The Satanic Panic
The longest and most expensive criminal trial in US history to that point, built on these allegations, ended with no convictions at all. Formal investigations by both American and British authorities in the early 1990s each concluded independently that there was no evidence of any organised satanic ritual abuse network.
The McMartin preschool trial (1984–1990); the FBI's Lanning report (1992); the UK's La Fontaine report (1994)
A wave of belief in the 1980s and early 1990s that organised satanic cults were secretly abusing children across the United States and beyond.