I want to tell you
about a book that kept me awake
for two nights this week
as I read it.
It's one of those
you-can't-put-down books.
It was a journey of horror,
of sadism, and perversion.
A story
of brutality and death.
It is the story of a woman
who wrestled with the Devil...
and won.
[static crackles]
[Pringle] Joining me now
from Victoria is Michelle Smith,
a one-time victim of abuse
by a Satanic cult,
and Dr. Lawrence Pazder,
the psychiatrist
who helped her come to terms
with that nightmare.
They are co-authors of the book
Michelle Remembers.
The book
is called Michelle Remembers.
The authors are Michelle Smith
and Lawrence Pazder, M.D.,
who, acting as a psychiatrist,
extracted from her
bizarre childhood memories
of Satan...
which have shocked many people.
[reporter] Michelle Smith
created a sensation
with her story of abuse
at the hands of a Satanic cult.
This was
the first publicized account
of such rituals.
Now, you've mentioned evidence
which proves
some of the early things
you feel
that happened to her
as a small child
in Victoria, B.C..
I have to say
that the evidence is clear
that this came
from an experience
that Michelle had.
[Jack Webster]
Michelle, can I ask you
what it was that,
after four years of therapy
and this deep state
of consciousness,
that came out of your mind?
Uh, basically,
what I remembered
was a 14-month period of my life
at age five,
where I was given
to a group of people,
whom, at first, I wasn't aware
of what they were doing
other than, to a child,
they were adults doing things
I couldn't understand,
and it frightened me.
They would put me in cages,
they would
sacrifice animals,
they would have
a lot of candles,
and chanting,
and bizarre things
I had never seen.
Eating feces, and orgies,
and-- and, um...
dismembering fetuses--
these were things
that you experienced?
That's right.
Now, when you say
something like that,
that's alarming-- I mean,
people get terrified
by this sort of thing.
I mean,
are they rightfully terrified?
I think that, today,
that it's very, very wise
to take a good, hard look
at where
you place your children,
into whose care
you place your child.
[podcaster Sarah Marshall]
I have been interested
in the "Satanic Panic"
for years--
I researched it for years...
...and once I read
Michelle Remembers,
I could not
get it out of my head.
I did a five-part series
on Michelle Remembers.
To me,
it was important
to present a discussion
about it to people,
because this book
has helped shape the world
we now live in,
and whose contents we have
to have some understanding of
if we're going to know
how we got here, so...
I think
of Michelle Remembers
as the "Patient Zero"
of the Satanic Panic.
The book begins
when Michelle is in the hospital
following a miscarriage,
and Dr. Pazder comes--
because he, in the past,
has worked as her therapist--
and she tells him
about a dream
where there's an itchy spot
on her hand.
She scratches it,
and then...
countless tiny spiders
come surging forth,
and she's extremely upset
by this dream,
and so he decides,
based on this,
that it's time for them
to return to therapy.
[interviewer]
What went on in your childhood
that you discovered?
[Michelle] What, basically,
I began to remember
was a series of events
that stretched out
over about a 14-month period
in my life.
[interviewer] Was this
through hypnosis, Doctor, or--?
[Larry]
Actually, it's beyond hypnosis.
It's a method
that Michelle had devised
to go deep
into her depths.
[interviewer] How had
you devised this technique
yourself, Michelle?
[Michelle] It just came about
in the atmosphere
of Dr. Pazder saying to me,
"Just go where you have to go.
I'll be there with you."
I could then shut my eyes,
and through breathing
very deeply,
go way down inside.
It felt very much like falling
over backwards into the dark...
and that's where
I began to find the memories.
[click]
[Larry] Side "A"--
November 1976.
[Michelle gasping and sobbing]
[Michelle]
The first thing I remembered
was a night
when a group of people
were gathered to do...
I didn't know what.
They were doing dances
that were not like the dances
I was used to.
They had the walls
draped in black.
They had set up candles.
My mother was present...
but not in the ceremony,
not in the ritual,
she wasn't involved in that.
Her position seemed to be
one of giving me to this group.
They were dedicated
to doing a lot of seriously...
frightening kind of things,
and they sacrificed animals,
and they used fetuses of babies
in their ceremonies.
[Michelle sobs on tape]
[crying out]
No! No! No!
[screams unintelligibly]
No!
Incredible story.
Tell me about Michelle
and what, in fact,
you believe
happened to her
as a small child.
Well, I have to back up
a little bit.
I knew Michelle very well
through four years of therapy,
uh, intensive therapy,
and there was no evidence
of any of this kind
of material present,
but I knew her personality
and everything.
When she came to me a year after
it had been discontinued,
and went into a very deep level
of consciousness
and began to relive,
essentially--
to see, to hear, to feel,
and to tell me in detail--
these events,
for 14 months,
of what happened to her
as a child,
it was very difficult
for me to...
decide where
it was coming from.
[Charyl] Victoria
was very small in the 1950s.
I mean,
the population was 70,000--
that's it.
It was safe.
It was quiet.
Tertia's the oldest,
and then Michelle
is the middle child,
and I came along
five years later.
Tertia was pretty.
Michelle
was kind of a fuddy-duddy.
I was gorgeous.
[laughs]
No, I'm just joking!
But Michelle and I were
always getting into trouble.
I think that's because we had
such an up-and-down childhood.
My mom,
she didn't have an easy life,
raising three girls
on her own.
I mean, Dad was in and out.
You know, he was an alcoholic,
and he had
a gambling problem, so...
When you have a husband
that's an alcoholic,
you don't have friends.
You just don't.
So Mom spent a very lonely life.
My sisters talk about it now,
and it's-- they always say,
"Well, she always--
she would drink,"
and I said... [sighs]
"You know,
if I had three young girls,
and I sat down in the evening
and had a cold beer,"
you know, "I wouldn't classify
that as drinking," you know?
She just, she had
a lot on her plate.
We moved eight or nine times
in ten years
because of Dad.
Dad was quite violent.
And it always happened
Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving.
We would all end up
at a hotel somewhere
because the police
would have to come and take us,
because Dad would
start to...
terrorize
and destroy the house,
and b*at my mom up.
That was my childhood. Right?
You know, I just assumed
that's what everybody did--
got drunk
and had fights.
I don't know.
[click]
[Cheetie]
Larry liked the limelight.
You know,
everybody liked him
and he liked being liked...
and Michelle wasn't like that.
Michelle is like a Puritan,
you know?
No off-colour jokes, and...
not really any swearing,
and no alcohol.
But Michelle is
a caring,
loving,
gentle person
who cares about the whole world.
I worked with them
for about a year and a half,
and I only did it
because I love typing.
[click]
Larry had recorded everything
that Michelle said
in her reliving process.
[Larry Pazder speaking]
[Cheetie]
He took his reel-to-reels,
put it all on onto cassettes,
and I went through
the whole 14 months
from the beginning
to the end,
and filled in
as much missing words and sounds
as I could.
[typewriter clacking]
And so, what Larry did
was he clipped out, you know,
excerpts of the typing,
and he would put that,
and then put
his own writing underneath it,
and then he'd give it to me,
and I'd type it all and--
and send it off
to the publisher.
[Michelle, on tape,
increasingly distraught]
[Larry speaks]
[Michelle speaking]
[Cheetie]
To be 100% honest with you,
I listened to all the tapes
and I believe that something
happened to Michelle.
There isn't much doubt
in my mind.
Something definitely
happened to her, and...
I do believe
it was a group of Satanists,
and they had her
for those 14 months.
[Michelle cries out,
on tape]
[sobbing]
[Marshall]
As they get deeper
into these memories
of Satanic ritual abuse...
Michelle learns
that her mother
is not merely dabbling
in this social scene.
She gave Michelle
to the Satanists
because she is a Satanist.
She belongs to these people.
