Chapter 7: Satanic Panic

Chapter 7: Satanic Panic

This was the most difficult chapter to get through for me. I found myself regularly having to go back and reread sentences and whole paragraphs because I had checked out or the information I had just looked over had initially left me in total disbelief. Perry’s descriptions of “holding”/”attachment” therapy, the role of social contagion in America in the early 90s around “Satanic Ritual Abuse,” the fad of “recovering” traumatic memories, and the firm adherence to these beliefs and therapeutic models by many professionals in various and relatively socially powerful positions were painful and infuriating to read about. I was most horrified by how the children in Gilmer who had been sexually abused by their family members were tortured further by being transported across the state, subjected to coercive and physically assaultive methods of treatment that were unsupported by any kind of evidence, and manipulated by caregivers, caseworkers, and the judicial system to confirm these adults’ own beliefs about the events in the small east Texas town.

Although horrifying, the history of this mass hysteria and the coercive methods used by the caseworkers, foster families, and prosecutors in the Gilmer cases are not particularly surprising. Perry described adults in therapy who look for the “Rosetta stones of their personal histories” and attempt to find solutions to their current issues in daily functioning by searching for the one traumatic memory that with explain and “resolve” their problems. Instead of learning to cope in the present and validate for oneself that life can be stressful, isolating, and overwhelming in and of itself (even in the absence of a history of childhood trauma/abuse/neglect), some adults will seek out alternative explanations to validate their daily experiences and feelings of already-justified fear, anxiety, sadness, etc. I drew a parallel from Perry’s commentary here to how the adults in this chapter acted and may have perceived the children in Gilmer who had been subjected to horrific abuse. Instead of working through their own feelings of disbelief, sadness, and anger around the cases, they sought out a “better” explanation (e.g. Satanic Ritual Abuse) for why the abuse occurred, perhaps to help themselves feel more at ease. However, just as daily life can be inherently overwhelming for an adult with a severe mental illness that has no roots in childhood trauma, the sexual abuse experienced by children in Gilmer was inherently horrific and required no kind of outside justification or explanation in order to effectively care for them. Providing empathy, understanding, and appropriate care and allowing a client to determine what exactly it is that they might need is almost always more important than intrusively digging into their past (in this case, via coercive interrogation and holding therapy), and it would have only served to benefit the children in this case.

By the end of the chapter I wondered what, if any, care was offered to these children after the criminal and custody cases had ended, and if they would even be able to trust another mental health professional in the future. I think Perry effectively modeled how building a safe, strong alliance with them might look if they or their caregivers sought out care again.