Though it sounded like a wholesome sitcom premise — four lesbian housemates raise a baby in San Antonio — reality proved anything but. Instead, Liz, Anna, Cassie, and Kristy found themselves caught in a nightmare of a crime drama after being accused of Satanic abuse. They face all the twists and turns of court proceedings, junk science, Satanic allegations, and wrongful convictions — for 22 years.
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A second helping from Satan: SATANISM 101
Dr. Justin Sledge (who you heard from in Episode 6) is a professor of philosophy and religion. in this bonus episode, we learn how his own experience as a teenager implicated in an alleged satanic plot led to an academic career studying esoterica and the occult.
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Episode 6: I’m Just a Teenage Cultist, Baby
How does a victim of a school shooting become accused of masterminding the whole thing in the name of Satan? When Justin Sledge was 17, a friend of his opened fire at their high school, killing two people and wounding seven others. It was one of the first modern-day school shootings, even before Columbine. Over the next few weeks, their once tight-knit town is embroiled in fear and rumors as people search for a reason for the tragedy — eventually landing on a cult of devil worshippers. Justin finds himself at the center of these rumors, leading to him also being arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.Check out Justin's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel
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Episode 5: The Devil in Delaney
The idea of “repressed memories" was having a moment. And for those suffering from intense grief, it provided an explanation for their pain. Delaney, a housewife and mother of two young boys living in Manitoba in the 1980s, starts seeking out counselors and psychiatrists to help her remember what happened in her childhood to explain her deep inner turmoil. Years later, her son Matt describes growing up amidst the Satanic Panic with a mother who struggled to find answers. We hear from Delaney herself through a biographical manuscript she wrote before she died, working through her memories of childhood trauma and eventual belief that Satanists were involved.
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A second helping from Satan: Arab Spring, Satanic Summer
In this bonus episode, we look at some impacts of satanic hysteria outside of North America. We hear from Cherine Amr, the founder of the Egyptian metal band Massive Scar Era, who was accused of being possessed by the devil himself in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Producer Mary Steffenhagen speaks with academic Pasqualina Eckerström for a deeper look at heavy metal’s connection with satanism.
In the 1980s and 90s, Satan and his followers were accused of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale — yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded in our cultural memory, warping everything it touched — including the lives of innocent people.. And it never quite died out.In a new 8-part series, Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) explores the tangled web of the Satanic Panic, in a journey that will take you everywhere from Victoria, B.C. to rural Kentucky to San Antonio, Texas. This is a show about the people who experienced the Satanic Panic in real-time — the believers, the skeptics, the bystanders, and the wrongfully-convicted. What was it like to be a psychologist told to look for Satanists in every case; a mother slowly recovering memories of supposed Satanic abuse; a teenager accused of conspiracy to murder? The stories of these eyewitnesses point us toward the real underlying problems — individual and societal — that the Panic was a response to. The fault, as ever, was not with Satanists, but in ourselves.
Ireland