[Michelle sobs and weeps]
[Marshall]
And essentially,
the bulk
of Michelle Remembers
is long descriptions
of a young child
being mercilessly tortured.
[Michelle, sobbing]
[weeping]
[Larry, quietly]
[Michelle speaks]
[Marshall]
Dr. Pazder and Michelle
were spending
more and more time together.
The sessions are getting
up to six hours long.
It's becoming
both of their worlds,
and yet, surprisingly,
each of them is going home
to a spouse each night--
Michelle to her husband, Doug,
and Dr. Pazder
to his wife, Marylyn.
[Charyl] I met Larry
at Michelle's wedding
when she was getting married
to Doug Smith.
She loved Doug.
They were happy, you know?
He was a kind, kind person.
Michelle had a huge imagination.
She always created things--
she was very creative.
So, she had made
her wedding dress
and she had made
her husband's suit.
But the wedding--
I remember Larry coming in,
and, uh,
I thought it was odd...
that a psychiatrist
would show up at a wedding
of-of-- of a patient,
but there must have been
a connection
between Michelle and him.
[church bell pealing]
[Marylyn] Well,
I was married to Larry Pazder.
We met when I was 13
and he was 17,
and we married in 1961,
when he graduated
from medicine
and I had graduated
from nursing.
Well, he was always lots of fun,
and always very happy
and cheerful,
and very charming.
My mom said,
"he could charm the birds
right out of the trees,"
and he collected friends
like a dog collected fleas.
[Theresa]
My dad was really religious
and we went to church
every Sunday.
He was very much, like,
"The Catholic Church
is the only church,"
but with my dad, like...
I was his princess, basically--
"Daddy's little girl".
So I was always really, really
tight with my dad.
Like, I knew
he was a psychiatrist,
and I think
that's one of the reasons why
I really looked up to him
because, like, a psychiatrist
was sort of seen
as somebody that was
kind of all-knowing
and expert in human behaviour
kind of thing.
You're a conventional
medical psychiatrist.
Absolutely.
How would you describe
what was done...
mentally and physically?
It was a very carefully
organized as*ault on Michelle,
on a physical, emotional,
intellectual,
and finally,
on a spiritual level.
Very organized.
-Very sophisticated.
-Who were these people?
Well,
they're a secret organization.
They're a secret society.
Uh, a secret society
does not reveal
the identity of the people
or the ways of their practices.
I was familiar with this type
of society firsthand
in Africa--
practicing general medicine
there--
and if one of the members
of that society
revealed who he was,
he was k*lled instantly.
[Marylyn] Larry had the camera
when we were in Nigeria--
for taking 16-millimetre.
He liked to record things
and he had all the latest
photographic equipment,
recording equipment--
everything like that.
He loved doing that.
Larry was a character,
and he told
these stories of Africa.
And he had some run-ins
with nuns down there.
Nuns kept telling him
that he was evil,
and he was full of voodoo,
and he should leave.
[Marylyn] There were
strange things there.
It was
a completely different culture.
Very, very different.
He did take some pictures
of this group dancing around...
and it was like as if
they were in a possession state.
He went in there
and took those pictures
of two big wooden masks...
and he really liked
that sort of thing.
He seemed to be
very fascinated with it
and just kind of drawn to that.
[Larry, on radio]
Well, I had worked in Africa
and done a lot of work
in transcultural psychiatry,
so I was familiar with cults,
and the degree of
sophistication
and organization
that these people
were using on Michelle
told me that they were
a serious cult, indeed.
[host] But they believe
in the other God--
-the Devil, right?
-The Devil.
They worship the Devil
to bring down anything good
that they know about.
[host] How do they do this,
Michelle, what rituals--?
Does the Devil appear?
Is that the idea?
[Michelle] Well, that is one
of their intents, of course,
is to summon a presence.
[host] And you quote
that the Devil always
talks in rhyme?
[Larry]
This is historically a fact
that was brought out to us
by the priest
who we had to call in
to help us understand
what we were experiencing.
[host] "But I'll be back--
you wait and see.
I'll be back
to take the world for me."
You heard this, Michelle?
[Michelle]
Yes. It was serious.
Father Guy said
that Michelle could never know
the symbology...
of what she was saying.
Like, mostly, when Satan
comes out of the fire
and he speaks in rhymes.
Father Guy was the priest
at the Catholic Church
that Larry and Michelle went to,
and so he helped
Michelle to understand
what she's seeing
and-- and what's happening
in that reliving process.
[Jack Webster]
"Michelle is saved
by the timely intervention
of the Virgin Mary."
What was that referring to?
I was literally
being frightened to death.
At that moment,
when I think I was dying,
a very soft white light came
and enveloped me,
much like the feeling of being
padded with cotton batting,
and out of that, a woman came
and stood beside me,
and took a hold of my hand,
identified herself
as "Ma Mre",
and basically told me
to hang on,
to help me understand
the situation I was in,
and how to get through it.
-"Ma Mre"?
-Ma Mre.
-The Virgin Mary?
-That's right.
[Cheetie] Mother Mary--
they referred to her
as "Ma Mre"--
visited Michelle
and talked to her in French.
She helped
to keep her going.
Father Guy...
felt concerned about it enough
that he took Larry and Michelle
over to his bishop,
which was Bishop Remi De Roo
at the time, and...
Bishop Remi De Roo decided
that her memories
had enough import
that they needed to go to Rome
and tell the Pope this...
and so they did!
[church bell tolls]
Larry and Michelle
and Bishop Remi De Roo
went there,
and they did
get to see the Pope...
...and they did tell him
Michelle's memories.
[Morningside host] It sounds
like Dante's Inferno--
hundreds of mutilated corpses.
-Now, you saw this?
-Mm-hmm.
Now, you've placed this
in the hands
-of the Catholic Church?
-That's right.
[Larry] The entire tapes
were transcribed
with a great deal
of time and effort.
There's some
million and a half words,
and these are presently
in the hands of the Church
for their study.
[host] And so, the Vatican
still has some pronouncements
to make upon this?
-Very much so.
-Yes.
[Larry] ...And they're
taking it very seriously.
[Cheetie]
It was October, in 1980...
as soon as the book came out,
Larry and Michelle started
this big publicity tour.
[Charyl] She was traveling
all over the place
for this whole book tour.
We didn't think
it would really get
as-- as big as it did,
but then it just--
I don't know how it did,
it just blew up.
I had a ton of articles
from all the papers
and everywhere that they went.
[Charyl] Michelle and Larry
were famous.
They were famous.
Everybody was talking about it.
I mean, in the newspapers
in San Francisco and Houston.
She was in Seattle, Dallas,
and New York.
She was everywhere.
I mean, they just went
right across the whole country,
and when they were
on the book tours,
they stayed in
all these really fancy hotels.
They had limousines.
And I lived in San Francisco
and they came down
on one of her many book tours,
and I mean, we had fun,
we had some wonderful dinners...
...and they wined and dined
whoever they were with.
I know they got $245,000 U.S.
advance for the book.
[Cheetie] And I know
it was translated
into a bunch of languages
other than just English,
so I know the book
must've sold a lot of copies.
The book's already
a big bestseller!
Who wrote it?
You wrote it?
-We wrote it together.
-We wrote it together.
[Charyl] But at that time,
I had to have surgery,
and so I had
just come out of surgery,
and I was lying there
and I was really groggy,
and I looked up at the TV,
and all of sudden,
there was my sister,
and I was like,
"Oh, my God."
[game show theme plays]
[host] I, Michelle Smith,
was turned over by my mother
at the age of five
to a group of
practicing Satanists...
who, for the next year,
held me c*ptive
and abused me
both mentally
and physically
as part of a demonic ritual
called the "Feast of the
Beast".
