"Satanic ritual abuse" grand conspiracy claims

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Utah could become the first state in decades to enact a law codifying ritual abuse. Others passed similar laws at the height of a since-debunked satanic abuse hysteria.

State Rep. Ken Ivory sponsored the bill, backed by Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith, who testified in support on Wednesday.

After an evening of emotional testimony from activists, self-described victims and law enforcement officials, lawmakers in Utah are moving forward with a bill that would criminalize so-called ritualistic child sexual abuse — a codification critics say is unnecessary and potentially harmful.

Sponsored by Republican state Rep. Ken Ivory, House Bill 196 defines ritual abuse as abuse that occurs as “part of an event or act designed to commemorate, celebrate, or solemnize a particular occasion or significance in a religious, cultural, social, institutional, or other context.” The bill lists specific actions that fall under the proposed definition: abuse against children that includes animal torture, bestiality or cannibalism, or forcing a child to ingest urine or feces, enter a coffin or grave containing a corpse, or take drugs as part of the ritual.

At the hearing on Wednesday, several adults who described themselves as survivors of ritualistic child sexual abuse urged lawmakers in the state House Judiciary Committee to support the bill. Their testimony included the stuff of nightmares: devil worship, animal torture, forced bondage, rape, cannibalism, child prostitution and mind control — assaults so physically and emotionally traumatic that the victims said they repressed memories of their abuse.

Kimberli Raya Koen, 53, an activist who heads a nonprofit and leads local summits on ritual abuse, told legislators through tears that “everything named in this bill” had happened to her. Koen has appeared on dozens of podcasts over the years to tell her story: that she was tortured and forced to participate in human sacrifice as part of satanic cult rituals led by family members, neighbors and church leaders. She told NBC News that no one has been charged with her abuse, memories of which she uncovered as an adult.

“Utah has an incredible opportunity to lead the country in naming and acknowledging this horrific abuse is real,” she said at the hearing.

If the bill passes, Utah would be the first state in decades to enact a law codifying ritual abuse. Several states passed similar laws in the 1980s and ’90s, during the height of hysteria over satanic ritual abuse, but few, if any, prosecutions came from them. Since then, federal law enforcement agencies, scholars and historians have pointed to the scarcity of evidence for the claims of widespread ritual abuse and warned of the lasting legacies of the national panic — including false allegations, wrongful imprisonments and wasted law enforcement resources.

“This bill is a very good example of panic legislation, hastily cobbled together, on the basis of testimony from a couple of women recollecting childhood histories of satanic ritual abuse,” said Mary deYoung, a professor emeritus of sociology at Grand Valley State University who has documented the harms of the satanic panic. “It’s a bill that responds with the kind of approach where we get really angry and say, ‘There ought to be a law.’ And we don’t think about whether it can be enforced in such a way that adds any benefit to society or that ensures that justice is done.”

But Ivory described ritualistic abuse as common in Utah, offering as evidence the anecdotes from constituents and a statewide investigation announced in 2022 that the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said resulted in over 130 tips. Ivory characterized those tips as individual victims coming forward.

That investigation, led by Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith, who spoke in support of the bill, led to the 2022 arrest of David Hamblin, a former therapist who has been charged with sexual abuse of children in the 1980s. His ex-wife, Roselle Anderson Stevenson, was arrested last August and charged with the sexual abuse of a child decades ago. Hamblin and Stevenson have not yet entered pleas. Hamblin’s attorney said in a statement that he “strongly denies the allegations”; Stevenson’s attorney said she "is adamantly denying the charges."

Their prosecution has lagged in the courts, the cases plagued by accusations that investigators mishandled witness statements and that the investigation was politically motivated from the start. Prosecutors have disputed these claims in motions before the court, but a judge found them concerning enough to recuse the Utah County Attorney’s Office from prosecuting Hamblin’s case.

Smith has defended the integrity of his investigation and told lawmakers Wednesday that his yearslong probe into ritual sexual abuse in the state had made him a laughingstock, but that he believed the accusers.

“I was attacked, I was ridiculed, I’ve had memes made about me because of it,” he said. “Without a doubt, these things do happen in Utah,” Smith added. “I believe they’re happening, I believe they have happened.”

