: "A Second Helping from Satan: Satanic Injustice"

The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall (CBC)
Date: December 4, 2025
Guest: Josie Duffy Rice, journalist and host of Corruption Uncovered

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Episode Overview

This bonus episode dives into how the U.S. legal system enabled and sustained the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s—a period when widespread moral panic led to false accusations, wrongful convictions, and cultural paranoia around supposed Satanists. Sarah Marshall and guest Josie Duffy Rice explore the systemic failures that let such panic thrive, examining how flawed justice processes, fear-driven narratives, and collective blind spots blurred the line between villain and victim. Throughout, they consider how these phenomena echo both in history and the present.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Legal System as a Mirror (01:49–03:48)

• Systemic Reflection: Josie frames the U.S. criminal justice system as a reflection of broader societal weaknesses—driven by fear, incentives for punishment over problem-solving, and a lack of logical consistency.

  • Quote:
    “Our criminal justice system is a microcosm... of us. Right. It's prone to and corrupted by the same things—lack of logic, the same negative instincts, the same negative incentives we're all prone to, but on a much broader scale.” (02:27, Josie Duffy Rice)

• Fear as a Driver: The society’s approach to crime is primarily fear-driven rather than rational or proportionate to actual risk.

  • Quote:
    “We are not good at problem solving. We're good at punishment. And so much of how we justify terrible institutions and harm... is fear.” (03:12, Josie Duffy Rice)

2. Harmful Incentives and Systemic Punishment (03:48–04:58)

• Punishing Juveniles: Examples of how U.S. justice punishes children harshly and rewards false confessions through plea deals.
  • “We currently sentence some juveniles... to life without parole. We tell kids, we are going to put you in prison, and there is no chance you can ever leave.” (03:53, Josie Duffy Rice)
  • “Some parts of [the system] are really threadbare. It's not looking great...” (04:52, Josie Duffy Rice)

3. Historical Parallels: Salem Witch Trials, Modern Panic (05:00–08:22)

• Proof & ‘Junk Science’: Chat about how previous systems demanded actual proof for witchcraft—and how modern equivalents rely on dubious expert testimony and “junk science” instead.

  • “The concept of science, regardless of how it's being executed, can just, you know, it's a little bit like spectral evidence. You just don't need anything else.” (05:59, Sarah Marshall)

• Gendered Constructions: The demonization of women persists, with language echoing old tropes (e.g., framing women as “promiscuous” or “manipulative”).

  • “Women suffer a particular kind of cruelty in our criminal justice system and are still kind of framed as promiscuous or manipulative, crafty or masterminds. Right. The same kind of language that we used [in the witch trials].” (07:40, Josie Duffy Rice)

4. The Return and Persistence of ‘Satan’ (08:22–10:37)

• Projection and Guilt: The conversation spotlights how perceptions shift based on narrative. Once someone is a suspect, everything they do is scrutinized as suspect—even their grief.
  • Notable Quote:
    “Once people see you as guilty, it's very difficult to work yourself out of that perception because everything you do... is seen as, ‘Well, he would also… That’s what he would say if he were guilty, too.’ Right. It becomes very hard to kind of, like, keep hold of reality when you can spiral down the... ‘What if this person's a Satanist’ rabbit hole.” (09:47, Josie Duffy Rice)

5. Flaws in Human Judgement & Narratives (10:37–12:56)

• Faulty Intuition: We overestimate our own ability to ‘read’ others, illustrated by the Kuleshov effect and stories of jurors misjudging defendants based on emotional displays.
  • “None of us have a perfect trust thermometer, let's put it that way.” (12:19, Josie Duffy Rice)

6. The Folly of Outsourcing Investigations to the Untrained (13:01–14:10)

• Children as Witnesses: The lack of expertise in handling child witnesses led to poor investigations—a vacuum filled by parents and police with little relevant training.
  • “Being a police officer does not actually make you an expert at communicating with parents of toddlers who may have been sodomized. And the idea that, like, this is your job, so therefore you can do it, is so backwards.” (15:19, Josie Duffy Rice)

7. Single-Issue Focus and Neglecting Real Harms (15:32–16:31)

• Distracting from Real Issues: Panic over Satanists allowed avoidance of examining why abuse happens in the first place.
  • “One of the things about focusing on that problem is that you don't have to think about what causes people to sexually abuse children... we have been really great at finding distractions from that.” (15:54, Sarah Marshall)

8. Systemic Shortcomings in Addressing Harm (16:31–20:53)

• Reluctance to Understand Harm: The system resists preventive or rehabilitative approaches for fear of appearing to ‘endorse’ wrongdoers.
  • “We don't like that because we think that by trying to understand people, we are endorsing them.” (16:31, Josie Duffy Rice)
• Legal Limitations: The challenge of establishing sexual harm “beyond a reasonable doubt” and the resulting inadequacies of the justice system.

