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Comment by Boris on October 1, 2018 at 9:26pm

HBO movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial,

If you've never seen the great James-Woods-starring HBO movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial, Wikipedia sums up the real-life trial of a perfectly-innocent family running a dayschool based on "recovered memories" of kids who claimed they'd been sexually abused in Satanic rituals:

The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case in the 1980s, prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner.[1] Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990, it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history.[2] The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The stories they told were literally unbelievable. Literally. Unbelievable. Kids told them about "The Naked Movie Star Game" where they'd have to undress and strut the cat-walk for guests.

In another incident, kids claimed that they were led to a ceremony to engage in Satanic rites. A photo array was put before a kid, and he was asked to circle any faces of the men who took them to the ceremony.

The two men identified? An LA attorney and martial arts legend Chuck Norris.

The Chuck Norris part is at 109:30.

Of course, that's just the case they made a movie about -- this panic swept up all of America. Commenters remind me that Janet Reno made her reputation (to the extent she has one) riding this wave of insane panic.

Comment by Boris on October 1, 2018 at 8:47pm

called it -the Manchurian dem