Satanic Panic of the 1980s Is Happening Again — This Time in Minnesota Daycares (w/ Sarah Marshall)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: There Are No Girls on the Internet

"Satanic Panic of the 1980s Is Happening Again — This Time in Minnesota Daycares"

Host: Bridget Todd | Guest: Sarah Marshall (Host of You're Wrong About and The Devil You Know)
Release Date: February 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the recurring phenomenon of “moral panics”—specifically, the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and its resurgence in contemporary forms, such as accusations against Minnesota daycares. Bridget Todd is joined by Sarah Marshall, an expert in the history of moral panics and host of The Devil You Know, to analyze how fear-mongering, scapegoating, and media hysteria continue to target the marginalized, often at the expense of caregivers and communities dependent on outside help. The episode draws unsettling parallels between past and present, focusing on whose stories get told, who is demonized, and what society chooses to ignore.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Roots and Mechanisms of Satanic Panic

• Satanic Panic Defined ([04:26]):

  • “It was the mainstream idea that there were large scale satanic cults that had infiltrated North American society…abusing children…and if we could just find the Satanist, then we could find the real threat.” — Sarah Marshall ([04:26])
  • Resulted in investigations, media frenzies, and wrongful convictions without substantive evidence, often bipartisan and mainstream at the time.

• Contemporary Echoes ([01:53], [18:11]):

  • What once seemed like history is “maybe a preview of what we're inside of now.” — Sarah Marshall ([01:53])
  • Current anxieties about daycares and childcare workers show eerie similarities to the 1980s panic—again targeting those who care for children.

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2. The Role of Family Anxiety and Social Change

• Changing Family Structures ([11:46], [12:17]):

  • Anxiety around “non-traditional families” (single-parent or non-nuclear) created fertile ground for panic.
  • “The nuclear family isn't super traditional…you call something non traditional for not being a nuclear family, it's…we didn’t even discover until the middle of the 20th century.” — Sarah Marshall ([12:17])

• Outsiders and Adult-Child Relationships ([09:48], [10:10]):

  • Ongoing suspicion toward non-family adults working with children, especially in the context of changing social values and increased women’s labor force participation.

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3. Redirecting Anxiety: From Social Problems to Scapegoats

• Economic Stress and Blame ([14:23], [17:26]):

  • The panic redirected “anxiety away from real structural problems” like expensive childcare and working parents' vulnerability by inventing external villains (Satanists then, immigrants now).

• Racial and Class Dynamics ([23:01]):

  • Accusations disproportionately targeted marginalized groups—lower-income, immigrants, people of color—reinforced by tales that Satanists were after “white, blonde haired, blue eyed children.”

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4. Media, Misinformation, and Moral Panics

• Influential Books and Media ([26:22]):

  • Sybil and Michelle Remembers popularized “recovered memory” and satanic ritual abuse narratives despite being debunked; their templates persist in new forms.

• Minnesota Daycares & Modern Parallels ([26:22]):

  • Example: YouTuber Nick Shirley’s viral, unsubstantiated claims about Somali-run daycares triggered real-life investigations, funding cuts, and suspicion, despite lack of evidence.

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5. The Mechanics of False Accusation and Mass Hysteria

• How False Memories & Claims Spread ([28:54], [34:48]):

  • Early 80s investigators lacked tools to properly question children, leading to contaminated “evidence.”
  • The McMartin case (California) became the blueprint, with wild, unsupported claims replicated nationwide: “There were these tunnels under the school, and the kids were being taken up in planes and taken to other countries…” — Sarah Marshall ([31:54])

• The Power of Non-Evidence ([25:16]):

  • Adults assumed guilt based on mundane “evidence” (black robes, fabric), catalyzed by paranoia:
    • “I’m not much of a detective, but even I can think of a reason just offhand why someone would have that [a graduation robe].” — Sarah Marshall ([25:16])

• Silencing Dissent ([36:47], [37:02]):

  • Raising skepticism during the panic was socially and professionally dangerous: “You would really be in a position of being accused of being sympathetic to…child abuse or even to Satanism.” — Sarah Marshall ([37:02])

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6. Lessons, Patterns, and the Struggle to Move Forward

• History Repeats ([42:59], [45:45]):

  • The same playbook—believe the worst, seek a scapegoat—recurs because it is emotionally satisfying and socially expedient.
  • “If you can’t stop history from happening, then how do you live within it and even protect some of the people who are stuck inside of it with you?” — Sarah Marshall ([44:59])

• Demonization as Distraction ([46:22]):

  • Fixation on “Satan” allows society to ignore deeper, inner failings or vulnerabilities, and makes people feel heroic at the expense of the innocent.
  • “We're not dealing with cosmic evil. We're dealing with very prideful, individual, kind of often mortifying to look at human control and abuse…We can deal with that one a lot easier.” — Sarah Marshall ([53:35])

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7. Optimism and Moving Forward

• Hope in Historical Awareness ([51:24], [53:28]):
  • Even amid despair and repetition, there is hope: “I’m an optimist and nothing can beat it out of me, apparently. So I’m honestly very hopeful in a way…”
  • By recognizing these patterns are not “cosmic” or invincible, but human and therefore changeable, we can resist and protect the vulnerable.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Political Consensus:
  “This was a very politically bipartisan idea to begin with…for really quite a while, it was hard to express doubts.” — Sarah Marshall ([04:26])