9. Lullabies of Evil: The Comfort of Simple Narratives (20:53–23:48)

• Good vs. Evil Distinction: The simplistic belief that “bad people do bad things” keeps us comfortable and distanced from the possibility of personal or peer wrongdoing.

  • Quote:
    “My inherent frustration with the narratives around this system is that they are lullabies. They are told to us to convince us that bad people do bad things, and as good people, we would never do those things…” (21:24, Josie Duffy Rice)

• Preference for Villain Narratives: It’s easier to imagine a vast Satanic conspiracy than to accept random or mundane causes for horrific acts.

10. The Danger of Collective Blame and Moral Crusades (23:48–26:42)

• Scale of Evil: Skepticism is warranted when a theory requires broad, organized evil by many people.

  • “If it seems like this thing requires many, many very evil people... not just kind of callous... you should ask some questions because usually that's not how people function.” (25:16, Josie Duffy Rice)

• Hero Complex: For law enforcement, finding “Satanists” fulfills a need for drama and validation in otherwise routine work.

  • “To be the cop who stumbles upon the Satanist cult, I think is in some ways probably validating of why the world needs you and why law enforcement is so important...” (27:20, Josie Duffy Rice)

11. Systemic Change & Community Accountability (28:23–31:13)

• Outsourcing Harm Reduction: Societal reluctance to address underlying causes fuels the myth of “evil others” and prevents authentic change.
• Community Solutions: Lasting accountability and prevention require real community investment and connections, not just emergency services.
  • Memorable Moment:
    Marshall and Duffy Rice recall Miriam Kaba’s prompt: “You hear your neighbor beating his wife. What do you do?”—illustrating how unprepared society is for non-police forms of accountability. (29:39–30:56)

12. Risk, Paranoia, and Missed Opportunities for Progress (31:21–34:58)

• Paranoia about Neighbors: Halloween panic is used as an illustration—true horror exists, but the majority of people are kind; still, fear persists.

  • “People compliment your child. People decorate for kids... And yet there is this fear of the candy that's been laced. It's not that it's not possible, but that it's not likely.” (31:55, Josie Duffy Rice)

• Addressing Boring Problems: Instead of sensational solutions, issues like child care and nutrition are crucial but overlooked.

  • “Maternal mortality is a problem in this country. Infant mortality is a huge problem in the US... We don't want to have a big headline task force about that because... we can't shift the blame to somebody else.” (33:13, Sarah Marshall)
  • “The system we have basically punishes people for poverty, takes kids away from their parents... puts them in foster care... doesn't address any of the problems...” (33:52, Josie Duffy Rice)

13. Society’s Role and Acceptance of Responsibility (34:58–36:39)

• Responsibility for Harm: Absurd tragedies (like a mother dying in a chase for stolen baby formula) are the result of collective social failure.

  • “At what point are we willing to take responsibility for our part in people's... If someone is killed running from cops for stealing fucking formula. That's on us as a society. That is. That's on us.” (35:26, Josie Duffy Rice)

• Comic Relief and Sad Truths: The hosts use The Incredible Hulk as a metaphor: perhaps the problem is not the “monster,” but the circumstances that create him.

  • “The Incredible Hulk is just a guy who gets really mad and then... scares the people around him and is uncontrollable. Like, that's crazy.” (36:03, Josie Duffy Rice)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “None of us have a perfect trust thermometer, let's put it that way.” (12:19, Josie Duffy Rice)
• “We are not good at problem solving. We're good at punishment.” (03:12, Josie Duffy Rice)
• “If it seems like this thing requires many, many very evil people... you should ask some questions because usually that's not how people function.” (25:16, Josie Duffy Rice)
• “Maternal mortality is a problem in this country. Infant mortality is a huge problem in the US...” (33:13, Sarah Marshall)
• “There's this real kind of sense we all have of, like, this guy could be scamming me... our vigilance makes us... better able to read people's true intentions versus worse...” (11:16, Josie Duffy Rice)

