Philip Jenkins Review of Satan's Silence
Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt
Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker
New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1995
pp 317 + xvi, $25.00

Satan's Silence is a work of immense significance, and is critical for understanding current debates over issues as diverse as feminism, the social position of children, the growth of therapeutic values and beliefs, and the status of American civil liberties. These claims might appear hyperbolic, but only to those who have succeeded in escaping the outrageous clamor of recent years over the supposed epidemic of ritual and Satanic abuse and violence to which American children are said to be subjected. According to these tales, countless thousands of children have from their earliest years been repeatedly raped and violated by Satanic cults, in appalling rituals that often involve the consumption of blood, urine and feces, and the ceremonial murder of humans and animals. Though seemingly outré, notions of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" have become widespread among groups as disparate as feminist theorists, child protection advocates, psychotherapists, and Christian fundamentalists. Indeed, the acceptance of SRA has for some years been an ideological touchstone in such circles: acceptance shows that one sides with the victims, with women and children, against the incessant terrorism waged by the diabolical hosts inspired by an oppressive patriarchal society. To express scepticism is to acquiesce tacitly in the crimes, or even to become a vicarious participant. If we suggest that children are lying or mistaken in this critical area, we are seeking to reverse a generation of progress in the direction of "believing the victim", of taking children's rights seriously. We are also rejecting a cardinal precept of modern therapy. To paraphrase the famous seventeenth century phrase, "No bishop, no king", the modern motto seems to be "No Satanist, no therapist": or even, "No Satanic abuse, no child protection". If these equations are correct, then we should be prepared for a true social revolution, for Nathan and Snedeker have proved beyond any doubt that the whole ritual abuse scenario is utterly fictitious, founded moreover on a sickening mixture of gullibility, avarice, self-promotion, and personal malice. It is often tempting to pursue a moderate course, to argue that while most such charges might be false, there is obviously a core of fact: surely there could not be such abundant smoke without a little fire? But as with the anti-Jewish blood libel of past years, from which the legend partly derives, ritual abuse offers a classic example of a slander cut from whole cloth. In reality, the number of children victimized by Satanic ritual gangs is precisely equal to the number of Christian infants butchered by Jews at Passover, and that number is zero. Reciting either myth as factual should earn the culprit a like degree of public ostracism.

Satan's Silence shows brilliantly and persuasively how the SRA theory originated in the 1970s with speculations by the "anti-cult" movement, notions that were focused and magnified by the 1980 book Michelle Remembers, in which a woman purported to recall abuse by her mother's cult many years previously. This initiated a boom in the therapeutic recollection of early trauma that has made immense fortunes for a band of snake-oil psychiatrists with the ethical standards of Ted Bundy. Incidentally, the authors fail to note that the crucial Michelle tale apparently derived from tales of the doings of West African leopard cults in the colonial era, an exotic mythology lovingly transplanted to North America, where it has blossomed splendidly: as in ancient times, ex Africa semper aliquid novi. The various strands of the legend merged in 1984-85 with the case of the McMartin preschool in southern California, where a group of seven innocent teachers were subjected to years of hell at the sadistic pleasure of the Los Angeles media and prosecutor's office, on charges of inflicting bizarre sexual rituals on hundreds of toddlers. The McMartin affair was the model for hundreds of succeeding incidents, in which teachers and caregivers were identified as the Special Forces in Satan's limitless horde.

Case by case, Nathan and Snedeker show painstakingly how to generate such a witch hunt: how minor physical oddities in a child patient are taken to prove the "witch's mark" infallibly proving abuse; how child "victims" are subsequently interrogated at terrifying length until they seek escape by accusing anyone nominated by the inquisitors; and how unscrupulous prosecutors drive home these charges by the cynical use of jailhouse snitches and media leaks. The chief problem is what might be called the "overkill" phenomenon, how ever-willing child witnesses seek their elders' approval by constantly embroidering their tales, until the associated mythology strays into wondrous realms of sacrifices and massacres, hidden tunnels, Nazi mind-control, Satanically-mobilized killer bees, and CIA atrocities (and everything in this list derives from an authentic SRA case, even the bees and the tunnels). Such rococo fabrications are usually excluded from court, but fuel the fantasies of an enthusiastic audience of conspiracy theorists, among whom a quirky television series like The X-Files is presumably viewed as excessively sceptical.

When the SRA theory originated in the early 1980s, critics were remarkably scarce, and few were willing to express their doubts in print for fear of themselves attracting public obloquy. Worse, the therapists and prosecutors who nurtured this monstrous creation were swift to allege that the defenders of accused ritual abusers were themselves clandestine diabolists, so that to be a member of "the backlash" was an unenviable position. I am proud to say that my first publication in this sceptical genre dates from 1985, but I claim no merit vaguely comparable to the authors of Satan's Silence. Michael Snedeker belongs to that elite corps of attorneys who had the guts to defend parents and teachers accused in such cases, despite the grave risk of being stigmatized for "defending the devil". Debbie Nathan is the sort of investigative journalist one would not dare invent in fiction, as so few people today believe in the image of the heroic crusading press. She has successively written on the most outrageous witch hunts, those incidents deemed untouchable by local media hacks, and has fought tirelessly to free the thousands of the falsely accused and imprisoned. Knowing the power and lack of scruple of those she is denouncing, she provides meticulous documentation of her charges against therapists and SRA true believers, charges of malfeasance and obscene greed that would be quite incredible were they not so fully buttressed by irrefutable evidence. The present book is exactly what one might expect from the collaboration of a brilliant lawyer and a courageous journalist, both motivated by outrage at the atrocities inflicted on the wholly innocent by crooked and/or deranged therapists and prosecutors, and their airheaded cheerleaders from that unhappy alliance of radical feminists and fundamentalists. (Why am I not surprised to find that one of the most egregious of the false convictions outlined in this book was secured by a Florida prosecutor named Janet Reno?) If President Clinton is so keen on having a war crimes trial to root out the collective sins of a community and its leaders, he would find work enough in Southern California before venturing into the Balkans. There is blame enough here, and to spare: blame for thousands of individuals and groups, for the participants and true believers of course, for the pressure groups who permitted the scandal, and perhaps even more for the media who consistently failed to stand up for the truth. The authors end with a powerful but presumably futile appeal for reparations and redress: "The involvement of women's activists in this effort would also help feminism's sullied reputation among people who have suffered from false charges. Child protectionists and feminists who refuse to help make these amends will ultimately be remembered as the deluded commanders of a crusade whose enemies were phantoms, but whose casualties were all too real". Put another way, they will go down in history as the people who gave devil worship and human sacrifice a bad name.

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