• On Blaming the Other:
  “It is wild to me how much this is kind of back in the zeitgeist again.” — Bridget Todd ([06:18])

• On Marginalization:
  “Allegations were baselessly sensational, spread through media coverage and word of mouth, but resulted in real destroyed lives and careers.” — Bridget Todd ([26:22])

• On Adult Paranoia:
  “I love that story, too, because…it feels like part of a healthy society involves people being able to travel around and meet people different from themselves…and that if that causes fear and superstition…that…is taking away a lot of…the potential to offer care.” — Sarah Marshall ([07:27])

• On Human Nature:
  “There are lessons that we chose not to learn because it would have been hard.” — Sarah Marshall ([42:59])

• On Vigilance:
  “We’re not dealing with cosmic evil. We’re dealing with…mortifying to look at human control and abuse.” — Sarah Marshall ([53:35])

• Personal Anecdotes:
  “I grew up in the South…I remember going to…a school project at someone’s house where…her mom made us keep [a] Ouija board on the front porch because…having it inside would be like inviting the devil in.” — Bridget Todd ([49:22])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:53] The Satanic Panic as a preview of current events
• [04:26] What was the Satanic Panic and its mainstream grip
• [11:46] Changing family structures and the roots of anxiety
• [17:26] Redirecting structural family/economic anxieties into scapegoating
• [23:01] Racialized and class-based targeting in accusations
• [26:22] Influence of media and the modern Minnesota case
• [28:54] The McMartin case: blueprint for daycare panics
• [36:47] Was it unpopular to be skeptical in the 1980s?
• [42:59] Frustrations, lessons from the past, and emotional responses
• [46:22] The cultural meaning of the devil and the dangers of certainty
• [51:24] Optimism and the repetition of patterns
• [53:35] Closing thoughts on “cosmic evil” vs. human responsibility

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Tone & Style

The conversation is insightful, occasionally darkly humorous, and blends rigorous historical analysis with personal stories and emotional honesty. Both Bridget and Sarah balance deep dives into grim realities with moments of optimism and empathy, encouraging critical thinking and community care.

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Where to Listen & Further Resources

• The Devil You Know (Sarah Marshall’s CBC show) — available on major podcast platforms
• You're Wrong About — Sarah Marshall’s acclaimed podcast with deep dives into misunderstood history
• Episode Transcript via the “There Are No Girls on the Internet” platform

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Bottom Line

The episode illuminates how society repeatedly targets the marginalized under the guise of “protecting children,” using fear and fantastical tales in lieu of evidence, and how these patterns adapt to new scapegoats in every era. By learning from history and examining the stories we tell, listeners are encouraged to advocate for truth, resist panic, and protect both the caregivers and children at the heart of the community.

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Transcript

[Sarah Marshall]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Bridget Todd]

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[Sarah Marshall]

It's beginning to feel less like this bizarre chapter of history than maybe a preview of what we're inside of now.

[Bridget Todd]

There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet. It may seem like forever ago now, but last month we had a national conversation about daycares. Are daycares all scams? Are they being run by people who are actually threats to Our kids. The conversation was specifically taking place in Minnesota and the baseless attacks on daycare workers felt kind of familiar to me. So I turned to Sarah Marshall, who is pretty much my podcast idol. Sarah hosts the podcast you're wrong about and has a new show with the CBC called the Devil, you know, about the Satanic panic of the 1980s that baselessly accused daycare workers of harming kids as part of satanic rituals.

[Sarah Marshall]

I became interested in the Satanic panic initially and I think about 2012 when I was in grad school and I was a baby teacher and I was a teacher whose skills were in their infancy. I was not teaching actual babies. And I remember finding a Texas monthly article about the case of Fran and Dan Keller in the Austin article, which was a big satanic panic case of the 80s. And encountering at around that same time the documentary about the West Memphis three, Paradise Lost, and just feeling like I had encountered some kind of glitch in American history that we hadn't talked about enough that revealed something that I felt like I had not maybe been given a chance to understand was there before in this basic, you know, the idea that you could actually maybe convict someone of murder by arguing that they were satanic even if you didn't have physical evidence to support it. And I was absolutely shocked. And then as the years have gone on, it's begun to feel less like this bizarre chapter of history than maybe a preview of what we're inside of now.

[Bridget Todd]

For folks who are perhaps uninitiated, how would you describe the Satanic panic?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I mean, I think I would. Unfortunately, we're being forcibly initiated at this point. But yes, if you haven't encountered it, basically the Satanic panic of the 80s, which is what I've been researching for a long time and what my new show is about is basically this widespread and pretty mainstream belief that gripped North America and sort of spread outwards as well in the early 80s through. Through the early 90s and then began to, you know, lost a lot of its mainstream respectability as a theory, but never quite went away, as we can see. And it was the mainstream idea that there were large scale satanic cults that had infiltrated North American society and they were the ones abusing children and they were the ones kidnapping children. And if we could just find the Satanist, then we could find the real threat to life, love and happiness, I guess, and the threat to the American family. And so it resulted in investigations and trials and wrongful convictions generally without a shred of physical or Even circumstantial evidence that really pointed toward child abuse. And now, of course, we kind of. We have a White House that. That's kind of openly embracing the idea that if anything happens that you don't like, it's Satanism. But this was a very politically bipartisan idea to begin with, and one that for. For really quite a while, it was hard to expressed doubts about publicly for fear of, you know, being accused of being on the side of, if not Satanists and at least child abuse.