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Segment Timestamps

• Introduction of theme & guest: 00:42–01:49
• Legal system as reflection of society: 01:49–03:48
• Harsh incentives for juveniles/admissions: 03:48–04:58
• Historical context: Witch trials vs. modern justice: 05:00–08:22
• Narrative-shifting & projection in criminal perception: 08:22–10:37
• Limits of intuition, Kuleshov effect, juror bias: 10:37–12:56
• Satanic Panic: flawed investigations, handling childhood evidence: 13:01–15:19
• Issues of distraction from underlying harm: 15:32–16:31
• Shortcomings in addressing sexual harm: 16:31–20:53
• Comfort of binary good/evil lullaby narratives: 20:53–23:48
• Scale and fallacy of collective evil: 23:48–26:42
• Law enforcement’s hero complex: 26:42–28:23
• Accountability, abolition, community connection: 28:23–31:13
• Halloween paranoia, real community, and risk: 31:21–33:52
• Child care, poverty, societal failures: 33:52–34:58
• Responsibility for system-created tragedy: 34:58–36:39

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Tone & Language Notes

• Conversation is thoughtful, wry, and direct—often using humor to underline serious systemic critiques (e.g., polycules for toddler care, The Incredible Hulk as metaphor).
• Language is empathetic yet incisive, focusing on systems not sensationalism.
• Both host and guest emphasize complexity, pushing back against comforting binary narratives.

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Summary Takeaway

Sarah Marshall and Josie Duffy Rice argue that the Satanic Panic was an inevitable outgrowth of a culture and legal system built on fear, faulty incentives, and a preference for scapegoating over systemic change. The episode asks listeners to recognize these patterns—not just in historical panics, but in the justice system and collective logic today. Ultimately, the hosts urge a shift from villain-hunting and paranoia to preventive, community-based solutions addressing harm at its root.

Transcript

[Sarah Marshall]

A boy goes missing from a bus stop in Queensland, Australia. His disappearance made national headlines and launched the largest search for a missing child in Australia's history.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

It was absolutely enormous. He said it was going to be a long few days. We didn't know it was going to be a long 12 years. Whoever responsible had picked on the wrong family. We're going to hunt you down.

[Sarah Marshall]

From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is where is Daniel Morcom available now on the binge? Watch, listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

This is a CBC podcast.

[Sarah Marshall]

Welcome to your bonus episode. This is the devil you know. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we're talking with Josie Duffy Rice, a journalist who focuses on prosecutors, prisons and other criminal justice issues. Josie is also the host of the Corruption Uncovered podcast and former president of the Appeal. Josie is here to talk with us about the United States legal system and how it may have allowed the satanic panic to rip through it a little bit faster than it would have otherwise. We've talked a lot about how moral panics work, but how can the way that a system functions or doesn't function allow a moral panic the chance to grow and flourish for much longer than it should have? And we also look at the question of what kind of blind spots might a system have if it tries to sort people into the categories of hero and villain and the vast gulf of humanity that lies between the two.

I'm trying to come up with sort of the. The best description for sort of the unifying theme of some of that, at least as I see it, because I was drawn to your work when I started thinking critically about the legal system. And to me, really, the ultimate truth of it all is that none of it is sacred and parts of it are good. But the fact of part of something being good doesn't mean the whole works. And I feel like it's showing the lack of logic and the actual motives sort of animating the way different parts of the system work is how you understand the whole overarching problem.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that our criminal justice system is a microcosm or a macrocosm, depending on what angle you're looking at of us. Right. It's prone to and corrupted by the same things, lack of logic, the same negative instincts, the same negative incentives that we're all prone to, but on a much broader scale. And that's why my interest in the system is directly related to the way that it reflects who we are.

[Sarah Marshall]

And if I say, well, I don't know about any of that, I've been sitting in a room and watching Law and order for 20 years. What does. What you see about the system? I don't know. I guess I'm asking for kind of a precis of what's wrong with us.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to write a book about that, and it's a lot. But, you know, I think we are driven by fear. Fear regulates so many of our decisions as a. As individuals in a society in ways that do not actually make sense or accurately reflect risk. Our misunderstanding of fear and risk and our, I would say, like, lack of imagination. Right. Like, we are not good at problem solving. We're good at punishment. And so much of how we justify terrible institutions and harm, our own harm, is fear.

[Sarah Marshall]

Is there a case or a story that exemplifies some of that for you?