Lt. Jason Randall, the county’s lead investigator on ritual abuse, argues the new bill would help legitimize this work and encourage more victims to report their abuse, because it would signal that authorities won’t discount what can appear to be incredible claims. When asked by lawmakers what in the existing code had kept Randall from being able to press charges against child abusers, Randall answered, “Belief. Belief.”

Utah’s proposed bill and the county sheriff’s investigation have attracted national interest from conservative media and an online network of conspiracy theorists who believe this case will prove that the allegations that fueled the 1980s satanic panic were true all along, and that cabals of satanists are still sexually abusing, murdering and cannibalizing children. Several self-described internet investigators have, in blogs, videos and podcasts, accused hundreds of Utahns of participating in satanic ritual abuse rings.

Utah’s role in the 1980s panic was significant. Many of the first well-known cases of alleged ritual abuse originated in the state, as did the movement’s central figures, including therapists who used hypnosis and manipulative interview techniques to recover memories from alleged child victims and scholars who made some of the earliest claims of widespread satanic ritual abuse. Local media promoted the claims.

In 1990, Utah’s governor formed a task force that spent $250,000 in state funds to address pervasive ritual abuse. Investigators interviewed hundreds of victims in more than 125 alleged cases, only one of which ended in prosecution. A final report from the state’s attorney general in 1995 suggested that there was evidence of isolated instances of abuse involving rituals, but not a widespread plot to abuse children in this way. “What hasn’t been corroborated,” the report said, “is the multitude of reports by abuse ‘survivors’ claiming to have been party to human sacrifices, sexual abuse of young children, torture, and other atrocities committed by well-organized groups which pervade every level of government, every social status and every state in the country.”

National studies from the Department of Justice and the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect found no evidence to support claims of widespread ritual abuse. Child sexual abuse, however, is staggeringly common; about 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 20 boys in the United States are victims, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The unanticipated harms associated with a ritual abuse panic, deYoung said, include “ripple effects” on child victims of sexual abuse. “We spend time and resources and energy going after robed and hooded strangers when the greatest risks to children remain within the home, with family, friends or the local parish priest. Yet we don’t have the same degree of moral outrage where the largest risk lies.”

California, Illinois and Idaho were among the earliest states to pass laws criminalizing ritual abuse in response to 1980s claims of satanic threats to children, primarily in day care settings, deYoung said. A handful of other states followed suit.

While some states still have these laws on the books, others did away with theirs after the consequences of the panic became clear.

Satanists don't tend to abuse kids, regardless if they are more in line with Anton Levay and the Church of Satan or The Satanic Temple....like vast majority of satanists hate child abuse and would never be sacrificing children.

‘There are substantial, verified, credible allegations of these actions taking place right here in Happy Valley,’ lawmaker says.

Lawmakers took steps to revive a failed bill from last legislative session that would define and criminalize “ritualistic child sexual abuse.”

On Wednesday, members of the legislature’s Judiciary Interim Committee voted to re-open Child Abuse Amendments, a version of a bill sponsored by Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, during the 2024 legislative session that appeared to have support, but was never voted on by either the Utah House or Senate.

The bill describes the stuff of nightmares, reminiscent of the “satanic panic” that swept through Utah decades ago, involving a number of high-profile allegations of sexual abuse involving devil worship.

Many of those allegations surrounding the satanic panic were later debunked. In 1995, investigators with the Utah Attorney General’s Office who interviewed hundreds of Utahns claiming to be victims of some kind of satanically-motivated abuse said criminal charges were only filed in one case, according to a Deseret News story at the time.

But survivors, some of whom who spoke to lawmakers Wednesday, have for years advocated for a bill targeting this uniquely traumatic abuse. Their experiences are so unimaginable they are often met with skepticism — and the abuse is so taxing that many possible witnesses die by suicide, police officers say.

In the words of Ivory, witness testimony describing ritualistic abuse makes you “feel a little sick.”

During the committee meeting, one survivor said her abuser would wait every day at her bus stop to kidnap her, starting when she was just seven years old.

The woman, who testified in favor of Ivory’s bill last legislative session, described “being offered up as a sacrifice to an evil, unknown deity in exchange for power with unfamiliar chanting, candles lit and strange symbols displayed.”