[Bridget Todd]

You might already know some of the big names who pushed the idea that Satanists had infiltrated daycares and were harming our children nationwide. But Sarah's work, the Devil, you know, focuses on something different. The everyday people swept up in this panic, teachers and caregivers, people who just wanted to work with kids only to be branded as members of a satanic cabal. It is wild to me how much this is kind of back in the zeitgeist again. And something. Something I really, really like about the new show the Devil, you know, that you've done with the cbc, is how the voices that you're hearing are from people who were caught up in this. Right. The first voice that we hear is from Diane, just somebody who was doing a photography project with kids in a school, and then everything is going fine. And then all of a sudden, one day hears over the school's loudspeaker the principal saying, if anybody sees that photography lady, send her directly to my office. The way that regular people got ensnared in this without really a shred of evidence. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I love starting off with that story because there's something I find. I don't know, something we really wanted to do that I'm glad you brought up is trying to. Yeah. To hear about this as much as possible in the voices of people affected by it and who kind of were going about their day when suddenly this strange story crept in and maybe even, you know, became something that. That they had to flee in this case, or in fact, couldn't escape in time in later examples. And I love that story, too, because it's about, you know, a woman traveling from, you know, from her home in a city to rural Kentucky, and with the best of intentions and with this desire to, you know, to teach kids, but also, I think, to kind of forge the connections that we. We need in any culture to feel like we're part of something more unified and not just a bunch of feuding little groups that are all trying to secure our own interests. And so this Idea that if you set out that way one day and then you get accused of, you know, literally looking for blonde blue eyed children to sacrifice because you dared to be a stranger in town trying to teach skills and because there just was sort of a need to find a scapegoat in that moment. And you were at. Then, you know, these are. And we're, it feels very similar to what we're seeing now. That kind of, it feels like part of a, a healthy society involves people being able to travel around and meet people different from themselves and to find, figure out what connects us and learn from each other. And that if that causes fear and superstition and anxiety, then that is, you know, that as now is taking away a lot of, a lot of the love and care that we have the potential to offer to each other and making us feel more like enemies who happen to share a country than anything else.

[Bridget Todd]

That's such a good way to put it.

[Sarah Marshall]

Thank you.

[Bridget Todd]

And I do, I do. There's this thread of like the demonization and fear and anxiety around children being in contact with adults who are not family.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Bridget Todd]

Especially I feel that today that, you know, there are all these ways that anxieties about the family and sort of our current sort of social climate is translated into it's dangerous if your kid is being watched or taught by an adult that is not a blood relative. You know, I wonder if that's part of it too.

[Sarah Marshall]

I think so. And I feel, I mean something that is very apparent today that I feel like is, you know, not even difficult to pick out the subtext from. It feels like it's become text at this point is this idea that, you know, that in, in the kind of the political conservativism of the United States today, which has become, you know, very infiltrated by fundamentalist aspects of Christianity. There's this sense that like someone sexually abusing your child and teaching them about sex ed and about, you know, about gender and about queerness, that it feels like people are equally afraid of both those things. And that feels like it's bringing this sort of subtextual part of the satanic panic of the 80s, like straight into the foreground where it's. You kind of reach this point in a lot of looking at the fears and anxieties of a lot of people of, well, are you worried about someone harming your children or are you even, perhaps maybe even more worried about your children learning things that you don't want them to know and then having the power that comes with that knowledge or Finding. Finding community that empowers them to live a life that you didn't envision for them. Because then it becomes, you know, not about protecting your children from harm as much as trying to maintain absolute control, but then passing that off as your desire merely to protect them when in fact, you're maybe the thing that they need to be protected from at a certain point.

[Bridget Todd]

Yeah. And you know, in your. In the first episode, when you talk to Mary, that Grand Valley State professor who basically is talking, I mean, she really breaks it down that at the time when the satanic panic was really popping off in the 80s, people were real. Just the fam. People were very anxious about the family. Right. You had these higher rates of what I guess back then you would call non traditional families. What was that? Is that a euphemism for like single parent households or. I couldn't quite pick up on what the subtext of that was.

[Sarah Marshall]

I feel like that is just the non nuclear family, which, you know, which is interesting in its own right. Right. Because then if we call something the non traditional family for not being a nuclear family, it's, well, it's like, well, okay, the nuclear family isn't super traditional as evidenced by the fact that it's named after something we didn't discover until like the middle of the 20th century. Right, great point.

[Bridget Todd]

Let's take a quick break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show [e-mail] that's iheartadvertising.com in the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever. I said, I need you to tell.

[Sarah Marshall]

Me exactly what you're doing. And immediately the mask came off.

[Bridget Todd]

You're supposed to be safe.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's your home. That's your husband. To keep this secret for so many years, he's like a seasoned pro.

[Bridget Todd]

This is a story about the end of a marriage, but it's also the story of one woman who was done.

[Sarah Marshall]

Living in the dark. You're a dangerous person who preys on vulnerable and trusting people. You're a creditor.

[Bridget Todd]

Michael Levengood.