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Oh, gosh. I mean, there are thousands. There are like, literally thousands. I think. You know, I think there are especially trends when we think about the fact that we currently sentence some juveniles accused of serious crimes to life without parole. We tell kids, we are going to put you in prison, and there is no chance you can ever leave. That's one of the things that. When I think about how harmful the system is and how little trust we have in people's ability to change and also how little investment we have in people's in changing them, I think that really says it all. I do think the fact that we have a system that incentivizes admitting to doing something that you haven't done by pleading guilty or incentivizes convictions over any sense of justice is. You know, if you think of this whole system as a tapestry, some parts of it are really threadbare. It's not looking great, and we don't.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's like that beach towel that your mom got on sale at JCPenney 43 years ago. And you can't get a new one.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

One thing I found really interesting in looking at the precursors to this is that we. We think of the Salem Witch Trials as a great example of kind of how Puritan or early American colonial justice functioned. And I think what's kind of unsettling to realize today is that that period stood out within history because it was unusual for the time and because previous to that, and in all kinds of different places, people accused each other of witchcraft all the time. But you needed proof. And if you didn't have proof, then someone wouldn't be convicted of witchcraft, and it would. That was sort of how the system functioned. And generally you would need Two eyewitnesses and a confession. And something that is interesting about some of the trials of our time because, you know, looking at how justice, how the justice system fails both the innocent and the guilty, you know, it also fails people when you did commit a crime, but you're convicted for the wrong reasons. And it feels like a way that we can kind of interestingly use the idea of science to require less proof is through convicting people based on, on a junk science where then a jury can feel comfortable that they don't need a confession or an eyewitness. The concept of science, regardless of how it's being executed, can just, you know, it's a little bit like spectral evidence. You just don't need anything else.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah, I think there a lot of what you're saying is really important because I think it, it highlights a couple of patterns we see especially in like recent history. And I guess throughout history is like when something doesn't make sense, people want an explanation. People like villains, they like bad guys, they like answers. And so historically there is a willingness to ignore what, what doesn't add up if it provides some sort of explanation to people who are seeking one. I think the second thing that you're saying that really speaks to me is this idea that it is interesting. We talk about the Salem witch trials as if, how could you ever get caught up in this crazy fever? How could you possibly think people were witches? How could this happen? And it's truly not that different. I mean, we don't do things the exact same way, but we talk about recovered memory where we convict people on evidence that like, is a 30 year old memory that they just recounted. We use experts in trials who one says there's absolutely no way it happened this way, and the other one says there's absolutely no way it didn't happen this way. And we, you know, move on with our day. You have this kind of historical trend of our system looking a lot more like the Salem witch trials than I think we're comfortable admitting. And I would add to that that like, we have a system that is overwhelmingly. Men are punished in a system usually. Right. They tend to be more likely to be arrested, convicted, everything. But women suffer a particular kind of cruelty in our criminal justice system and are still kind of framed as promiscuous or manipulative, crafty or masterminds. Right. The same kind of language that we used.

So no, you know, you don't really have people accused of witchcraft anymore. But to your point, a lot of what we see evokes A time that most of us would like to think we have nothing to do with anymore. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I think it's harder to believe that now that we have so many people who believe that anyone who unnerves them is somehow in league with Satan and that. That, you know, Satan has really made a comeback. Satan is. Honey, Satan's huge right now.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Satan's back. Satan's back.

[Sarah Marshall]

Call it a comeback.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that is correct. That, like, how we think about people, both in a moment where we're interacting with them, but also in hindsight, is very shaped by stories that were told about them. So my example of this would be there was a story, a pretty famous story here in Georgia, where I live, of a guy who left his child in the car. He's serving a prison sentence now. He was convicted of intentionally leaving his child in the car. This is a case that has a lot of history, and I don't pretend to be an expert on all of it, but the basic story is that he left his child in the car. He had gone back to the car a couple of times to drop something off in the car, but had not looked in the backseat. He had also been cheating on his wife and texting women. And I'll just put it this way. I remember reading the story of when the witnesses who saw him find his child, who were there in the parking lot when he realized his kid was dead. And the way that they described him was harrowing. I mean, it was like, this poor man. I felt so bad for him. He was screaming. He was panicking. The tone was one of real empathy and horror. Once he was a suspect, suddenly it was. I thought something was off. It was weird. He seemed too upset. He didn't seem upset enough. Once people see you as guilty, it's very difficult to work yourself out of that perception because everything you do, if you're an innocent person, everything you do as an innocent person is seen as well. He would also. That's what he would say if he were guilty, too. Right. It becomes very hard to kind of, like, keep hold of reality when you can spiral down the. Like you said, like, what if this person's a Satanist rabbit hole.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, well. And I think that we all like to believe that we're better at reading other people than we are. And that makes me think of, like, the montage, effect, right? Where if you have footage of a guy with the exact same expression, if you cut in after it, a scene of, like, a hot bowl of soup or a child or something sad Then people will report that, like, oh, he looks hungry. He loves the child. He's sad about the thing, and his face is the same. But that so much of what we perceive is kind of based on, I don't know, guessing and projection a lot of the time.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah. I mean, I think it's always surprising when. And in a terrible way, when you go back and you listen to jurors talk about people that they. Especially when we later find out that person's innocent. And when they asked the juror, what were you thinking? It's very often, well, he didn't cry enough. He didn't seem upset at the defendant's table. He didn't seem emotional at the defendant's table. He, you know, or he seemed too emotional, or he was looking our way, or he wasn't looking our way, or he seemed arrogant, or. We project a lot onto people, and especially when there's already suspicion. And I think I have to work against this instinct a lot. Right. Nobody wants to be a sucker, and nobody wants to be a mark. And so there's this real kind of sense we all have of, like, this guy could be scamming me. This idea that our vigilance makes us. Vigilance bordering on paranoia, and our fear makes us better able to read people's true intentions versus worse. None of us have a perfect trust thermometer, let's put it that way, which.

