Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt

Journalist Nathan and lawyer Snedeker, both involved in debunking ritual-abuse cases, have produced a thoughtful investigation of how and why such cases have led to ``moral panic'' over the past 15 years. They trace how emerging theories about sex abuse--which proclaimed children's truthfulness--led to a situation in which social workers supplanted police as investigators, and how changes in family and gender relations (including victimology feminism) fueled social preoccupation with demonology. They look closely at several cases, including the notorious McMartin case in California, which led to paranoiac attitudes toward public child care and to a growing ``ritual-abuse industry.'' Reproducing case transcripts, the authors show how children's testimony was led; nevertheless, civil libertarians shied away from challenging such cases: ``demonization of child sexual abuse as society's ultimate evil has rendered it so holy as to be virtually immune to reasoned analysis.'' The authors believe that real sexual abuse, especially incest, is underreported, and recommend that investigators be better trained as well as granted only limited immunity from malpractice. More broadly, they see a need to educate children in such a way that they develop psychological and sexual integrity. (Nov.)