After my ordeal,
I lived normally and happily
until 1976,
when a strange sense of unease
led me to seek
psychiatric help.
All the terrifying memories
that were buried for so long
began to surface
and were recorded
by my doctor, Lawrence Pazder,
and Dr. Pazder and I
have told my story
in a book
called Michelle Remembers.
At first, I thought
I was imagining it--
I was hallucinating,
I thought I was, like,
"Man, that morphine
must be really good." [laughs]
When you relive these things,
was this just in your head,
the reliving?
No, this took place--
Oh, the reliving itself?
Yes. This, took--
This was in my head.
[Charyl]
It was just too strange...
and she told the whole story.
So who's the person that was
turned over to a Satanic cult
and had written a book?
The votes are all in--
now, we're gonna find out
which of these ladies,
in fact, did survive
this, uh, demonic, uh, uh...
possession, and we're gonna--
who better to pick her out
than the co-author of her book,
Dr. Lawrence Pazder?
Doctor, come down
and pick out Michelle,
if you would, please.
[crowd applauding]
And of course, she stood up,
and I was like,
"I can't believe this."
[laughing]
I think I called her
and I said,
"I can't believe I just saw you
on TV." [laughs]
[Ward]
Can you squeeze in there?
-Are you comfortable?
-Yes, indeed.
Um, Doctor, before we go on,
I'd like to ask, is there
any misinformation that emerged
from this particular, uh, spot
that you'd like to clear up?
Well, one of
the important things
is the, uh, journey
to the Vatican
was to bring the information
Michelle had seen
some special presences--
Ma Mre, who is thought
to be the mother of God.
[Charles Ennis]
The book came out in 1980,
and I heard about it
almost immediately
because I was
the first Wiccan priest
in law enforcement.
It was
a very, very popular book--
it still is, in some circles--
and she's
all over North America
in years following
the publishing of that book--
in front of police audiences,
in front of church audiences,
in front of
community audiences...
and they're both
being seen as an expert.
[Michelle] I knew
that it needed to be shared.
It's the average person that,
with this kind of information,
maybe we can make
some wiser decisions
about the kinds of things
that go on.
Maybe we won't get
so easily pulled into cults.
[Charyl]
She was everywhere.
They were plugging everything.
That's what they did for...
at least two years.
And he was all of a sudden
being asked to come and talk
because, apparently,
now he was the guru of...
being able to decipher
when a child has been abused.
So that's when they started
the speaking tours
for the psychiatric conventions.
[Debbie Nathan] In 1981,
there was an American
Psychiatric Association
annual meeting,
and Pazder talked about
the content
of Michelle Remembers,
and he started generalizing
that there was this phenomenon,
you know, beyond
that particular story--
that there was a phenomenon
called "Satanic ritual abuse."
[Ennis]
"Satanic ritual abuse"
was a theory
that people took as a fact,
that there's
a Satanic conspiracy
and there are children
who are kidnapped or stolen,
and sacrificed.
Children are involved
in graveyards and crematoriums,
in funeral parlours
because one of
the primary focuses
of these people
is death.
Everything is attempted
to be destroyed and k*lled
in that child,
and in society,
everything of goodness.
[click]
[grand theme rises]
I'm Gordon Coulter.
For many years,
I served as
a law enforcement officer.
Today, it's my privilege
to host this program
on a little-known area
in law enforcement.
It's the area of Satanic cults.
[Nathan] People would come in
and they'd be paid
to give these seminars
to the police,
or particularly
the mental health professions.
There were just
all kinds of seminars,
and, you know,
the problem was
that you could
get credits for these
and they'd get
their little certificate.
Now they know
all about Satanic ritual abuse.
[TV reporter]
A few months ago,
Chicago played host
to a conference
featuring ritual abuse.
One thing that's
super-important to remember,
I think the field is forgetting,
is these people
come from cults.
[TV reporter]
Like-minded social workers
and therapists
eagerly noted
the latest
on the Satanic thr*at.
Police are also being taught
how to "spot Satan".
I, um, do lectures
throughout the country.
In fact, I was in Canada.
Did a presentation, uh,
for about 150 multi-agency
personnel up there.
[Blanche Barton] We called them
"Cops for Christ"--
people who had
their own agenda,
and they created these seminars
and these materials
and presented as actual, uh,
scientific, confirmed fact.
[Ennis] There was an enormous
amount of time spent
dragging police
into conferences
to be taught
how to investigate this stuff.
All of that
can be directly traced back
to the Pazders' book...
and others, you know?
That's what fuelled that.
That's what made that happen.
[Nathan] Pazder said
that it was very widespread,
and he pretty much validated
that claim--
that Satanic ritual abuse
is a real concern. You know?
People panic
over this stuff.
[Charyl] Michelle and Larry
were always talking all the time
of Victoria,
in the church,
explaining Satanic cults...
and that's when someone said
that the child was gonna
be stolen from the hospital,
and it caused major havoc!
We stepped up our extra
security staff itself,
and we've taken
other certain precautions
within the hospital
that I can't discuss.
[Marylyn] It was in the paper
that Satanists
were going to take a baby
from the nursery.
People were really alarmed.
They were really upset.
The patrol guards
seem to be
wandering around
the halls constantly.
I've been up at times
during the night and seen them.
[local reporter]
Dr. Lawrence Pazder,
who works out of
this Victoria medical building,
expressed concern
the Satanists' thr*at
hadn't been checked
thoroughly enough,
and denied any connection
between it and his book,
the bestseller,
Michelle Remembers.
[Charyl]
People got caught up in it.
It was like a snowball,
you know?
The more interest it got,
the bigger it got,
and it was just...
it was a hot topic.
[Agent Ken Lanning]
Up until 1983,
I was not aware of
any of these cases...
and then it just began to grow
and grow and grow,
and I kept hearing about
more and more of these cases.
I'd say,
"Man, this is some weird stuff.
This is--
This is some really serious,
heavy-duty stuff here."
I didn't know what to call it!
I didn't say, "Wow!
That's Satanic ritual abuse."
I just heard people
start to refer
to these kinds of cases
as "Satanic ritual abuse..."
and it touched a nerve.
"Satanic! Oh!" Those--
"I knew those people were
involved in all this stuff!"
And ritual?
"Oh, yeah, what's that?
That sounds sinister and evil!"
And in Quantico, Virginia,
Special Agent Kenneth Lanning
of the FBI...
[Lanning] I became
an FBI agent in 1970,
and I was a regular FBI agent
for ten years.
Eventually, I was assigned
to the FBI
Behavioral Science Unit,
and I became the Bureau's
expert on Satanism,
the occult, cults--
the whole package.
[Barbara Frum]
Special Agent Lanning,
I'm going to ask you
to deal first with the belief,
which is quite widespread
out there now,
that there are just
too many people
telling too many stories
that all sound the same
for this not to be true.
Well, it's very interesting
that that argument--
the fact that there's
so many people
telling the same story,
so often...
As I began to respond
to these cases,
I started out with an open mind,
and I kinda thought
that this had to be going on,
because why would
these people be saying that
if it didn't happen?
Pretty soon,
somebody mentions Dr. Pazder
and the book,
Michelle Remembers ,
so I start to hear them
getting involved...
and the number of cases
that they were consulting on
in this area
just began to grow...
...and then somebody
called me up and told me
about the McMartin
daycare case.
The McMartin case
was one of these preschool-type
of cases,
the daycare cases,
and all of these kids
were making--
you know, ended up
making these accusations
about things
that supposedly happened
at a preschool
in Manhattan Beach, California.
[reporter] 41 youngsters
over a six-year period
had not just been
sexually molested,
but had also been forced
to participate
in Satanic rites.
There were also charges that,
to keep the children quiet,
animals had been mutilated
before their eyes.
[Loftus] They're remembering
being abused
and Satanic rituals.