[Sarah Marshall]

Is, like, hurts to accept. Like, I really want to think I could be better at it.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

It really does. There are gonna be people who disappoint you, who you disappoint, who.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm gonna keep dating the wrong people.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah. I mean, this is.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

It feels.

[Sarah Marshall]

Hopefully not for that long, but yeah.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah, it does feel like all of us think. A lot of people I know think that if they're careful enough, if they're observant enough, if they consider enough possible scenarios, they will be able to perfectly read people, or they will know people fully, or they will. Like, you can't. Right. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

It also. It strikes me about the satanic panic. Well, and actually, let's.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Let's get there. Let's go there.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And, you know, and it's so. It's so interesting and speaks to how little anyone had thought about how to do this at the time to just outsource to parents. Just like. Well, I guess quest can you child about whether any of these things happen to them? And of course, what you see throughout the satanic panic and throughout so many other social moments like these is that people of Course, talk to their children. They call each other. They sort of. It's my child saying this. You should ask your child about it to figure out what's going on. And then, you know, I think something. I think toddlers are incredibly difficult and require at least five strong adults to like to sort of be passed off between without anyone losing their mind, which I think is why the future is polycules. But that's a whole different conversation.

But they're extremely delightful to talk to. And I think one of the things that makes them so charming is that they describe things that you were there for in a way that sounds really weird and potentially horrifying. And also that they kind of inhabit fantasy and reality in a very seamless way and just kind of flip back and forth whenever they feel like it.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah. I also just think it's, like, a remarkable burden to put on children. It's really hard because sometimes if a crime is committed against a child, it gets really complicated. Like, do they testify? How do you know? What are you relying on, like, all these questions with the full acknowledgement that sometimes crimes are committed against children and we need to be able to, like, address that wrong. To me, this story really is the lens through which you can see all the arguments for divesting from law enforcement. Because the truth is that there are people who are trained and have the experience to talk to adults about their child being harmed or sexually assaulted. Or, you know, that might be a psychiatry specialist, that might be a therapist or a. I don't know, there might be a million different people who are going to maybe have the skills and knowledge to say to a group of parents, whatever the best way is to translate this information and get the most accurate information back. That is not going to be a cop. It's not going to be a cop. In some, you know, small town. Being a police officer does not actually make you an expert at communicating with parents of toddlers who may have been sodomized. And the idea that, like, this is your job, so therefore you can do it, is so backwards.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. It's also. I mean, this moment speaks to how it feels like the way American culture is organized, I guess, politically and at least in the way media worked back then, Although I think it really carries over a lot today that we have this kind of Eye of Sauron approach where we feel like we can only look at one problem at a time and that this is about the sort of. This idea that's been brewing in the culture and is now about to leap over to the legal arena. That we have to be on the lookout for these organized cabals of people who want to abuse children as part of their religion of Satanists. And, you know, and one of the things about focusing on that problem is that you don't have to think about what causes people to sexually abuse children. Which I think that that's something that, if studied, like, ever, really could yield some solutions. But we have been really great at finding distractions from that.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah, that is one of the most frustrating parts of our criminal justice system more broadly, that so much harm is actually, there's a lot of harm that's avoidable. There's also a lot of harm that maybe isn't avoidable, but could be mitigated. Right. There are a lot of ways that if we are willing to understand why people make harmful decisions, we can try to reduce the possibility that they will make that decision. Right. But we don't like that because we think that by trying to understand people, we are endorsing them. It's an implicit endorsement. And so, you know, child sexual abuse is, to me, one of the clearest failures of our system because there's just a lot of different ways in which we could try to address people who are more likely to cause this level of harm, and we don't. And so instead, we wait until someone is hurt.

