23. Michelle Remembers was a memoir that brought the Church a lot of heat
In 1980, a psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder, and his patient, Michelle Smith, co-authored the latter’s memoirs of her childhood abuse at the hands of a secret Satanic network in North America which kidnapped children to torture, murder, and rape them in honour of Satan, whom she once saw summoned. Smith attributed these rituals, dating back to 1954, to ‘the Church of Satan’, which of course was neither a theistic organization nor in existence at that date. Michelle Remembers caused a period of paranoia and moral panic, but the ensuing witch hunt was to ruin the lives of more than actual Satanists…