They're remembering
having to...
k*ll animals and breed babies,
and k*ll those babies,
and drink blood,
and all kinds of pretty wild
and bizarre things.
[reporter] The defendants
faced more than 300 counts
of sodomy, r*pe,
and oral copulation.
The evidence of abuse
was largely developed
by social worker
Kee MacFarlane,
who used puppets
to get the children--
who were between the ages
of two and six--
to reveal what had happened.
[Ennis] "Children's
Institute International,"
which was a group
that was involved
in trying to get
disclosures from children
from the McMartin
daycare case...
decided to bring down
Lawrence and Michelle
as "consultants"
to-- to assist in the process.
So they were directly involved
in getting these disclosures
and "recovering" memories.
Michelle Smith, what are
the goals of these cults?
They want to possess
the soul of the child.
It's not just they want
to capture them physically, um,
but they want to have
the child theirs.
And these are people
whose families
are either involved
in these cults
or who, because of you,
because of some connection,
fell into their hands?
Or through such, um, vehicles
as daycare centers,
where the chil--
they have access to the child.
[Cheetie]
They went down to the States
for the McMartin trial...
and I know Michelle spent
a lot of time with the kids
because that's what
she would talk to me about,
was the kids,
and how she related to the kids,
and helped the kids
remembering, reliving...
what had happened to them.
[reporter]
The mother of two children,
who admitted
that they were severely abused
while at the McMartin school,
agreed to talk to us on camera.
What actually happened
to your two children?
They were tied up,
sodomized,
um, they were taken
off the premises.
They were threatened...
by watching animals
being slaughtered.
Uh, they were sold
for prostitution.
[Lanning]
People wanted to validate
what children were saying,
and the problem is,
if you can't believe
everything that the child says,
what can you believe?
How do you decide what happened
and what didn't happen,
what might have happened?
Maybe the child
misremembered it.
Maybe it's distorted.
Maybe the child
didn't understand.
But I would estimate that,
as time went on,
during that time,
from '83
to maybe the late '80s,
I consulted on hundreds
and hundreds of these cases.
How alarmist would you be
about how we should
be dealing with this problem
and how widespread it is?
It's widespread.
It's a--
It's across North America.
We've had reports of it in--
in every province
and in every state.
It isn't, uh, just in California
or just on the West Coast here.
[Nathan]
As the daycare cases erupted,
which started
in about '83, '84...
there were police
who were investigating
these cases,
and prosecutors who were
deciding to take them to trial,
who were using
Michelle Remembers
as a kind of a checklist
to develop cases...
which meant that they would
try to come up with questions
based on
what had happened to Michelle
to ask the children.
Michelle Remembers
actually led to this panic
over children
being endangered.
People panic over this stuff.
They panic
because they think that
this is the end of the world.
[Lanning] It's known as
the "Satanic Panic"
from the 1980s and '90s,
and this stuff just spreads
like wildfire!
And, as an FBI agent,
I could step back,
and see cases from
all over the United States
and, eventually,
all over the Western
industrialized world.
[Ennis] Police officers
all over North America
went out looking for this stuff
and prosecuted people.
The Satanic Panic
was picking up steam
and it started to spread out
and affect more people.
It just... went viral.
And all of this was started
by this book.
[film projector whirs]
[Theresa]
Victoria was a great city.
Growing up here
was so much fun.
It was happy.
It was...
it was fabulous.
I was really lucky.
You know, my dad had
a great sense of humour.
He also had, like,
a bit of a twinkle in his eye,
and sometimes, at Christmas,
all the family would come over,
and there's a ukulele.
My dad would play
and my mom would sing and...
they were just so happy,
singing along together.
Those were good memories...
...but that was before the book.
[Marylyn] Before
he started on this book...
I was at home,
and I was sitting there,
watching that show--
Sybil , was on TV.
Sybil...
Oh...
please don't touch me.
It hurts.
[Nathan] Sybil is about
a woman who goes into therapy,
and she ends up
in extreme therapy,
like, five times a week,
and she gradually remembers
really horrific, sadistic
sexual abuse and t*rture
by her mother.
The book came out in 1973,
and it was just, like,
this instant wild success,
and then it was made into
a made-for-TV movie in 1976,
and I think about, like,
one-fifth of the American
population watched that.
[Marylyn] He said,
"I want to do the same thing,"
and he said, "I don't want to be
just an ordinary psychiatrist.
I want to be famous,"
and he said, "I've got
a patient just like that,"
and that's when he phoned her
and gave her the phone number,
and that's when it started.
It just took off from there.
[Theresa] The phone started
ringing in our house constantly,
and it was usually
really late at night.
You know, to have
a patient calling all the time
was just unusual.
No patient
had ever called before.
[phone ringing]
[Marylyn]
When she got the phone number,
she didn't stop phoning.
She'd phone several times a day.
When he came in the door,
I would watch the clock...
and sometimes,
it would get to maybe about
two minutes,
three minutes,
and then
the phone would ring.
And so I thought,
if we went to Mexico
for Christmas,
that he'd be able
to distance himself
in a more realistic way,
but she just phoned
and phoned
and phoned
and phoned and phoned,
and he did believe her.
There's no two ways about it.
He believed everything.
[Theresa] The big change
was that trip,
and when they came back,
I mean, all hell broke loose.
Michelle was, like, showing up
at all these different things
behind us,
and following us and...
it was frightening.
We went to Edmonton
to a wedding
and she followed us
all the way,
and I cried all the way,
because there she was,
right behind us.
His patient was everywhere.
[Michelle, on tape]
[Theresa]
We thought this was the story
that she used
to get his full attention.
It had him wrapped
around her finger.
No question.
You know, she was always there,
always reaching
into our house with the phone,
showing up
at the doorstep.
That was the Michelle we knew
before the book.
To us, she was like...
this stalker.
Although, I think he saw her
differently than we did.
Definitely.
I felt that she was...
deeply in love with him.
She was very protective of him,
and, you know...
all of us that--
that did the typing,
we all felt the same way,
that she just wanted Larry
to herself.
Essentially, this has become
a relationship where...
the boundaries
that exist
between doctor and patient
are no longer there,
and Dr. Pazder and Michelle
are first holding hands.
He's then sometimes placing
a hand on top of her head,
and gradually they move
from the couch
to a rubber mat
he has on the floor
so that they can both lie
on the floor together,
their bodies touching,
and according to this book,
this is "very necessary"
for the therapeutic experience.
She's experiencing
so much pain,
she's in so much distress,
that she needs to be held
in order
to continue remembering.
You know,
around that time,
my dad started sort of
disappearing quite a bit,
and we didn't know
where he was...
...and my mom
didn't know where he was.
I didn't...
I just knew all these weird
things were going on, and, uh...
he was making a lot of effort
to keep it secret.
So I started asking around,
and I found out Father Guy
was involved with it.
[click]
Larry had all tape recorders
and all kinds of equipment,
so I phoned
and recorded Father Guy.
[phone rings on tape]
[receiver picks up]
Father Guy said
many people
are going to be k*lled,
and many people
are going to be saved, and...
you know, there was
something wrong up there.
And Father Guy told me
that they were gonna make
a million dollars from the book
and there was
a lot of money involved.
So we went to see
the Bishop Remi De Roo,
and said, you know,
"Stop supporting this."
But I didn't realize
he went to Rome with him.
I didn't realize
that he was so mixed up in it
until the book came out,
but they obviously were
all believing all of this.
They were all for it...
but I can't understand
why anybody would believe it.
I don't know why these people
would follow such a stupid book.
[Charyl] One of
the first things that came out
after the book came out
was the article
in People Magazine,
and there she is,
lying on this couch,
and she's got her top off
and...
Why would you give that picture
in the first place
to a-- to a magazine?
Like, you've got
a wife back home.