[Sarah Marshall]

There are two kinds of Canadians.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Those who feel something when they hear.

[Sarah Marshall]

This music.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

And those who've been missing out so far.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Niel Kerxal. We are the co hosts of as It Happens. And every day we speak with people.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

At the center of the day's most.

[Sarah Marshall]

Hard hitting, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious news stories. Also, we have puns here.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Why as It Happens is one of Canada's longest running and most beloved shows.

[Sarah Marshall]

You can find us wherever you get your podcasts.

To get back to the idea of how robust of a legal system do you need to have to sort of responsibly handle a witch accusation? Something I feel like that gets brought up is the idea that specifically around women and sexual assault.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

That if anyone wrongly accuses someone of sexual assault or of rape, then that's taking away the right of anyone else to make that accusation when it really has happened, which is the kind of scarcity mentality that really generates all kinds of terrible outcomes, I think. But what seems clear to me is that you need to be able to have a legal system that can process a false accusation and know what to do with it, and that the responsibility can't Be on the individual in that way. The system, legal, political, whatever, needs to make allowances for the existence of people who get the wrong idea or are, you know, are prone to paranoia. People are going to have paranoia, people are going to have delusions. People are going to be stressed and jump to conclusions. People are going to just be a little dumb sometimes.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

I mean, look, we're supposed to have that system because we are supposed to have a system that requires something to be true beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a vague concept and also probably about as specific as you can afford to get. If you are like writing a constitution. There have to be other systems of accountability to work in the middle ground. And instead we have entrusted this system to do things like determine if there are Satanists. And the truth is that there is a real problem here, which is that we usually know if someone's been murdered. We usually know if someone's car has been broken into. When we talk about sexual harm, like, the nature of sexual harm is just much more difficult to have a legal system establish beyond a reasonable doubt what happened in certain situations. And so many of the things we consider crimes, we have established there is a crime by the time that we establish who's responsible for it. With sexual assault and sexual contact. And the social panics that have evolved around those things, whether it be satanic panic or, you know, the element of sexual harm, especially when we take kids out of the picture, is often like, did something happen? Do we believe this thing happened? And if we believe it happened, who did it and who's responsible? And it makes it a really. Our system is ill equipped to address sexual harm, really, and almost every form.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I mean, and it feels like there's a real problem we have in terms of lack of interest and motive, where if you ask, well, if in that true crime story that you're. You're reading and enjoying, like, why did this person do the horrible thing they did? I think that often that person will say, and this is largely because this is the insight that they're given by what they can say. I'm like, well, they're evil. That person's evil. So that's why they did that. And it's like, that's not really a motive, though, you know, and it doesn't explain anything.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

No, it's not. And also, it doesn't solve anything. It's not a motive. It is really, really easy for us to think that people who do bad things are bad people. I think my inherent frustration with the narratives around this system is that they are lullabies. They are told to us to convince us that bad people do bad things, and as good people, we would never do those things, and we would see it in someone else before they did it. Right. And the levels of that are like, you know, that is not just, oh, only an evil person could do this. But it also includes why, you know, you shouldn't. Don't drink too much if you don't want to get sexually assaulted. It includes, why didn't that woman just call the police on her abusive husband? It includes all the kind of various ways in which we attribute clear delineations between reasonable and unreasonable behavior and clear delineations between evil and good that make it seem like nothing could happen to us, but we know that that's not true.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And then I think, you know, as much as I like to spend time talking about, like, you shouldn't be afraid of random people, you should be afraid of people, you know, and then I feel like, you know, there really are anecdotally enough cases that you hear about where someone who you identify with is killed in some sort of random, violent way by a stranger that, like, you can't discount it. You can see it as statistically not threatening. And yet the fact of its existence is scary enough on its own. But then, even then, I think that it helps to kind of. It dulls the pain maybe a little bit to say these things don't happen because somebody just had the opportunity and took it because the thought occurred to them or they felt like it, or something in their psychology just made it the only thing that they were capable of doing at that point. As opposed to, well, it was a plan because the head Satanist is in Cincinnati, and so obviously you're in the Dayton area. You need to get four virgins by Thursday at midnight so you can start carting them over to the big shindig. And that that is preferable in an interesting way, or at least was during this period for people.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

