7. When Fears of Satanism Led to Hysteria
Paranoia over Satanism and satanic practices swept America in the 1980s. Nowhere was that more evident than in the child abuse hysteria surrounding an otherwise unremarkable California preschool. It began in 1983, when Ray Buckley, an employee of the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, was accused by a mentally unstable woman of raping her child. The accuser added that people in the preschool had sex with animals; that Ray Buckey’s mother and preschool owner Peggy McMartin had perforated a child under the arm with a power drill; and that “Ray flew in the air”.
Police were skeptical, but they nonetheless sent a letter to other McMartin parents, asking them to question their children about abuse at the school. As parents talked to their children and other parents, other allegations of sexual abuse began trickling in. Soon, the accusations had turned into a flood of wild, weird, and increasingly incredible stuff that stretched credulity amidst a mass hysteria of false accusations.