[Sarah Marshall]

Listen to Betrayal Season 5 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bridget Todd]

I'm Brandon Kyle Goodman, the host of the Tell Me Something Messy podcast. I wanted to create a safe, comfy place for all of us to talk about sex, relationships and what it means to be human. And baby, my fantastic guests are bringing their mess to share with the class. Like singer songwriter Duran Bernard suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends. Here's the thing. Get a group that's mature enough not to putting your hand in warm water and tickling you. You know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, I mean, I mean granted I might be doing. But you know, like, and I think it's important for those examples of that of us just being gentle with one another because the world and the people in it are already finding brand new ways to whip our ass Every single day 1,000%. So the least we could do is make strides to handle each other in a way that is. That's with care and a bit more mindful. Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need and at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. And we're back. So how do you really scare people? Make them afraid for their children? The brilliance and cruelty of these moral panics is how they redirect anxiety away from real structural problems. Because the truth is, supporting a family is really hard. It's expensive. Most families need two incomes just to survive, which means relying on non family adults, daycare workers, teachers, caregivers to help raise kids. And that dependence can naturally feel vulnerable. It requires trust. But instead of addressing why childcare is so expensive, why wages for childcare workers are so low, and why parents are all stretched so thin, it's much easier to create a villain, a satanic conspiracy, a fraudulent immigrant, someone specific to blame and someone different to fear. So then you have economic anxieties, more women working, and then on top of that you have these social commentators who are going on TV and really making people Afraid of what the consequences of all of this might be and stoking a lot of fear around the family. And I mean, I wonder, do you see us as in a very similar moment today? Because, yeah, listening to that episode, I was like, gosh, this could have been written about 2026.

[Sarah Marshall]

I know, that's the creepy part. Yeah. And I guess, you know, it's. I would like for it to be less relevant, but that's what history does. It repeats. And, yeah, I do feel like we're in a similar moment. And it's funny to compare it to the 80s when I think, you know, I was born in the late 80s, so I wasn't, you know, I was limited in the things I could learn about what was happening in the news, existing only sort of in egg form, and you can't pay very much attention in that case. But, you know, it feels like one of the. Some of the major anxieties were about the death of the American working class, which, in typical fashion, we were like, Reagan, save us by destroying it faster. Thank you. Great work.

[Bridget Todd]

Yes.

[Sarah Marshall]

You know, and it. Fears about the concept of family values and kind of an inevitable backlash to women's lib and gay liberation brewing. And, you know, it's easy to forget now, too, that it wasn't until the Reagan administration that. That the separation between church and state began to get real weird at the White House. And we, you know, we had kind of a presidency in which Jerry Falwell got to sort of stick a couple of fingers in. And that's never good, in my opinion. And also just the kind of the. The anxieties of the Cold War and this idea of, you know, just. I think probably at any time in America you can do this, but especially in times of heightened anxiety, it's so nice to be able to point to a villain who. You seem very far away and kind of inhuman and having completely different needs and values than us. And I mean, I never thought about this before, actually, but it does feel like the satanic panic mimics the Cold War just a little bit, you know, where it's like you have these Satanists and it's like talking about Soviets where, like, they're not regular people like you and me. Like, instead of worshiping Jesus, they worship Satan, and instead of saying goodbye, they say bad bye. I mean, nobody said that about them, but this idea that they're sort of bizarro humans is such a. It's such a great way to divert our anxieties away from the places that we should be directing Them, which are, of course, you know, generally the people in power who are doing whatever they can to save a little bit of money by cutting welfare a little bit more.

[Bridget Todd]

Yes, yes. And if you are really worried about your kid being like, sexually exploited or sexually abused, it's probably not by Satanists. There are probably, you know, like, there might be someplace else to, statistically speaking, there might be elsewhere that you could be looking if that was a meaningful concern to you other than the occult.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And I think that kind of the thing about the. Especially in the early 80s that the satanic panic made possible, which the allure of this makes total sense to me is, you know, to say that this problem of child abuse in America that at this point in history we had only really recently begun talking about that the problem, you know, wasn't what we now, having had the chance to really study it, understand it to be, I think, based on all available data, which is that it's. It's people in the family, it's people close to the family. If you're in a church, you have to think about the people in your church and the ways that, you know, very rigidly hierarchical institutions, including like quite a lot of Christian ones, really support and facilitate abuse. Because if children are disempowered to speak ill of someone who's in. In a position of authority for them or their family, then that's going to be a lot harder for them to do. And so the Satanic panic, I think, was so appealing because it was saying not just that there were Satanists who were abusing children, but that the majority of child abuse potentially was being perpetrated by Satanists. And, and once we. And also this kind of, this idea that I think leads to, you know, people struggling to deal with child abuse in a. In a way that's proportionate, which is the sense of, you know, that we've seen a lot in kind of American history and probably everywhere of like, well, you know, dare we remove a pillar of the community? Dare we say these things about, you know, someone who is in this or that important role, who is in a job that is sort of supposed to be for good people. What are we to do with this information? And the Satanic panic just makes it easy that way. We were like, well, here's a Satanist. And as far as we know, they do have fun sacrificing animals and possibly babies. So there's really not it allowed, I think, adults to protect a child from an absolute villain as opposed to putting them in a position that forced Them to really question the world that they had built and question the safety of the world that they were enforcing rather than choosing their own prejudices over a child's welfare, which we can see does happen quite a lot when Satanists are not a convenient villain.

