You may have heard a few times over the last several years that "Satanic Panic" is back — especially if you are a regular reader of Wonkette. But as much as people have once again started to embrace the batshit conspiracy theories, they've largely stayed away from actually filing charges against random daycare owners like they did in the 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately, that's starting to change.
On Halloween morning, 11 individuals, seven men and four women were charged with abusing multiple children in a Satanic child sex ring in Glasgow, Scotland. There is not exactly a ton of information in the case, but what is available is certainly enough to make anyone with any familiarity with the old Satanic Panic a tad skeptical.
One of the primary markers of these cases was that, among more plausible accusations, there were always a few outlandish or impossible ones — like how the children in the McMartin preschool supposedly traveled to space in a hot air balloon and were sexually molested by Chuck Norris and the children in the case against Dan and Fran Keller were thrown into swimming pools full of sharks, an accusation I believe was also present in the Little Rascals Daycare case.
The 11 defendants maintain their innocence, but are accused of sexually molesting and raping multiple children over the course of about four years. However, two girls and a boy are at the center of most of the charges. They are also accused of having forced the children to drink blood and eat hearts at Satanic seances, and communicate with demons through a Ouija board. Additionally it's alleged they forced one girl to eat dog and cat food and pretend to be a dog, and also "drugged her, ran a wheelchair into her legs, put a black plastic bag over her head."
Four of the defendants are charged with the attempted murder of the youngest female victim. Specifically, it is alleged that they pushed the girl into a microwave, an oven, a refrigerator, a freezer and various cupboards in a series of attempts to kill her. Thankfully she was more resilient than even Rasputin and survived.
They also chased the girl around “wearing a mask of the devil” and hung her up on the wall by her sweater.
The group also allegedly dressed up in cloaks and horns to teach the children how to do witchcraft, and then convinced them that they had “metamorphosed into animals.” Naturally, the children were also allegedly expected to to sacrifice many animals, and one of the boys was forced to stab a parakeet. The boy was also forced to “courier controlled drugs” and was at one point nearly murdered by someone holding his head under liquid in a bathtub — liquid he was told was blood.
There is also a charge against one of the group members for threatening one of the girls by telling her they were going to send her to live with a stranger in Turkey.
I have not seen a single article, tweet, anything on this case that suggests it strains anyone else's credulity, but I must admit that I have a few questions. Namely why it was so important to them to kill a child exclusively by means of microwaving them or putting them in a refrigerator — especially since we all know that refrigerators have a mechanism that allows them to be opened from inside ever since that episode of "Punky Brewster" where Cheri got stuck in the refrigerator. I also find it hard to believe that a non-infant child could fit into a microwave. They're making microwaves bigger these days but not that much bigger.
The thing that has always struck me about the Satanic Panic cases was that there was absolutely no questioning of very obviously ridiculous-sounding and logistically impossible things. How was it that not a single person questioned how anyone was getting a shark into a swimming pool? How did no one question how it was that daycare owners had access to a private plane? They knew what they were paying the daycare owners. Not private plane money, one would imagine. All of these lawyers and judges and expert witnesses and psychologists and no one ever asked "how?" All of these people ended up in prison for decades because people didn't want to ask "but how?"
The judge in the case has set the trial date for January. If more details emerge then and the accusations become plausible, I am more than willing to eat my words here and accept that this is the world's first-ever instance of Satanic Ritual Abuse. Not gonna hold my breath though.
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CORRECTION: This track is by The Wailers, which was the trio ofBob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. ALL three of them sing on this song which was written by Bob Marley AND Peter Tosh.
Credit where VERY important crediits are due!
I was able to buy a (not exactly legal) DVD set of all the Burns & Allen TV shows (274 episodes), including a rare one in colour! and a few George Burns specials he did after the B&A show.It also has an early 'test' show where all the scenery is just drawn on, and also a couple of CDs with B&A radio shows. I only just got it but expect years of great laughs