The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the controversial and now discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which arose afterward throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. Some allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.
Frances Xavier Cabrini, also known as Mother Cabrini, was an Italian-American Catholic religious sister. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a religious institute that was a major support to her fellow Italian immigrants to the United States.
Aberlour is a village in Moray, Scotland, 12 miles (20 km) south of Elgin on the road to Grantown. The Lour burn is a tributary of the River Spey, and it and the surrounding parish are both named Aberlour, but the name is more commonly used in reference to the village which straddles the stream and flanks the Spey – although the full name of the village is Charlestown of Aberlour.
The Duplessis Orphans were a population of Canadian children wrongly certified as mentally ill by the provincial government of Quebec and confined to psychiatric institutions in the 1940s and 1950s. Many of these children were deliberately miscertified in order to acquire additional subsidies from the federal government. They are named for Maurice Duplessis, who served as Premier of Quebec for five non-consecutive terms between 1936 and 1959. The controversies associated with Duplessis, and particularly the corruption and abuse concerning the Duplessis orphans, have led to the popular historic conception of his term as Premier as La Grande Noirceur by its critics.
The Diocese of Burlington is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church for Vermont in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Boston.
Laurel Rose Willson was an American con artist and author. She authored books alleging Satanic ritual abuse (SRA), and later assumed the guise of a Holocaust survivor. The general theme of her writing, from adolescence, was horror fiction, often violent and sexual, in which she was the victim.
The Archdiocese of Louisville is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or archdiocese, of the Catholic Church in central Kentucky in the United States. The cathedral church of the archdiocese is the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, Kentucky. The archdiocese is the seat of the metropolitan see of the Province of Louisville, which encompasses the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. The archdiocese is the second-oldest diocese west of the Appalachian Mountains, after the Archdiocese of New Orleans. As of 2023, the archbishop of Louisville is Shelton Fabre.
The Company of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, commonly called the Daughters of Charity or Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent De Paul, is a Society of Apostolic Life for women within the Catholic Church. Its members make annual vows throughout their life, which leaves them always free to leave, without the need of ecclesiastical permission. They were founded in 1633 by Vincent de Paul and state that they are devoted to serving the poor through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Michelle Remembers is a discredited 1980 book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient Michelle Smith. A best-seller, Michelle Remembers relied on the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping, lurid claims about Satanic ritual abuse involving Smith, which contributed to the rise of the Satanic panic in the 1980s. While the book presents its claims as fact, and was extensively marketed on that basis at the time, no evidence was provided; all investigations into the book failed to corroborate any of its claims, with investigators describing its content as being primarily based on elements of popular culture and fiction that were popular at the time when it was written.
Erin Merryn is the author of Stolen Innocence, Living for Today, An Unimaginable Act, Bailey No Ordinary Cat, and The Diary of a Cat Named Carrot. She is an activist against child sexual abuse as well as the founder of Erin's Law, which requires public schools to teach children personal body safety in order to prevent child sexual abuse. Erin's Law was the first law passed in the United States requiring sexual abuse prevention education to be taught to students in school every year, and it was subsequently passed in 38 U.S. states before being signed into federal law. Erin’s Law has now gone international with a judge in Kerala India requiring Erin’s Law in the 2023-2024 school year. Merryn is a national spokesperson for the National Children's Alliance, becoming the first survivor of child sexual abuse that went through a Children's Advocacy Center to speak on national television about her experience.
The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, also known as the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, is a Catholic religious order that was founded in 1835 by Mary Euphrasia Pelletier in Angers, France. The religious sisters belong to a Catholic international congregation of religious women dedicated to promoting the welfare of women and girls.
Michael Taft Benson is an American academic administrator serving as the president and professor of history at Coastal Carolina University. He previously served as president of Eastern Kentucky University, Southern Utah University, and Snow College, and as special assistant to the president at University of Utah. He was appointed Visiting Professor within the Department of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University in January 2020.
Anne Johnson Davis was an American author and public speaker who in 2008 published Hell Minus One, a memoir in which she claimed to have been a childhood victim of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA). In the book, Davis further claimed that her allegations of abuse were corroborated through a confession by her mother and stepfather made to Lt. Detective Matt Jacobson of the Utah Attorney General's office.
Allegations of abuse of children in certain institutions owned, managed, and largely staffed by the Sisters of Mercy, in Ireland, form a sub-set of allegations of child abuse made against Catholic clergy and members of Catholic religious institutes in several countries in the late 20th century. The abusive conduct allegedly perpetrated at institutions run by the Sisters of Mercy ranged from overuse of corporal punishment to emotional abuse, and included some accusations of sexual abuse by lay persons employed at the institutions.
The "Cornbread mafia" was the name for a group of Kentucky men who created the largest domestic marijuana production operation in United States history. It was based in Marion, Nelson and Washington counties in central Kentucky. The term "Cornbread Mafia" was first used in public by federal prosecutors in a June 1989 press conference, where they revealed that 70 men had been arrested for organizing a marijuana trafficking ring that stretched across 30 farms in 10 states stretching from the Southeast into the Midwest. The story was first reported in the Courier Journal Magazine in Louisville, Kentucky on October 8, 1989, and then in 2012 in the narrative non-fiction book The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code Of Silence And The Biggest Marijuana Bust In American History (2012), by James Higdon.
Elizabeth Kim is the pen name of an American journalist who authored the book Ten Thousand Sorrows, which is described as a memoir.
Michele Irmiter Elliott OBE is an author, psychologist, teacher and the founder and director of child protection charity Kidscape. She has chaired World Health Organization and Home Office working groups and is a Winston Churchill fellow.
St. Thomas–St. Vincent Orphanage was an orphanage located in Anchorage, Kentucky, best known for allegations of child sexual and physical abuse by one priest, seven nuns, and five laymen, between the 1930s and 1970s. It opened with the merger of St. Thomas Orphanage and St. Vincent Orphanage in 1955 and closed in 1983 as a result of rising costs and increased government services for orphans.
The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 and 1943. Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people. Pack horse librarians were known by many different names including "book women," "book ladies," and "packsaddle librarians." The project helped employ around 200 people and reached around 100,000 residents in rural Kentucky.
The Giver of Stars is a 2019 historical fiction novel by Jojo Moyes about packhorse librarians in a remote area of Kentucky. Set in Depression-era America, The Giver of Stars is the story of five extraordinary women and their journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond. The women deliver library books to people in the mountains of Kentucky during the Great Depression, a real-life program launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Universal Pictures has acquired the movie rights to The Giver of Stars, and the feature film is in the early stages of production.