So much of the frame that you've presented this conversation in is kind of like such a useful one and one I haven't, in all the encountering of satanic panic over the years, hadn't really seen, which is just not how extreme it was, because it was that, but also how in line it is with so much of who we are and who the system is, whether it be like, oh, we see echoes of this in the Salem witch trials, and we see echoes of the satanic panic in much less dramatic examples of what the system deals with every day. But also Our belief that there are lots of people, or even most people, fundamentally driven by and interested in and trying to cultivate harm because they get some sick joy out of harm that we can't relate to. That doesn't mean that there's nobody who gets a sick joy out of harm. That doesn't mean that, like, everybody is equally driven by the same things. But it just means this idea of how could so many pockets of the country be being driven by satanic baby assault when it's obviously out of our conception of what would ever be remotely humane or enjoyable or interesting.

It's almost the opposite of when it seems too good to be true. Maybe it is. There is a sense of. And obviously crazy things happen all the time. But if it seems like this thing requires many, many very evil people, not just kind of callous, like deeply at their core doing some really evil shit, you should ask some questions because usually that's not how people function. You know, one thing that my friend says that I really like is that most of us, all of us are doing the right thing most of the time now. It doesn't super matter if you, like, held the door open for me if, like, later you kill three kids. And it doesn't really matter if, like, the other 22 hours of the day you weren't doing a bad thing, but then you killed those kids and that was only two hours of the day. Like, that doesn't mean you had a successful day if you spent two hours of it murdering someone. But it does just mean that most of the time we are all kind of engaged in the human practice of existence in a way that is not trying to conjure the devil.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's totally it. Right? And I feel like there's something about the.

Some aspects of satanic panic lore, like even kind of the worst person you can think of, I really think would hesitate to sacrifice a baby. You know, it's true. It's true.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

It's true that that takes a level of. I mean, a level of indoctrination really. But the other thing I was gonna say is that I do think that some of this is like, our need to be heroic and law enforcement's need to be heroic. And the reality is, like, lots of people think of cops as constantly in danger, like constantly in conflict, having to pull their guns on people a couple times a week. Like, it's like sbu. But in reality, for most people, like, being in law enforcement is a small town job where people go decades without ever even ever pulling out their gun right in Some places, how we understand police as violent also is only part of the story because lots of policing is in lots of places is traffic tickets. And like, Stan, you know, being the sheriff's deputy there for the eviction and doing security at, like, the local whatever, city council, whatever. And I say that. To say that, like, to be the cop who stumbles upon the Satanist cult, I think is in some ways probably validating of why the world needs you and why law enforcement is so important. It brings some heft to a job that in many ways can be. In many places, can be especially largely white places, can be extremely, for lack of a better phrase, boring. And so I think when you think about the psychology of this, it's also the psychology of being willing to fall for it as like, to be willing to engage in this farce as law enforcement. Right. It's just so crazy.

[Sarah Marshall]

It also, it. It really. It does something that I can see being very seductive where if the reason all these crimes are happening, you know, the reason children are being sexually abused is because of the Satanists, then, like, that's not an approach that forces you to see the people causing harm as part of the whole social fabric of that you are also a part of. And that theoretically your job is not just to apprehend people after they commit a violent act, but that, I mean, it's something that people I feel like, have been talking about and struggling with in the past few years is like, well, I don't want to call the police, but, like, who am I supposed to call? Especially if when you call an ambulance, like, that can result in basically the police showing. So what is there when basically our prevailing emergency service is have someone get arrested. And that. That's something that is hard to answer because it involves, you know, you need a lot of resources. You need to sort of change the structure by which these things are allocated. It's all difficult systemic stuff. And so, of course, it's appealing to be like, well, we've caught the criminals. They're criminals because they're Satanists, which is just simply not our fault.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Yeah. You know, I think I love that. So Miriam Kaba, I once, years ago, went to a session she was running in New York, and she asked a room full of people how they, you know, we were talking about abolitionist was pre2020. So these are people who are really in it because this is pre2020. And this is part of the conversation. And everybody is like, yeah, I believe in abolition. I want abolition. All this stuff. Like, we believe in a world. And then she said, okay, so you're in your apartment tomorrow and you hear your neighbor beating his wife. What do you do? And there was total silence. And eventually someone said, I would call the police. And she said, of course you would call the police. Because the work of accountability outside of law enforcement starts before it doesn't work if you're not in relationship with your neighbors. It doesn't work if your neighbors or not, it doesn't work. But it's a lot more difficult if you don't have the phone tree or the ability to knock on the door and say, like, what's going on here? Or you don't have neighbors, frankly, who don't care if you hear them beating their wife. There are all of these ways in which accountability requires connection, community. Not just like government allocated services, but.