You're really
gonna get sh*t for this.
[Marylyn]
That was heartbreaking,
to think that he would
do that, you know?
So I realized
that there was no hope.
For me, that's...
that's where his...
affection was.
[Charyl] Michelle
was still married to Doug.
He had a good job.
You know,
Michelle got to stay home
and do what she wanted to do.
But they had
a really hard divorce.
Michelle wanted
everything her way
and he did not
see it coming at all.
[Theresa]
When that book came out,
it was really rotten,
and it was so hurtful
to see my mom at that time.
She was in bed
and she was, like,
destroyed.
My dad was her first boyfriend.
They had just been together,
like, her whole life,
that's the only person
she knew.
He definitely, like...
he broke her heart.
And yeah, no, he wasn't the same
with me at all.
He wasn't friendly.
He wasn't joking.
He kind of didn't have
that same look.
There wasn't that twinkle.
There's just a lot of sadness.
[Marylyn] I got so upset
that I just went down
and filed for a divorce.
I said forget it.
Forget it.
No way.
[Pringle]
Now, Michelle Smith,
you survived a year of abuse
by one of these cults
when you were five years old.
When you first
talked about these things,
I mean, did people think
this was a fantasy,
that y-you'd made this all up,
it was such hocus-pocus,
that it couldn't possibly
have happened?
Well, I was
one of the first to stand up
and start to recount
these kinds of things
and to bring it, um...
publicly,
and I think people
are so uncomfortable
and so afraid
of this whole subject
that, yes, I experienced
a lot of the uncomfortableness,
but what I also experienced
was a tremendous number
of people saying,
"this is true."
[Lanning] I'm a cynical person
who spent 30 years
in law enforcement.
I assume that people are lying
unless I know otherwise,
but a lot of therapists
have an opposite bias.
They assume that everybody's
telling the truth,
unless they know otherwise,
and actually, this becomes
a huge aspect
to these allegations
of Satanic ritual abuse,
particularly with what's called
the adult survivors,
and that's what
Michelle would be.
The things
in the adult survivor cases--
the stuff was even more weird
than it was
in the younger kids
at the daycare centres.
Bonnie, you were made pregnant
when you were 11 years old?
Yes. That child
was sacrificed within the cult
when she was
about six months old.
S-- Sacrificed how?
By being stabbed,
and I was coerced into
doing the act myself,
with my own child.
Uh, the police
never found out about this?
The groups are extremely careful
to cover up all evidence
through using crematoriums
and things like that.
At least that's how
I understand it.
[Loftus]
"Adult survivors"
are where you have an adult
who goes into therapy
without any memories
of horrific abuse
and comes out
with all of these allegedly
repressed and recovered
trauma memories.
That was some kind of
altogether...
different thing.
This wasn't just a little kid
and a fantasy.
[Marshall]
And you would have patients
who had essentially
the Michelle experience,
where suddenly,
you were logging enough hours
on the couch,
"in the depths,"
to qualify
as a full-time job,
and where a doctor
who you trust...
...is telling you
if there is
anything wrong with you,
it was a result of sexual abuse
that you had forgotten,
and probably Satanic abuse,
because apparently,
there's a lot of that,
and you can read about it
in this book
that was a bestseller.
We have so many cases
that essentially are the fruit
of this tree
that Michelle and Larry planted.
There are therapists
all over the country today--
many of them that
are not really qualified
to be therapists--
that are-are passing on
these stories.
They were salesmen.
They were going around
the country,
selling fear of Satan,
fear of Satanic cults,
and they were--
they made a living out of it.
Her therapy--
13 months of in-patient work
for misdiagnosed Satanic,
ritualistic, everything...
her therapy,
over $1,300,000 for her,
then they got both of
her teenage daughters in.
One daughter went in
for 11 months
of in-patient therapy.
[Barton]
I think it's very clear
that the therapists saw
the opportunity
to make some money
off of these wild accusations
and stories.
This wouldn't have happened
had it not been
for the therapists
who compromised their ethics
and encouraged their patients
to elaborate
further and further.
They cut us and made us
sign our names in blood
in The Satanic Bible.
That was the first ritual
that I remember.
I was informed that my parents
were in the occult.
[talk show guest]
She claimed
that we had a pizza delivery boy
come to our home.
We cut him up, grilled him,
and ate him.
[guest] I said,
"I know what you did.
You're the ringleader
of this cult
that I know
you m*rder*d babies,
and I know you made me
m*rder babies,
and eat babies,
and I know just what you are.
I know you
for the Satanist that you are."
And Sally,
most of these women
don't come forward
until their mid-30s,
after five or seven years'
worth of--
This is not a case in which
someone has repressed memory.
This is a courageous woman
who has--
[studio audience applauding]
[Nathan] I would run into
adult survivors
on, like, The Sally Show ,
and so many different kinds
of people--
including educated people--
believed
that this was happening,
and if you didn't believe it,
you were suspect--
I mean, at best,
of not caring about children,
and at worst,
that you are a Satanist.
Are you accusing me of
being a Satanist? Yes or no?
You're acting like--
You're acting like one.
Say it. Yes or no?
I'm saying you're acting like
a Satanist right now.
[Ennis] Some people suggested
that what they thought
was causing Satanism
was heavy-metal music,
and some of the people
who were trying
to investigate this stuff,
they thought
they were doing a good thing.
[reporter]
How often do you find
heavy-metal-music indicators
at the scene of a crime
involving Satanic worship?
Probably about 35 to 40%
of the calls.
-Regularly, then?
-Yes.
[Nathan] At the same time,
there was kind of a...
I guess you'd call it a rumour,
although it got picked up
by the press
and it was taken as absolutely--
as fact, to the effect that--
that, you know,
thousands and thousands
of children were missing.
Thousands.
You know, then,
the next question is, well, why?
I mean, who's taking them?
Supposedly, the Satanists
were taking the children.
I believe that they do.
I can't-- We can't prove
that they do,
but as
a law-enforcement officer,
I question two million children
missing in the United States,
knowing that many, many of those
are not runaways.
[Ennis] They were saying
two million children
are sacrificed every year
in the United States.
3.71 million children
were born every year
in the States.
You're telling me that 54%
of the children born
are all kidnapped
and sacrificed?
Really? Like...
no evidence of that, folks.
The hard evidence
is difficult to find,
because
if a child is sacrificed,
that child's body
isn't going to be left.
If it's
an orthodox Satanic cult,
they're going to burn the body
and they're going to eat it
during ceremony,
so they'll leave
no evidence around.
The proof
that we have had disappears.
W-What proof has disappeared,
that we had?
Okay, a good example
is I had, uh, baby wax.
What's "baby wax"?
Wax from a baby
that was b*rned.
A baby that was b*rned
and the wax was made
into a candle
of b-baby wax.
It's a very important thing
in the cult.
They make candles
out of babies?
It was part of the zeitgeist.
There was just
a complete lack of skepticism.
I mean,
Michelle Remembers had
something
to do with that, right?
Because in Michelle Remembers,
it's kind of,
"This is what's happening
to the babies."
[Barton]
Within Michelle Remembers,
they use the term
"Church of Satan"
to describe this...
cabal of
vile, terrible people
doing
these heinous criminal acts--
saying
that we sacrifice animals,
that we sacrifice babies...
but the whole point
of the Church of Satan--
what Anton LaVey founded
in 1966--
was liberation
and embracing
our strangeness, our uniqueness,
the things that make us
different from each other.
This is
a very selfish religion.
We believe in greed.
We believe in selfishness.
We believe in
all of the lustful thoughts
that motivate man
because this is man's
natural, uh, feeling.
This is based on
what man naturally would do.
[Barton]
Anton LaVey blended
magic and science
and rationality,
and a lot of people,
especially in those early days,
found the Church of Satan
uniquely liberating,
for one reason or another.