[Bridget Todd]

The Satanists, according to those raising the alarm, weren't equal opportunity predators. They supposedly targeted a specific type of child, white, blonde haired, blue eyed kids. This meant the people working in daycares who tended to be marginalized by race, class or both became the ones being demonized. And speaking of convenient villains, like something that you say in the, I think the first or the second episode is that, you know, a lot of the accusations being made were falling on the shoulders of people who were marginalized, whether they were lower income folks or strangers from out of town. And the idea that, oh, these Satanists are not just looking for any child, they're looking specifically for blonde haired, blue eyed children. Like those are the children you gotta keep at a school. It's just very clear to me how much this was a proxy for attacks on the other using claims that as you put it, would be comical if there weren't actual lives at stake.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, yeah, that's the thing, right, is that it's, the details of it are so over the top that it really, it, if it weren't real, it would be very funny. And there's even moments where it is funny. You know, you have kind of cult cops, which is what I think they're happy to be called at the time, or at least not too miffed about it. In the 80s who's, you know, who make a living by traveling from town to town giving seminars, talking about how you can identify like satanic elements in a murder investigation and talking about, you know, oh, I own a copy of the Satanic Bible but I'm afraid to read it because it's demonic. And it's like, you should read it. And then if you read it you would find out that in the Satanic Bible Anton lavey himself is like, no, of course we don't literally worship Satan because that would be silly. But this is a religion about celebrating selfishness and then you would know that. But I don't know, this idea of grown adults being afraid of even opening the Satanic Bible is just like when you think about them being in charge of what happens to the rest of us, you're like, oh no, but in isolation it's hilarious.

[Bridget Todd]

Or like the story of the people who come into town and they buy yards of black fabric and that's it Satanists. There's no other reason why else would someone need black fabric?

[Sarah Marshall]

I know, and, and the story behind that is that they were, you know, making dresses for a funeral scene in a movie. And, and a funeral itself is like a reason that anyone could reach for. And there's an example also in the, the McMartin case, which was kind of the first big trial in the satanic panic. And these cases of alleged daycare sexual abuse where one of the women who ran this daycare center was, they searched their house and found a black robe in it. And they were like, oh my God, it's a black robe. What could explain this except use in satanic rituals? And it was a graduation robe like so many people hang on to. You know, it's just, it's one of these things where you're kind of like, I'm not, I'm not much of a detective, but even I can think of a reason just offhand why someone would have that.

[Bridget Todd]

I'm sad to say that not a lot has changed. Daycares remain targets for people looking to attack those who are different. And the playbook today is remarkably similar. In the 1970s and 80s, books like Sybil and Michelle Remembers laid the groundwork for the satanic panic. Sybil, published in 1973, detailed a woman who supposedly had 16 personalities uncovered through recovered memory therapy techniques later discredited but treated as gospel at the time. Then came Michelle remembers in 1980 claiming to document recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse. These books didn't just tell stories, they created a template. They taught people what to look for, what to fear, and how to interpret ambiguous situations as evidence of hidden evil. And this template was weaponized against daycare workers, particularly those who were working class immigrants or people of color. Caregivers who simply wanted to work with kids found themselves accused of participating in elaborate satanic conspiracies, accused of targeting white, blonde haired, blue eyed kids specifically. The allegations were baselessly sensational, spread through media coverage and word of mouth, but resulted in real destroyed lives and careers. Fast forward to today and we're seeing that exact same playbook, just with different villains. YouTuber Nick Shirley baselessly accused Somali run daycares in Minnesota a fraud, filming empty buildings during off hours and presenting it as damning evidence. His viral videos, viewed over 130 million times, led to frozen federal funding, increased deportation threats, and a new wave of suspicion against immigrant childcare workers, despite state investigators finding no evidence of fraud at the facilities he targeted. And they're all recreating it because it works. Moral panics about children amplified through media aimed at marginalized communities doing the work of caring for kids. Yes, the details might change, but the pattern remains the same. So many of these allegations circulated around daycares in places like Kern County, California, like, like, prominently featured. Why? Why daycares? Like, why. Why do you think that was like, the place where so many of these allegations stem?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I. I couldn't say exactly why, but I think there. There are a few factors and that it. It started with this case in McMartin where you had a parent of a preschooler who had some severe mental health issues that she was dealing with and who I think, kind of latched on to this idea that was being, you know, already kind of in the air and being talked about by experts and by people who had every reason to be a bit more skeptical about it, that, you know, daycare. Well, not daycare, sexual abuse so much, but just that Satanists were looking for young children to abuse. And also that this was, you know, if you were looking at sexual abuse, then you would have to wonder about Satanism. And that kind of came from this book that came out in 1980 called Michelle Remembers, which was a kind of a smaller scale bestseller at the time, but was actually used to train social workers and police. And so it was, you know, kind of a sensationalistic paperback. It was definitely a sensationalistic paperback on the same scale as, like, I mean, it was attempting to emulate Sybil to an extent. That was another highly fictionalized book that was then treated as. Treated as gospel by people who. Who perhaps could have known better. And then a lot of people who just were acting on the advice of experts. And so. And this was a book where, you know, a woman went through therapy and after a lot of unethical treatments that we talk about it in episode two, had kind of been really pushed by her therapist to stand by the story that she had been abused by Satanists as a small child and that Satan had told her what his plan for the 80s was and that that was going to be his decade to take over. And so if you believe that kind of thing, it was extremely stressful, you know, and so seems as if we had this initial daycare case at McMartin where essentially a mother became concerned that her child had been abused. There wasn't any actual evidence of this. And in my opinion, it was something that she kind of had on her mind and brought. Brought that concern to her child, who was kind of too Young to confirm or deny it because of being, I think, two or three years old. And. And, of course, you know, it's worth mentioning that at this time, we really didn't know how to forensically question children, especially young children, about whether they'd experienced abuse, because we hadn't. You know, no one had really bothered to learn how to do that before. It wasn't something that the police and in North America had too much experience with. The idea of childhood sexual abuse as a social concern or as something that people were talking about on a bigger scale was just very new. And so there's this, you know, combination of we didn't know what to do because no one had had time to research yet, and also the sense of blame of, like, well, why didn't. Why hadn't we done that? But that was what the situation was. And then it seems as if there was almost kind of a meme quality to it where this case progressed, because then you had police and social workers who didn't know how to question young children and so inadvertently contaminated their witness pool and were fairly quickly began pressuring young children to corroborate details that they were able to get other kids to mention, and often would get those details through kind of imaginative play. So we ended up with these extremely, extremely strange and elaborate claims against the family that ran McMartin as this investigation proceeded. And it was on the level of there were these tunnels under the school, and the kids were being taken up in planes and taken to other countries, and they were forced to kick a pony to death. And, you know, one of their abuser, one of their alleged abusers flew through the air, which was supposed to prove that they were using witchcraft. And it was a lot of it, in retrospect, pretty clearly seems to have been just children told to play with puppets until they said something that could maybe be connected to the idea of a crime, and then being asked to implicate or to confirm each other's stories in the same way that you would maybe ask people to implicate each other when they were your suspects rather than their witnesses. So just this really, this absolute nightmare of an investigation that was the most expensive legal proceeding in California until the O.J. simpson trial, and that ultimately went nowhere. But it did, you know, destroy the lives of the people who were accused, who had no choice but to be caught up in this for several years. But then the issue is that once in terms of how that gets replicated, I think the McMartin investigation breaks as national news, and then I think there's just something about it where people are primed to look for the devil, where it's this idea of could Satanists be secretly abusing your child who's too young to really be able to give you much information about what they're doing all day long? And it's something where similar cases then pop up elsewhere in the country which can, if you're looking for it, give the impression that, oh my God, the Satanists really are everywhere. I mean, they're not just in California. There's, there's a case in Florida, there's a case in Massachusetts, there's a case in New Jersey. So this, if you're looking for it, you can say, well, this is just proof of how wide the Satanist reaches. But you can also say this is the kind of investigation leading potentially to wrongful investigator. But you can also say that this is the kind of investigation leading potentially to wrongful conviction that is easy for police in different locations to replicate if they want to. Because if you keep pressuring young children, especially a large group of them, to say that, that an adult has done something, at some point they're going to like. Weirdly, I think these cases replicated so quickly because parents were terrified, as they had every reason to be, because parents are always, I think, justified in feeling afraid all the time. And then people in authority hadn't done the work that they needed to, to be able to really evaluate these stories as thoughtfully as they had to. They didn't know how to question children. And then if you push children to confirm a story, then it's, it's similar dynamics to the way that you get false confessions. You know, where if you, there are some people, and especially people with low IQs, which again puts them in a similar category to kids where if you just keep pushing and pushing them to just tell them now that you did it and kind of especially focus on the idea of short term relief for someone who doesn't have a great concept of long term consequences like a small child, then you can kind of get what you want out of them. And so it feels like from that perspective maybe an inevitable pattern, but also kind of a sinister one. Because this, you know, the catchphrase of this was believe the children. And yet a lot of children really had the experience of being systematically disbelieved by the adults in their lives.