“The school never noticed or contacted my home. I felt invisible. My family never knew, and my sweet and very aware parents believed I was safe at school,” she said. “I was literally hunted, caught and raped with a live snake inside a pillowcase over my head, with my abuser chanting aloud and asking Satan to join us.”

The woman said she blocked out memories of the abuse for decades, and that her abuser was never prosecuted.

Lt. Jason Randall with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said he’s currently investigating a case that fits the definition of “ritualistic.” Two victims who could have testified have taken their own lives, and he said fear of being not believed might be preventing others from coming forward.

“One of the biggest consequences in these types of crimes is the victims are minimized,” he said. “They are abused and then they are left in a mental state where, when they come forward, it can be so unbelievable they are completely marginalized.”

Randall said codifying this particular kind of abuse — which he told lawmakers can include “thousands of different offenses” — would send a message to survivors that ritualized abuse is a crime investigators take seriously.

Under Ivory’s bill, “ritual abuse of a child” would be a new, second-degree felony that prosecutors could use if a crime meets a certain threshold.

“Ritual,” in the bill, is described as a ceremony “marked by specific actions, specific gestures, ceremonial objects, ceremonial clothing, religious texts, or specific words … designed to commemorate, celebrate, or solemnize a particular occasion or significance in a religious, cultural, social, institutional, or other context.”

Sexual abuse that involves a lengthy list of additional crimes could meet that definition, including torture, mutilation, human or animal sacrifice, bestiality and “ingestion or external application of an organic substance or material.”

The bill also defines some very specific actions — forcing a child to take drugs, enter a coffin or open grave that contains a human corpse, touch a mutilated human corpse or animal, or participate “in an unlawful, unauthorized, or mock marriage ceremony” are listed in the bill.

Ivory tried to pass a similar bill last legislative session, which resulted in a lengthy, emotional and graphic committee hearing where survivors and advocates described ritualistic abuse in detail. It sailed through the House Judiciary committee with just one lawmaker, Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, voting no because much of what’s described in the bill is already illegal.

But it was never brought to the House floor for a vote and ultimately died when the legislative session ended, never getting any consideration from either the House or Senate. This time around, Ivory said he has strengthened the definition of “ritual” in hopes that more lawmakers will get on board.

“There are certain things that are so heinous and hard to even talk about, that rise to the level of of needing heightened protection, both to punish and to prevent such such action,” Ivory said on Wednesday. “There are substantial, verified, credible allegations of these actions taking place right here in Happy Valley.”

If you have experienced sexual violence, call Utah’s 24-hour Sexual Violence Helpline at 1-801-736-4356. You can also call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 for free and confidential counseling. The following local resources are also available:

Native American domestic violence and sexual assault line: 1-833-688-4325
Rape Recovery Center: 801-467-7282
Rape & Sexual Assault Crisis Line: 1-888-421-1100
YWCA Survivor Services 24-hour crisis line: 1-801-537-8600
University of Utah Center For Student Wellness Victim-Survivor Advocacy: 1-801-581-7776
Linea de Apoyo de Violencia Sexual las 24-Horas de Utah: 1-801-924-0860

There have been bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, and we should all be taking notice.

On Friday, for the second consecutive day, bomb threats forced the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings in Springfield. Students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools were “evacuated to an alternate district location,” according to school district spokesperson Jenna Leinasars. Additionally, Roosevelt Middle School was “closed prior to the start of the school day” following information from the Springfield Police Department, Leinasars noted.

In a related incident, several city commissioners and a municipal employee received an emailed bomb threat, city spokesperson Karen Graves reported. A second email threatened multiple locations, including Springfield City Hall, Cliff Park High School, Perrin Woods Elementary, Roosevelt Middle School, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and the Ohio License Bureau Southside.

“As a precaution, all affected buildings were evacuated,” Graves said in a statement. “Authorities, with the assistance of explosive detection canines, conducted thorough inspections and cleared the threatened facilities.”

Local police, along with FBI agents based in Dayton, are currently working to trace the source of the email threats, Graves added.

This is the result of an old racist, xenophobic trope: that immigrants are invading and they are eating your pets.

The trope resurfaced as former president Donald Trump unleashed a tirade during his debate with Vice President Harris last Tuesday. “In Springfield, they’re eating dogs,” the former president said. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating […] the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

The trope has been used before – ask any would-be authoritarian populist. It’s as easy as instructions like “just add water,” and it activates the prejudices of xenophobes and nativists.

