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 sacrifice, pornography, and prostitution.
Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She was best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. She used the lower-case spelling of her name to decenter herself and draw attention to her work instead. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed love, race, social class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.
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.
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.
Catherine Spalding, known as Mother Spalding, was an American educator who was a co-founder and longtime mother superior of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. She pioneered education, health services and social services for girls and orphans in Louisville and other Kentucky cities. On January 6, 2003, the Louisville Courier-Journal named Spalding as the only woman among sixteen "most influential people in Louisville/Jefferson County history."
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.
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.
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 Mount Cashel Orphanage, known locally as the Mount Cashel Boys' Home, was a boys' orphanage located in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The orphanage was operated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, and became infamous for a sexual abuse scandal and cover-up by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and NL justice officials.
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.
Elizabeth Esther is an American Christian author and blogger. She writes about her experiences of growing up in, and then leaving, Christian fundamentalism. Esther grew up in a fundamentalist Christian group known as the Assembly. She and her husband left the church after confronting her grandfather, and the founder of the church, about allegations of abuse. She later joined the Catholic Church.
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.
Elnora M. Gilfoyle is a retired American occupational therapist, researcher, educator, and university administrator. She worked at several hospitals before accepting a professorship at Colorado State University, later serving as Dean of the College of Applied Human Sciences and Provost/Academic Vice President at that university. She is also a past president of the American Occupational Therapy Association. With research interests in child development, developmental disabilities, and child abuse, she has led studies on the state and federal levels. The co-author of two books and many articles, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.
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.
Berniece Inez Gladys Miracle was an American writer, known for her memoir My Sister Marilyn (1994) about her half-sister, actress Marilyn Monroe.