[Bridget Todd]

So let's say that we were in the 80s and we were watching this go down. If I had been like, guys, wait, maybe it's not Satan. Maybe these kids are just saying what they think the adults want was that a. Was taking that stance terribly unpopular when this was all going on.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I mean, it definitely was and certainly at the beginning. And you can. You look at, you know, especially looking at local newspapers and local journalists, you can see people. I mean, that's another thing I kind of have wanted to emphasize, especially in talking about this show and sharing it. Is that then as now. Right. I think we all probably have a much better sense of what this all looks like in action because we're living through it like your country can be doing something awful and you cannot support it a tiny little bit and there will probably be no record of you in the history books, you know, and then people can study your country and be like, wow, it's crazy that everyone just agreed that they were all going to become evil all at once. I would never. Right. Which I think is kind of how we were taught about Nazism when I was in middle school. I was just like, wow, it sucks to suck. Wouldn't want to be evil and have that happen in a country where I lived. And then you're like, oh no, it's slightly more complicated. And so, yeah, you look at. There's journalists locally kind of, especially in local newspapers in the early 80s who were like, I just don't know about this. I have some questions and this seems strange and I'm going to bring up some inevitable logical fallacies. And then it just would be something that maybe would have, you would hope would have a little bit of a ripple effect and that some people would read and be affected by and that it would maybe kind of slow, to some extent, the progress of this, this kind of epidemic of conspiracy theories. But it could have, I think, could have pretty negative effects for your career because it was the kind of thing where even more so than now, I think that you would really be in a position of being accused of being sympathetic to, to child abuse or even to Satanism and by people who, you know, were not as. As conspiracy pilled, I think, as, as the people that, who. And by people who are not as conspiracy pilled as. As the people who would be mad at you for saying that today. Because it was really more, at least in the early years, much more accepted as a mainstream belief that these Satanists were behind child abuse. And also we're dealing with it for the very first time. So we have to deal with it this way, apparently. And yeah, that social pressure was definitely there.