They found Satanism
to be a celebration
of their differences.
It wasn't a tolerance.
It was a celebration.
And that's what
Satanism is to us,
to a Satanist.
Are you planning on training
a lot of little devils?
[laughter]
Only those that wish
to become little devils.
-Are you married?
-Oh, yes.
Do you have
any little devils?
Oh, yes. I have two.
Are you gonna raise them
as Satanic kids?
Certainly,
but not to go around
chopping people up
or sacrificing human beings.
[Barton]
One of the things
that Anton LaVey
was particularly miffed about
was how Michelle Remembers
was marketed--
that it was supposedly
a true story...
...but Michelle Remembers,
obviously,
is so chock full
of things that Satanism
very clearly isn't.
He said we are
an established religion,
protected by the Constitution
of the United States.
Here they were,
using it,
as if we were some international
criminal organization.
And that's why
the Church of Satan
brought a defamation suit
against them
in the court of law
in 1981.
And subsequent printings
of Michelle Remembers
did take out
most of the references
to the Church of Satan.
Hail Satan.
[congregation]
Hail Satan.
[Charyl]
I don't believe
that my mom
is that type of person
that would turn her child
over to a Satanic cult.
It was not part of my childhood
when I was a kid.
I couldn't see
my mom doing that.
I just couldn't...
As a mother,
your instinct
is to protect your child...
but when I was 10 years old,
my mom was diagnosed
with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,
and so she d*ed
shortly after that.
When my mom passed away,
her wish was
that she wanted to be cremated.
She wanted to have her ashes
put in the crypt.
This is how important
this church was to her.
It was important to Mom.
You know, her marriage
was not great,
so she came here for support.
In the book,
Michelle said that my mother
was this horrible person,
giving up her little girl
to a Satanic cult...
But I don't understand why
Michelle would even think that.
What is wrong with her?
[reporter] Why did you think
that there were others
who would have been
through this experience?
Because when I was
in that experience,
I wasn't the only child.
So there had to be others,
and I knew this wasn't
an isolated thing in--
in just Victoria.
I thought
maybe there would be...
you know, unrealistic,
30, 60 people out there
at the most,
not the hundreds...
[Lanning] It was in 1987,
and it was a conference
in Richmond, Virginia,
where I met Dr. Pazder.
So we sat in this room
and Dr. Pazder
was up at the podium
and Michelle was
off to the side there.
One thing
that really got me interested
is Dr. Pazder indicated
that he thought
that most of the alleged cases
were a bunch of nonsense,
but he then said something
that I was just
tremendously interested in.
"I'm gonna tell you
how to identify the real cases."
So I said, "Man, this could be
really valuable information,"
because I never was
one of those people who believed
they were all true
or they were all false.
There can be
a middle ground in here.
He would start
to describe these rituals
and began to talk
about Michelle.
But cops tend to ask
a lot of questions,
so the cops in the audience
began to raise their hand--
"What about this?"
"What about that?"
and-and I just
kinda began to notice
that every time
somebody asked a question,
Michelle never said a whole lot,
and he would always
answer the question,
and after a while,
after this happened
half a dozen times,
I just raised my hand,
I said,
"I'm curious, when people ask--
this all happened to Michelle.
"How come she doesn't
give the answer?
She turns to you."
He just said some version of--
I don't remember
his exact words--
something like, "Well, when
she first came to me,
she had no conscious memory
of it,
and through this therapy,
this story began to come out
over a year or more as time..."
and then he recorded it,
wrote it all down,
and documented it,
and then after that...
it kind of-- most of it
left her memory
and he was now
the keeper of the story.
I decided that
that greatly reduced the value
of what he was telling me,
so I put my pen down
and didn't take
as many notes after that.
Every time she entered
into a new area of working,
everything
that she had said before
was totally consistent,
and then, when she had
completed what she had done,
and was completely free of it...
it had a ring of truth to it,
that I said, you know,
"This is not accountable
from anything in the literature,
except from the fact
that she'd been
through that experience."
There's no other way
I can explain it.
[Lanning] During,
I think, the lunch break,
somehow, it just came out--
although,
he didn't try to hide it,
but it came out
that Michelle was now his wife,
and that was another factor
that caused me to think,
"Well, that's kind of
an inappropriate," you know,
"doctor-patient
kind of a thing.
How did that affect this story
that he's now telling?"
[Cheetie] I think
Michelle loved Larry.
She worshipped him.
But him and Michelle
were exact opposites,
and, uh...
I can't figure out
why Larry married her.
I really can't.
I-I...
You know,
would it come from a--
from needing to protect her?
I know he felt a need
to-to protect her
and look after her...
but marrying her
is a whole different ball game.
[Theresa]
We always thought
there was a reason
why he had to marry her.
You know,
he's a psychiatrist,
and he crossed the line
with her.
And she had tied him
into that lie so tightly
with that book,
that there was
no getting out of it.
[Marshall] We're never told
that a sexual relationship
begins between Michelle
and the doctor
at any time during therapy,
but regardless
of what you think
about what did
or didn't happen
or what we're not being told,
I think you can take
what they say
at face value
in this regard
and still see
a wildly unethical relationship.
[Charyl]
After they got married,
everything stopped.
She just wanted a normal life.
I know
that Oprah Winfrey called.
I was there at the house
when I picked up the phone,
and... and, uh, Michelle says,
"I don't want to talk to them."
You know, there are
thousands of men and women
who are secretly
worshipping the Devil.
The Devil!
If you'd like to join
that audience on Thursday
when we discuss Satanism,
call now
to reserve your seats.
[Barton]
The daily talk shows--
people, today,
I don't think realize
how pervasive
these opinions were.
[Maury Povich] Why, Doctor,
would you perform an exorcism
on a patient who came to you
to seek psychological help?
Well, because the patient
who was referred to me
by the State
was a Satanic ritual survivor.
[Barton] At the time,
these talk shows would be
several times a day,
and they were
very well respected,
but they were all
feeding on the Satanic Panic.
Explain to us
what really did happen
over these 17 years.
They started a Satanic cult
when I was five.
-Who did?
-My parents.
They would either
k*ll an animal,
sometimes they would
k*ll a baby--
[Sally] A baby?
Where would they get babies?
Um...
sometimes, people in the cult
would have them just for this--
[sobbing]
...and then when it was...
[sobs]
...when it was dead,
then people in the group
ate parts of it.
[Barton]
Dr. LaVey said, "I'd love
for somebody to call them
on their bullshit,"
but they wouldn't do it,
because it wouldn't
make good television.
In a nutshell,
there was a lot of craziness.
It was a fearful time,
and the one big promotion of it,
the one really big
promotion of it,
was Geraldo's
three-hour program
about Satanic cult crime
in the United States.
Of course,
millions of people saw it.
Millions of those people
who had preconceptions
believed it,
and it caused a lot of harm.
[Geraldo] These women say
they speak
from personal experience.
They claim to be breeders,
forced by covens
to bear children.
Did you give birth to infants
who were sacrificed?
My first two.
-Were sacrificed?
-Were sacrificed.
I was told it was
the highest honour
I could ever do as a woman
was to sacrifice
my first two.
There's a part of me
that wants to think
that these people
are just flat-out nuts--
and some of them are,
don't get me wrong!
And you look at this,
and you say,
"Are these people...?"
It is most common
for the heart
to be taken from the child...
and offered to Satan.
[Nathan]
Today, a lot of people
think that the Satanic Panic
was sort of a joke...
...but a lot of conditions
were created during that time
for people to get
more interested
in the idea that
evil, bad things were going on,
and you know,
one of those things
that you could really
hang your hat on
was Satan.
And... it was dead serious.
[TV reporter] The Essex County
Prosecutor's Office says
26-year-old
Margaret Kelly Michaels
is a manipulative,
sadistic, child...
