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In the climax, Smith encounters Satan himself in a “Feast of the Beast” organized by her oppressors, but is ultimately saved by the direct intervention of the Virgin Mary.

Photo by Excerpted from Michelle Remembers

The book even came complete with a statement from Remi De Roo, bishop of the Catholic diocese of Victoria.

“I do not question that for Michelle this experience was real,” wrote De Roo. But in a chilling warning, De Roo added “in such mysterious matters, hasty conclusions could prove unwise.”

Unfortunately, the world quickly decided not to take De Roo’s advice.

What followed is now known to history as the “satanic ritual abuse” panic.

Soon, hundreds of similar “Michelles” across the Western world were similarly recalling bone-chilling details of Satanic ritual murder and abuse. It would largely be the fault of a phenomenon known as “false memory syndrome,” in which patients under hypnosis can be led into fabricating elaborate false memories.

Parents. Daycare providers. Teachers. Police officers. Nobody was safe from the sudden accusation that they were guilty of unspeakable crimes.

A common investigative pattern emerged. Children suspected of being Satanic abuse victims would be interviewed and asked leading questions by investigators. As the number and intensity of the interviews progressed, children were led into delivering ever-more elaborate stories of witchcraft, blood-drinking, secret tunnels and ritual murder.

Photo by Excerpted from Michelle Remembers

In one case in Rochdale, England, all it took was a small boy to tell his teachers he had been dreaming of ghosts. Soon, social service workers were taking children from their parents in the misguided belief that they were breaking up a Satanist abuse ring.

“One afternoon in 1990 I got a call from my wife telling me our three kids had been taken away because of witchcraft and satanic abuse … I still can’t believe this has happened,” one of the parents, John Herstell, told the Guardian in 2006.

Saskatoon police officer John Popowich was one of the adults falsely accused of running a Satanist underground in Martensville, Saskatchewan.

“Nobody can understand what we’ve gone through and what we’re going through — nobody can … One minute you’re well respected, the next minute, you’re an alleged molester,” he told CBC in 1994.

Geraldo Rivera hosted a late 1980s claiming that the United States was in the grip of a Satanist underground counting more than one million members. “The odds are it’s happening in your town,” Rivera told viewers.