[Bridget Todd]

More after a quick break. Let's get right back into it. I guess I just Feel like we're in such a different climate now. However, we still have these highly sensationalized, over the top claims with like little to no evidence really driving our public policy decisions. With like that similar kind of real human cost, real human consequences. I just don't know what to do with that. That here we are decades later and it's almost like people have figured out how to turn that into a personal money making, or at least attention generating endeavor.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I think so. And I think there's, I mean, I really struggle with that. And it was kind of making this show as you might imagine, or maybe not, because when I imagine other people making creative stuff, I'm like, wow, it must be great to know what to do most of the time. And then you hear about them, discuss it, and you're like, oh no, we're all just kind. We're just figuring it out one thing at a time, if that. For the most part. And with this. There were times when it was hard to work on because I was like, I don't know what I want to say because I don't really feel like I have anything constructive or hopeful because there's just times when that's kind of your emotional response to the world that you're in. And I think that in the end I feel like it ended up with a conclusion that I believe in and that, you know, is not telling people that we have to love each other because that's not good advice. You know, it's like, just, just do it. Just love each other, just do it. It's not helpful, I don't think. And so I hope that it, I don't know, that it provides context in that way and that we also can kind of can encounter some of that frustration of like, oh my God, why are we living through this? We just did this one and now we're doing, you know, But I, I feel, I also feel like there's, I, you know, we end in this place of inviting the listener to think of it partly from the perspective of if we have to watch history repeat itself, which I think we do, you know, and I, and I think it's. Even if, even if you do understand the past, you still have to repeat it or you still have to live in a world of people who are repeating it and live through the consequences of their choices. But I think that studying those patterns and studying the times when people have lived through something similar to what we're going through now, which there will always be parallels, I think that can be useful. I think there's like a sadness in that, that we deserve to let ourselves feel that we really would like to be able to learn more as a species. And yet it. I don't know. In a way, it feels like studying human history and behavior is like looking after, like, a dog or a baby, you know, where, like, no matter how, actually. I mean, dogs are much more trainable, I think. But we're like.

[Bridget Todd]

I can confirm that.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, a baby or a cat, let's say. We're like, no matter. Like, I can explain to my cats for the rest of my life that if they stick their paw in a glass of water and pull it over, then, like, they're not going to get what they want and I'm not going to get what I want, and we're just going to get water and potentially a broken glass everywhere. And yet they're. They can't hear what I'm saying because they just. Our relationship doesn't happen on that level. But I can leave fewer glasses out for them to do that, too. And I do feel like, you know, you look at the Satanic panic, for example, and like, there are lessons from it and there are lessons that we chose not to learn because it would have been hard. But. But, you know, on the bigger scale, there's the issue that it revealed that the American legal system was extremely vulnerable to bad outcomes. For examples like, well, we're very reliant on eyewitness testimony, despite knowing more and more about how unreliable human memory is. Not that you can't rely on it at all, but that it's tricky and that there are ways, there's magical thinking around it, which, you know, has been proven not to be true. There's also a belief that the Satanic Panic really benefited from that testimony under. That you produced under hypnosis was more reliable and you're not more truthful under hypnosis, but you are more. More vulnerable to suggestion. And that ended up coming up quite a bit, you know. And so there were. There were things that we could learn and that some people did learn and that we still, if we look at it, have the capacity to learn today because those lessons don't expire about just not surrendering our common sense to authority figures and about the ways that it's comfortable to shift your anxiety over to a scapegoat when really the people who deserve it are in your community, often in leadership roles. And so those lessons are there and we can recognize those patterns around us. If we study the past, then we can see more clearly how it's replicating in the present and try and do something to affect it or to affect things meaningfully and to provide shelter for people who inevitably those myths are going to come for in some way. I guess I think it's important to try and find this middle ground of, you know, if you can't stop history from happening, then how do you live within it and even protect some of the people who are stuck inside of it with you? And I think that's the goal because it is so tempting to feel despair that we can't just explain something to people really, really well and then they won't ever do it again.

[Bridget Todd]

Yeah. I mean, one of the points that you make, I think, at the end of the first episode is that it really is a story about people encountering something just a little bit unusual or just a little bit not what they were expecting, and then being stirred into such a state of anxiety that it's not just the worst thing that they can imagine. They're jumping to the conclusion that it's worse than that. And I think I would love to live in a world where that's not our first instinct. But unfortunately, as you just beautifully articulated, I'm not sure if that's the world that we have today so many decades later. I'm not sure if we have learned those lessons or if we ever will. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I also just. It's. I don't know. It was kind of a fun show for me to do, partly in terms of. In terms of thinking about who is this cultural figure, the devil, who we love to blame stuff on? Because I grew up pretty secular, I've never had actual anxiety about the devil. And so trying to think about what would it be like to have that figure in my life. It would be very scary, you know, to think that someone is always out there trying to tempt me or trying to make me stop doing, you know, the right thing in life. I feel like I. I actually. I guess I do have a concept of that, and it's just my internal sense of, like, anxiety, you know, and that that's. They're like things inside of my brain or inside of my mental health that are trying to sabotage me all the time. And that's what I have. And instead of Satan, but it feels like, you know, there's. That Satan is a character who you may find yourself clinging to if you need to believe in the righteousness of. Of yourself a little bit more than is necessary. If you're, you know, if you're saying, well, you know, I'm breaking a few eggs, but I'm fighting the devil and so it's okay. Or I'm taking on pure evil and I'm. I'm really a warrior for God and all this, so I can do whatever. And it's like, what. What if. What if we didn't know that we were being these great heroes and we had to actually keep evaluating our actions one thing at a time and not be so sure that everything we were doing was necessary? Because I think that would cause us to listen more, you know, and I think it's. I think it's. It's. We're able to do more good works for each other if we're not so sure that we're the heroes in our own story. And, and that's like a positive thing that comes from discomfort where I think if, you know, you look at people in the satanic panic who just got really deep in it and became some, you know, fell into some kind of expert role potentially, and they were in a position, especially in, you know, I think in mental health fields where a lot of your victories are very slow and hard won and can reverse themselves out of nowhere, that Wouldn't it be nice to just. To be the hero and to fix a patient one day and just to like, just to do something kind of impossibly great and good. And I hope it's reassuring for people to hear. I think it's reassuring for me to think about the fact that you don't have to be in that hero role to do good in the world. And even that if you do find yourself in that role, then that might be a warning sign because it could mean that you're just not thinking clearly enough about what you're doing. One thing at a time, you know?