An understanding between ourselves and each other of what we expect from each other and what we want and how we hold people accountable. And it's. But we are used to that work being done at the moment of harm. And it's very hard when we have not built systems that allow us to kind of check each other's fears and impulses.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And I, And I feel like, you know, we can also see the satanic panic as our reaction to. Similar to the fears that we have about especially Halloween candy, which of course still comes up the razor blade and the apple. And the idea of receiving food or childcare from people you do not know is something that we should be paranoid about. It would be weird if we weren't. But it's just that we don't know how to express that often except through these sort of larger than life folklore ideas.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Right. You know, that one always makes me sad because when you think about Halloween, it's largely like one of the most beautiful examples of celebration and community that I can think of. It's like everybody goes out and gets candy and then they allow you to knock on their door all night and they give you candy and they say, great costume. And then you go to the next house and the kid's really happy and people are on the street like it's. People compliment your child. People decorate for kids. Like, you know, people really just do this for one night to do something for other people normally. And this idea that like, because risk exists, risk is significant, I think is so interesting in that scenario in particular, because every year we see actually our neighbors are pretty good. Right. And actually the people we live in a pretty good place. Like people who most 99.9999% of the time on this night are engaging in the best possible way. And yet there is this fear of the candy that's been laced. It's not that it's not possible, but that it's not likely. And we're really bad at differentiating between us two. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And you also see there are so many cases of terrible things happening to children in a way that seems preventable to me. Right. And where the problem is not evil, but, like, often I think more options in terms of childcare would do the trick or just the ability to, you know, or to get children adequate nutrition more easily. Like, these are very boring problems. But, like, maternal mortality is a problem in this country. Infant mortality is a huge problem in the US and, like, you know, we don't. We don't want to have a big headline task force about that because that's. We can't shift the blame to somebody else.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

I think that's right. I think there's also. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago about ending the child welfare system. And reading about it, you see the logic and like, the system we have basically punishes people for poverty, takes kids away from their parents in a permanently, in a lot of cases, puts them in foster care, where the system, where the, like, rate of success, you know, where rates of abuse are higher than rates of abuse at home, and doesn't address any of the problems, like, we don't actually have. We know that, like, separating parents from their children, especially when their children are, like, conscious and understand it is really traumatic. And yet we don't really have. We don't do anything to prevent getting there. We don't make sure people have the tools they need to, like you said, have childcare. We don't make sure that people have food. We don't make sure that people go to therapy and, like, address their own issues before they have kids. Right. We just tell people to wing it alone and then, like, inflict and then punish them.

[Sarah Marshall]

And God forbid they don't have that baby. We also have to really.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

Prevent that. Yeah, yeah. And because, I mean, it is like, it. It feels pretty cartoonishly evil to me. Like, there was a case during the big formula shortage where I think a woman stole formula and then ended up in a car chase with the police and I think ended up dying. And that's like, you. You have to do something with that information. Like, that's some Les Miserables level stuff right there.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Right. At what point are we willing to take responsibility for our part in people's is someone is killed running from cops for stealing fucking formula. That's on us as a society. That is. That's on us. Yeah. That's devastating.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. To quote an unusably canceled comedian unsuitable for broadcast. But there's like this old Dave Chappelle thing that I always loved from Dr. Katz where he's talking about the Incredible Hulk and how he's like, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry. And how at a certain point it's like, maybe the problem is you. You.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

Exactly. Literally the. That's. I've actually never heard that. But I'm going to look it up because I think about that all the time with the Incredible. Like, the Incredible Hulk is okay. And then I'm. I promise I. I'm going to jump. But the Incredible Hulk is very, it's like very interesting to me that the Incredible Hulk is like, the kids love the Incredible Hulk. I'm like, this is just a guy who gets really mad and then becomes like, scares the people around him and is uncontrollable. Like, that's crazy.

[Sarah Marshall]

I want the Incredible Lunk. And he gets sad and that's where his powers come from. He feels melancholy and then he like beefs up and he can do something productive.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

The Incredible Misanthrope.

Foreign.

[Sarah Marshall]

Thank you for listening to the W Know. Our producer is Mary Stephanhagen. Fact checking by Katherine Barner. Production assistance by Nicole Ortiz. I've been your host. Sarah Marshall. Our sound designer is Evan Kelly. Roorkhni Nair is our coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is manager of growth for CBC Podcasts. Arif Nurani is director of CBC Podcasts.

[Josie Duffy Rice]

For more cbc podcasts go to cbc ca podcasts.