Posted by:
anybody
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Date: March 15, 2023 09:12AM
Look, look, LOOK!!! Look under the bed, down in the basement or in the shed, in the back of the closet or in the old house, behind every shadow or dimly lit place, in every daycare, in every school, oozing from the radio, from the television, or from inside your computer, there's Satan, Satan, SATAN, everywhere, always lurking, lurking, LURKING, just waiting to first take over your mind and then drag you down to hell -- or so you were made to believe by the powers that be, to make you be what they wanted you to be, and make you see what they wanted you to see, and frighten you into compliance with anything they wanted you think, do, or say, and make you fear others they wanted you to fear.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/satanic-panic-film-movie-michelle-smith-memoir-b2300716.htmlA doctor helped his patient recall childhood torture by a cult. Their story sparked a global ‘Satanic Panic’
The publication of Michelle Remembers, a 1980 memoir co-written by a Canadian therapist and a patient who ‘recovered’ memories of torture by Satanists, sparked international mass hysteria about child abuse and devil worship. A new film looks at the impact of the book on the world – and, importantly, on the families of the doctor and patient who became not only infamous household names but also husband and wife.
For a time, they were everywhere – a Canadian psychiatrist and his soft-spoken patient, unassuming harbingers of doom at the hands of the devil. Larry Pazder and Michelle Smith exploded onto talk shows and into headlines after the 1980 publication of the co-written memoir Michelle Remembers, detailing the patient’s “recovered” recollections through therapy about childhood torture inflicted by a Satanic cult.
“Basically, what I remember 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 that I couldn’t understand and that frightened me,” Ms Smith said in one television interview. “They sacrificed animals and they used fetuses of babies in their ceremonies,” she told a different outlet.
And she warned — perhaps most distressingly — in yet another TV interview: “I think, today, it’s very, very wise to take a good hard look at where you place your children ... into whose care you place your child.”
What followed on the heels of the book and the media tour was a hellish hysteria that spread across the world. Stories of recovered memories and vile abuse abounded, many striking eerily similar chords; there was talk of abduction, sacrifice, sexual abuse and, mind-bogglingly, even the use of “baby wax” made from murdered infants.
Arguably most infamous were the 1983 McMartin preschool accusations in California, in which bizarre allegations of physical and sexual abuse — along with witchcraft and supernatural abilities — were levelled against the family operating the facility. Ms Smith and Dr Padzer consulted on the case.
The McMartin charges were eventually dismissed, and the Canadian authors of Michelle Remembers faded into the background along with the worldwide Beelzebub brouhaha.
But there was far more to the story — and a trail of broken lives left in the memoir’s wake.
“There’s hundreds of articles where Michelle and Larry, they’re on TV, they’re on radio telling their side of the story; not a single person spoke to the family,” says filmmaker Sean Horlor, whose new film Satan Wants You premieres on Saturday at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Texas. “Never before had they shared their side of the story ... for the very first time, you hear from Larry’s ex-wife, his daughter and Michelle’s sister actually saying, ‘Wait a minute — this is what really happened.”
As the psychiatrist’s ex, Marylyn, and daughter, Theresa, tell it, Ms Smith was a constant presence in their lives even before the book, ringing at all hours and even following the family on trips.
Within a few short years of the book’s publication, the Padzers divorced — and he went on to marry his former patient.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2023 09:13AM by anybody.