[Bridget Todd]

Yeah. I have to say I'm so glad that you brought up just sort of Satan as a character. I grew up in the South. I grew up pretty religious. My parents were like in the church, but not super into it, but then the, like, one sphere over. So like my extended family and where we lived, super, super religious. I went to religious schools, all of that. And you know, you interview one person in the show that their experience. I was like, oh, that is exactly where you see, like people with the long denim skirts and all of that. That was my childhood. So I was like, oh, definitely recognize that. And when I tell you the role that Satan, like, there was definitely an under. Satan had a. Had a recurring undercurrent role in my childhood to the point where, you know, I remember going to Do a school project at someone's house where we had to. It was a project about Ouija boards, and her mom made us keep it on the front porch because she was like, it's. If you kept the project inside, it would be like inviting the devil into our house. And I remember when I. When I was growing up, the group 36 mafias are already right there. 666. They had a song called Stay Fly. And the rumor was if you played their song backward, what the chorus actually said was, lucifer is my king till I die. So, like, all of these, like, ways where we were taught to sort of be both afraid of Satan, never have any kind of interaction with Satan, but also be obsessively looking for him in his presence everywhere.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, it's like when you, like, hate someone who turns out to be your crush. Like, it's. Yes.

[Bridget Todd]

That'S such a good way to put it. So much of your work, including this project, is about looking back to get a sense of where we might be headed in the future. Where do you think we're headed?

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my gosh. I'm an optimist and nothing can beat it out of me, apparently. So I'm honestly very hopeful in a way because the show closes with an episode where we actually talk quite a bit about Jonestown and the People's Temple and about this question of sort of, well, why is it that we felt a. Why did we feel the need to invent the Satanic panic when we had a case of a large scale cult operating under everybody's noses and that we just kind of ignored that one? And we're like, but what if. What about an imaginary one, though? Let's focus on that. And, you know, this. This thing that I feel like I can see pretty clearly, especially having done this research where you look at the United States and the past few years politically, and it feels like we're, you know, we've become infiltrated by fascism. And as far as I can tell from this experience, a fascist government operates similarly to a cult, and that a cult operates basically like an abusive household. And then it feels to me at this point like there's just sort of fractals where you have the same logic replicating itself, which is scary and also helpful because it's kind of the same story over and over again. And then maybe you can kind of anticipate the logic of it. And I do tend to think, just from looking generally at what happens when people get very attached to kind of a dictator like figure, is that, you know, There have been horrors and will be horrors that can, that can't be undone because of that. But also it's charismatic. Evil leaders can't really be replaced that easily. And I'm just excited for that.

[Bridget Todd]

I like closing on a little bit of an optimistic note, even though the story itself is like not super optimistic.

[Sarah Marshall]

I guess it's attempting realism. I don't know if I remember able to get there with my sort of need for Pollyanna ism, which you can see is. Is very loud. But yeah, I think that, you know, within the, within the story of the satanic panic, you kind of, you step away from the devil and you're like, okay, we haven't met this guy. We haven't been able to. To talk to him really. So what we really have are a bunch of stories of individual people who were able to get what they wanted by striking a lot of fear and anxiety into people and getting what they wanted out of them. And the idea of looking forward to a time when that will end because on a human scale, everything ends. Yeah, it's nice to remember that we're not dealing with cosmic evil. We're dealing with very prideful, individual, kind of often mortifying to look at human control and abuse. And that's, you know, we're not dealing with something that is inevitable or cosmic or has to take place. We're dealing with shitty little men being given too much power. And we can deal with that one a lot easier.

[Bridget Todd]

Hell yeah. The show is the devil, you know, on cbc. Where can folks check it out?

[Sarah Marshall]

You can check it out wherever you get your podcasts. I know that's how we all tell people to find podcasts now, but, you know, just your. Your normal platforms or if you're my mom and that phrase stresses you out, you can, you can simply search it on your favorite search engine. You can bing it like Andrew Garfield and Spider Man. And there's a. You can listen to the first episode on my podcast you're wrong about, which is a show where we have talked over the years about the satanic panic and survival stories and bimbos and so much other stuff. So check that one out too if you feel like it.

[Bridget Todd]

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. You can reach [e-mail] youm can also find transcripts to for Today's [e-mail] There are no girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative Jonathan Strickland is our Executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and Sound Engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sarah Marshall]

This is an I heart podcast.

[Bridget Todd]

Guaranteed human.