Michelle Remembers and the first source of the Satanic Panic

In 1980 a Canadian psychiatrist and his patient published a book built from hypnosis sessions. Within a decade its ideas had reached police training and the longest criminal trial in U.S. history at the time. Here is how one account became a national panic.

October 31, 2026 · 4 min read · TruthRanking

The first source

In November 1980, St. Martin's Press published Michelle Remembers, co-written by Lawrence Pazder, a psychiatrist in Victoria, British Columbia, and his former patient Michelle Smith. Pazder began treating Smith in 1973. In 1976, during treatment for depression after a miscarriage, she told him she had something important to say but could not remember it. Over the next 14 months, Pazder spent more than 600 hours using hypnosis with her.

The book presents what surfaced in those sessions as fact. It says that in 1954 and 1955, when Smith was five, her mother and others abused her in Satanic rituals, including one that lasted 81 days. Pazder is credited with coining the term "ritual abuse" for what Smith described. The book was marketed on that basis. In 1978 they had traveled to the Vatican to warn the Catholic Church about satanic cults.

How it spread

The book was translated into more than 20 languages, according to the Times Colonist. The authors appeared on programs from Oprah to CBC's Midday, CBC Arts reports, and Pazder's expertise was sought. CBC Arts reports that archival material shows the book was used to build checklists for police and mental health workers.

On August 12, 1983, a mother told police in Manhattan Beach, California, that her 2-year-old son had been molested at the McMartin Pre-School. On September 8, police sent a form letter to about 200 parents asking them to question their children. A Los Angeles clinic, Children's Institute International, then interviewed pupils. UPI put the number interviewed at 250. By spring 1984, 360 children were said to have been abused.

On March 22, 1984, a grand jury indicted seven people. The charges grew from 115 counts to 321 counts involving 48 children. That year Pazder consulted on the case. The initial prosecutor, Glenn Stevens, believed Pazder and Smith had influenced the children's testimony. On May 16, 1985, Pazder appeared on ABC's 20/20 in a report on Satanism. He also led ritual abuse seminars for police. By 1987 he said he spent a third of his time on ritual abuse cases.

The idea also spread through therapy. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus described a woman who, in therapy at a Chicago hospital from 1986 to 1992, was persuaded that she had been part of a satanic cult. Her family later accepted a $10.6 million settlement in a lawsuit alleging that therapists had implanted false memories.

What it became

McMartin became the longest and most expensive criminal case in U.S. history at the time. In January 1986, the district attorney dropped charges against five defendants, calling the evidence "incredibly weak." On January 18, 1990, a jury acquitted Peggy McMartin Buckey on all counts and Ray Buckey on 52 counts, deadlocking on 13. A retrial ended in a hung jury that July, and prosecutors dropped the case. Ray Buckey had spent nearly five years in jail. The case lasted seven years, cost $15 million, and produced no convictions.

Other cases ended in prison terms. In 1992, Fran and Dan Keller, who ran a home daycare near Austin, Texas, were each sentenced to 48 years. They were released in 2013 after the emergency room doctor whose testimony was central said he had misread the medical evidence. In June 2017, after 21 years behind bars, they were formally exonerated by the Travis County district attorney's office.

Official reviews found no support for the organized cults at the center of the panic. A January 1992 FBI guide by Supervisory Special Agent Kenneth Lanning reported that no evidence of a well-organized satanic cult had been found in any case he knew of, and no bodies of alleged murder victims. A 1994 survey led by psychologist Gail Goodman for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect gathered 12,264 ritual abuse accusations from more than 11,000 clinicians, police and agencies. Goodman said, "we found no evidence for large-scale cults that sexually abuse children."

What the record shows

A common summary says no case was ever proven. The 1994 survey is narrower. It found convincing evidence of lone offenders and couples who used Satanic claims to frighten victims, including a few cases with confessions or photographs. It found no substantiated case of an organized, intergenerational cult that abused and murdered children. Lanning added that children rarely lie about sexual abuse, but their accounts can still be inaccurate, so they should be neither automatically believed nor dismissed.

The book's claims have been checked against records. Smith's father denied the allegations against her mother in a 1980 Maclean's interview. Journalists Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker reported in 1995 that interviews and school yearbooks gave no sign of long absences, including during the alleged 81-day ritual. They found no newspaper record of a car crash the book describes. Accounts conflict on that point: in 1990, her father told a British newspaper the crash happened and went unreported. Many other claims remain unverified, which is a different status from false. In 1991, Pazder and Smith said on camera their account was accurate. The 2023 documentary Satan Wants You suggests Pazder told his daughter near the end of his life that he was somewhat unsure.

How to trace a claim like this

1. Find the first source and how it was produced. Much of the panic's vocabulary traces to one book built from hypnosis sessions. How a memory was obtained is part of the evidence.
2. Separate republication from corroboration. TV segments and police seminars repeated the book's framework without adding evidence. A child questioned by someone who already holds that framework is not an independent witness.
3. Check what a number counts. The 12,264 figure counts accusations reported to researchers. The 321 McMartin counts are charges, and they produced no convictions.
4. Check what happened later. Look for acquittals, recantations, exonerations and settlements. The Keller exoneration came 25 years after the trial.
5. Look for records that should exist. Yearbooks and accident reports can be checked. See our guide on finding where a claim started.