Preschool teacher Michaels
was convicted
of molesting 19 children.
Molesting them in bizarre ways,
and in the middle
of this crowded
New Jersey school
without any teacher or parent
noticing anything.
[Nathan] I covered
the Kelly Michaels' case
and I walked into that jail,
and it was so filthy,
and I interviewed her,
and it was terrible
to see this happen
to a young woman,
because, you know, I felt like
that could have been me.
I mean, I could've gone,
worked in a daycare centre
when I was in my early 20s.
It was very vicious,
what was done to her.
They say you inserted objects,
including LEGO blocks,
forks, spoons, serrated knives
into their anuses, vaginas--
And a sword, that was in--
-...And a sword?
-Yeah, yeah.
That you made children
drink your urine,
that you made kids
take their clothes off,
and licked
peanut butter off them?
It's very hard to believe,
yet the jury believed it
and not you.
No one is willing
to doubt a child.
[Barton] There were people
who went to jail
as a consequence
of the Satanic Panic.
Certainly,
Michelle Remembers --
[stammers]
...all of it can't be laid
at the foot
of one book,
two people,
but they sure didn't help.
They did
an enormous amount of damage.
They ruined people's lives.
They cost them
enormous amounts of money.
They put misinformation
out there knowingly.
Tell as big a lie as possible
with a straight face,
and just keep tellin' it.
It works,
to a certain extent--
it works until those of us
who are...
...paying attention
stand up and challenge it.
[Lanning] It's a very
interesting question
when people talk about
where this began...
...and so, Dr. Pazder's ex-wife
sent me a letter.
She had heard my name
was out there,
and she knew I was
looking into all of this,
and she said
that she could tell me
and explain to me
how all of this evolved
and how all this came to be.
[Marylyn] We didn't know
that people had gone to prison
because of the book...
and that was, I think,
about 1990 that I realized.
It was just a terrible shock.
It was just terrible.
We were--
It was just terrible.
But I felt that,
if people were in jail,
it's our responsibility
to do everything that we can
to help those people.
So anybody
that came to Victoria...
I would just help them
the best I could.
[Theresa]
My mom started looking into it,
and she went to the house,
she went to the neighbours,
she went to the school records.
[Marylyn]
I went to the registry.
We found out
every place she lived,
where she was,
went to the neighbours,
and we gave that evidence
to the different
investigations in the States
and that sort of thing.
[Nathan]
They were very specific claims,
Michelle Remembers ,
about a certain period of time,
and she named the time--
I believe it was 1955--
where she was gone,
she was held c*ptive
by these Satanists,
and so we thought
it should be pretty easy,
you know,
to see whether we can find her
during that time.
[Marylyn]
We just went to the school...
...and asked them
for the yearbook.
They have a collection
of all the yearbooks.
Her picture was right there.
And they said the picture
was taken in the fall,
while she was supposed
to be locked up.
She wasn't.
Her picture was right there.
There she was.
You can't deny it.
[Ennis] Could this
possibly have happened?
Is there any truth
to any part of this?
You go, okay, you're describing
these rituals in which
you are severely treated.
They cut you up with knives
and they sew things
onto your body
that are ripped off,
and they knock out your teeth,
and they do all these things...
[deep breath]
...and then...
miraculously,
the Angel Michael comes
and takes all your scars away?
[stammers and sighs]
This is ridiculous, you know?
I mean...
the Virgin Mary appears
and speaks to you in French.
What?
[snickers and laughs]
[radio host] "Ma Mre"
is really the Virgin Mary?
-Yes, the Virgin Mary.
-She spoke in French?
[Michelle speaking]
[Michelle laughs]
Well, throughout
the experience--
[Larry speaks]
[Charyl]
I remember hearing my sister
on the radio broadcast,
and she said, "Oh, but I--
I never knew French."
I was like, "Yes, you did.
You took it in high school,
for one thing,
and you won an award for it,
because you were so good."
Plus, my grandfather
spoke fluent French
and she used to converse
with him,
and she said, "I've never spoken
French ever in my life,
and it just poured out of me."
You know, just like
the lies poured out of her.
[Loftus] There's just
a variety of things
that can go on
in therapy
that we now know
can lead people
to false memories.
Guided imagination is one.
Using hypnosis
is another one.
Particular kinds
of dream interpretation
can lead people
to false memories.
Suggesting things
to the patient.
Reinforcing the patient
with, you know,
attention and interest
and other kinds of rewards
when the patient remembers
what the therapist
wants the patient to remember,
and sometimes,
the more lurid, the better,
in terms of producing a reward
for that patient.
The Michelle Remembers story
does seem to be a case
that has all these ingredients
that are known
to lead people
to think they have
repressed memories
they've recovered,
but then there's
this weird little thing
about how they get married.
So, um...
I-I don't know what to think
about the sexual,
romantic element.
That-That's a little different
than what you see in the typical
repressed memory case,
but that could mean
there was even greater interest
on her part
to do whatever she presumed
her romantic interest
would like to be done.
[Ennis] In the book,
very, very often
what is happening
is she's telling a story
and then Lawrence
is interpreting it
in terms of his experiences
in West Africa,
where he did
medical missionary work
for a while,
and he keeps mentioning that
this is like those practices.
We know that he witnessed
some tribal ceremonies,
he filmed them...
but you look at it
and you go,
"Okay, I believe you saw this,
but I don't believe
you understood
what you were looking at,"
but she has
grabbed pieces of it
and is pulling
this information out of it
and incorporating it
into her story
so that he can recognize it,
and then try
and make the connection,
and, like, put this--
this story together,
this false story
of these memories.
You know, people see
what they want to see.
I mean...
he's very Catholic,
so what does he want to see?
He wants to see angels.
He wants to see demons.
He wants to see
that sort of stuff.
[Marshall] This book features
an extraordinary number
of dead babies.
By the end,
it's just
a baby slaughterhouse,
and...
if your patient
starts seeing you again
because they're feeling
extreme grief
over a miscarriage,
and if they are telling you
again and again these stories
about dead babies,
I would imagine
that this patient
could be feeling
incredible, unresolved guilt
about the miscarriage.
But Dr. Pazder is Catholic...
...and so he decides
that whatever Satanic image
appears to Michelle
connects to something
that literally, physically
happened to her...
and I think
one of the things that stories
about demonic possession,
stories about Satanism
tell us,
is that there's a very clear
answer for all of this,
and it's God.
[Theresa]
My dad was convinced
that this was
a really big thing.
I really think
he thought he was on
some kind of mission
from God.
And I lost my faith completely.
Like, I saw the Church
as being a part of it.
The Church is, you know,
drinking this in,
and encouraging it.
[Nathan]
We found some documentation
about the fact that the book
was actually subsidized
by the local Catholic church.
Whether that was
a local project
or whether it went beyond local,
I don't know...
but it certainly,
you know, seemed like
it was a inspirational book
for Catholics--
Michelle Remembers --
and to the point where
the Church
was willing to subsidize it.
I don't have a problem
with Christianity--
I have a problem
with Church-ianity.
It's a business.
They're making money, right?
It's got nothing to do
with being devout.
Most of the people involved
in putting this out there,
they actually are interested
in three things--
power, influence,
and money...
...and they realize this is
a way that they can get it.
"I know that I can
use this information
to make you fearful
and pay me money.
I don't care that it's a lie.
I know it's a lie,
but it's not important.
I need your money.
I'm gonna get it.
I need your attention.
I want to get it.
I need power over people.
You will give it to me,
because you'll see me
as your saviour." Okay?
Over and over and over again.
[Lanning]
"Ironic," I guess,
is the word
that some people would use.
But I've been involved
in many, many cases
involving Catholic priests
who are molesting kids,
and yet,
I've had people tell me--
devout Catholics say,
"Yes, you know these priests
who are molesting kids?