The practice of demonizing immigrants through false claims about their dietary habits dates back to the late 19th century, during a peak of anti-Chinese sentiment. Stereotypes about immigrants consuming dogs, bats, or rats have circulated in the U.S. since the 1800s, beginning with the wave of Chinese immigration.

Here is an excerpt from the Sacramento Daily Union from 21 July 1852: “Our China trade is not what it ought to be, and, besides, the Chinese still eat dog-pie.”

That’s 1852. We have not matured.

In the lead-up to the 1888 presidential election, Grover Cleveland’s campaign distributed trading cards depicting exaggerated images of Chinese men eating rats, while accusing his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, of being “China’s presidential candidate,” according to the book Recollecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History.

More recently, during the 2012 presidential election, conservatives briefly latched onto a passage from President Barack Obama’s memoir, where he mentioned being given dog meat as a child in Indonesia.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in China, reignited old racist tropes targeting Asian Americans. Former President Donald Trump further fueled these sentiments by referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”

Trump and Vance are following this racist playbook. Indeed, Vance is open about how blatantly he is lying in order to villify a group of legal immigrants for political ends. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” he said in an interview on CNN, “then that’s what I’m going to do.”

This time, Haitians are bearing the brunt of the attack. I hope our community is offering them the support they need during this time. My Haitian neighbors are horrified and terrified. As an immigrant refugee, I am too.

“The most successful claims for politicians trying to demonize immigrants have to have a tiny kernel of truth in them, or something that might make them easier to believe,” Julia Young from the Catholic University of America observed in an interview with The Washington Post. “So, for instance, in the case of Haitians: most people in the U.S. know nothing about Haiti, but they might know that it’s a place where voodoo is practiced. And if that’s your only association to Haitians, then it doesn’t become that far-fetched to believe that they might take or eat your pet for an animal sacrifice — which is reprehensible and baseless, but still easier to believe.”

The idea that Haitian immigrants are abducting pets for use in Vodou sacrifices has been spread widely on social media, perhaps most notably in a post shared by Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter). These claims, suffice to say, are baseless, not to mention steeped in racism and long-standing prejudice against Vodou practitioners.

Let’s also not fool ourselves that there is no connection with modern Pagan religions either.

Our community has seen this before. The connection between animal sacrifice and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s produced similar claims that were later debunked or found to be baseless. Lurid tales of Pagan rituals involving animal sacrifice abounded in that period. These accusations often involved allegations that animals, particularly domestic animals like dogs and cats, were being killed as part of occult ceremonies. The media and public hysteria amplified these claims, despite little to no empirical evidence of organized Satanic groups performing such rituals.

That does not mean that it failed to have real consequences in people’s lives, from bankruptcy to prison sentences to suicide.

“If you make it seem like a group is savage or uncivilized,” said Anthony Ocampo of California State Polytechnic University – Pomona, to the Guardian, “it makes it a lot easier to scapegoat and enact harmful laws against [them].”

He’s right. He’s talking about the Haitian community in Springfield. But he’s talking about us as well.

Satanists don't tend to abuse kids, regardless if they are more in line with Anton Levay and the Church of Satan or The Satanic Temple...

...unless they're with Order of Nine Angels, in which case they're cool with it.

Dr. Joseph Laycock is a scholar of New Religious Movements and an expert on Satanism and the Satanic Panic of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Here he discusses the similarities between the Satanic Panic and the anti-LGBTQ moral panic we’re experiencing today. We discuss claims about Satanism from Fox News, MomsForLiberty, Target Pride artist Abprallen UK, and even Anthony Padilla.

Satan is exploding in popularity lately. Between Sam Smith and Kim Petras at the Grammys, Lil Nas X’s Montero video, and Little Demon on FX, it seems like the devil is becoming more popular than God in pop culture. Ben Shapiro, Fox News, Allie B Stuckey and others suggest that real evil forces are to blame. Others think a rise in the Romantic Era view of Satan is responsible. I think there’s more to the story.

This is a discussion of Satan and Christ as symbols, not a promotion of Satanism, The Satanic Temple or any particular organization.