You know who they are?"
I said, "Who are they?"
"They are Satanists
who have infiltrated
the Catholic Church
to destroy it."
Okay.
[chuckles]
[Barton] As the Satanic Panic
wound down,
like, around '91, '92,
a lot of it had to do
with insurance companies,
because the therapists
and psychiatrists
and psychologists,
they were being paid,
sometimes covered
by insurance companies,
for these--
for this endless counselling,
and the insurance companies
started investigating.
They said,
"We're not gonna pay anymore."
[Loftus]
Some of these patients
began to realize
their memories were false
and that they had been planted
by the psychotherapy.
Some of them
sued their therapists
for planting false memories,
and they ended up
with these huge settlements.
I could not stand...
what was happening
to my brain,
and the memories,
and the thoughts,
and the pictures.
[reporter]
Although Dr. Hosen claimed
that he did nothing wrong,
his insurance company
settled
and they paid
Nadine Gould $2.4 million.
I didn't even know...
that this doctor was a fraud
until recently.
And it didn't happen
to just us.
It happened to our children,
our significant others,
our spouses or ex-spouses,
to our family.
The issue is that counsellors
and therapists
are leading people astray
and destroying families.
We need laws.
We need things changed.
They need to be made accountable
for what they're doing.
[Barton]
Also, things got laughable.
[crowd applauds]
There was the Church Lady
from Saturday Night Live.
Who could it be?
Oh, I don't know...
[laughter]
...Satan?
All of this has to do
with the changing zeitgeist,
and people understood then
that this was all pretty--
pretty absurd and out-there.
[Ennis] A bunch of people
were falsely prosecuted.
They wasted millions of dollars,
police chasing after ghosts.
All right.
We are ready for the jury.
[reporter] Raymond Buckey
and his mother, Peggy,
were the only McMartin
defendants to stand trial.
We, the jury,
in the above entitled action
find the varied defendants
not guilty.
[reporter] Preschool
teacher Michaels served
five years in jail
until this year,
when her conviction
was overturned
by an appeals court
that questioned the reliability
of the children's testimony.
Childhood sexual abuse
does happen,
but there
is something else going on,
and that is whether
some therapists
are actually
encouraging individuals
to believe in abuse
that didn't happen.
[Lanning] A lot of these things
simply didn't happen.
But the thing
that really scares me
is that, as people say,
if you don't study history,
you are doomed to repeat it.
[Jones] We're not
covering Pizzagate enough
to expose the Satanism
and the occult.
[Nathan] We have
these strange allegations now
of "Pizzagate"
and things like QAnon--
the idea that thousands
and thousands
and thousands of babies
are missing, you know?
It's all sort
of coming up again.
QAnon...
with its claim
that "Satan-worshiping
pedophile elites"
are running our lives.
"Oh, boy.
Here we go again."
I mean, that--
that's exactly what I thought.
"Oh, no, not again."
[news host] Man showed up at
that pizza parlour with a g*n
demanding to know more,
and now this has become
the centre of a national debate
over fake news.
[Lanning]
I came to realize
this story is one of
the most relevant topics
that you could ever talk about
in today's world--
it's just not about
Satanic ritual abuse
of children,
but this problem
of what people believe
when there's no real objective,
professional evidence of it,
is an amazing thing
to behold.
[Nathan]
It's not going to go away.
I used to think it was.
I used to think,
"Well, all you have to do
is debunk the stuff
in a rational way,
and I'll just
be a good journalist,
and I'll do that,"
you know?
And, uh...
it just happens again.
This has been kind of difficult
for me,
to tell you the truth,
to see that none of that stuff
really mattered.
None of what we did
really seems to have made
much of a difference.
[Theresa] We had to deal
with the "Bride of Satan".
All the time--
we had to deal with her.
And we had to live
under the shadow of that book.
We had to live
under the shadow of her.
Once they married,
you know...
we couldn't get
close to him anymore.
It was really hard,
and I think that's why
I really made an effort--
"I'm gonna call you
every Sunday."
I really, really
pushed for that.
During that time,
the phone calls
started changing a lot.
He was kind of
pulling away from her...
and I think
there was things coming up,
like, different things
that made me realize...
...that, you know,
that he was coming around.
You know, he had said,
you know,
"What if it weren't true?"
[Charyl] I was at work.
My sister, Tertia,
came up to my office
and she goes,
"Larry's dead."
And I was in shock.
I was just, like...
I said, "What happened?"
She said, "He got up,
went to the bathroom,
and fell."
Apparently, the ambulance
took a long time to get there,
but he was dead anyways.
He had a massive heart att*ck,
they said.
Michelle discovered
that he'd kept all his pictures
from his marriage to Marylyn.
Michelle was really upset
about that one,
and she said that, "He was not
the man I thought I married."
[Cheetie]
I went to the funeral
and I connected with Michelle
and I stayed with her
for a few days,
and then,
when I was leaving,
this little deer came
around the side of the house,
and it just stood there
and looked at me,
and it was weird.
I felt like it had
something to do with Larry,
like-- ah,
it's breaking me up right now--
and, um...
I don't know,
I just felt like it was Larry,
you know,
standing there.
I felt like he was asking me
to look out for Michelle...
so I did.
I said that to myself,
that I would look out for her,
for him,
and I've kept that promise.
[chuckles]
She's a good person.
She had her life ruined,
first, by whatever experience
she did go through--
I am convinced
it's not mismemory
or false memory,
and then, the book,
you know?
It's ruined her life.
She hates the book,
because when people see her,
that's all they see.
And if anybody
should have blame,
as much as I loved Larry,
and I'm not even big on men,
but I loved Larry,
and he...
I think, was responsible
for the book.
[Larry]
I believe in the pain
that they experienced
as a child,
the details
of what they present.
I'm not there
to believe or not believe.
I'm there to try
and understand
what they're trying to tell me
of an experience,
and those experiences
are not simple to separate
from whether that has
actually happened to them
or that is their way
of trying to express
a profound pain
that they've experienced
beyond their body,
in their very heart,
in their very soul.
[Theresa] I always hung on
to that dad
that I grew up with...
and I think that's what
made it hurt so much,
is that you hang on to it.
You really love.
But he did
take her out of my life,
and that was the only good thing
about his death.
You know?
I-I, um...
[voice wavers] It was...
really good to have her gone.
It was, um...
I think that's when
I started to feel
that that whole chapter
was over.
[laughs]
It wasn't one chapter.
It was a book.
Literally.
[Marylyn] It was more than
any type of an affair.
Far more than that.
They were both obsessed
with each other...
...and she was
in love with my husband.
And maybe she saw our happiness
and she wanted it for herself.
But you see, you can't
get that for yourself,
because it doesn't belong to,
and it never will be yours,
because you-- if you try to take
somebody else's happiness away,
everybody's going to be unhappy
all the way around,
because it's not yours
to be had.
You make your own Heaven or Hell
right here on this Earth.
[Charyl] I think
she's living in hell...
...because the story has haunted
my family for years.
We could pretend
that we're a family,
but there's always
that feeling of,
"How could you do the damage
that you did
by telling a story
that wasn't true?"
If she came along
and said to us,
"Hey, I made it all up.
I'm sorry," you know?
Then we would understand,
but she hasn't.
She's never apologized.
She's never, you know...
Nothing.
Whether she made it up
or whether Larry and her
made it up together,
I don't know...
but she was able to do it.
You know,
she had a motive.
Her motive was
that she wanted Larry
as her husband.
[Michelle, on tape]
[Larry speaks]
[Michelle sobs]
[Michelle speaks]
[Larry speaks]
[Michelle sobbing]
[Michelle cries out]
[click]
Satan Wants You (2023)
Moderator: Maskath3