The Devil Goes to Day Care: McMartin and the Making of a Moral Panic

A new type of sex crime was discovered during the 1980s-the abuse of very young children in rituals performed by robed and hooded satanists who also happened to be their day care providers. Satanic ritual abuse, as this new sex crime quickly came to be termed, appeared to be epidemic during the 1980s, and the McMartin Preschool was its first locus delicti. The cultural response to the McMartin case had all of the characteristics of what sociologists call a moral panic:1 it was widespread, volatile, hostile, and overreactive (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 156-59). From Texas to Tennessee, New Jersey to North Carolina, Maine to Michigan, hundreds of local day care centers were investigated for satanic ritual abuse and scores of day care providers, as many males as females, were arrested and put on trial. From the witness stand, their accusers, the three- and four-year-old children once entrusted to their care, accused them of sexual abuse during satanic ceremonies that included such ghastly practices as blood-drinking, cannibalism, and human sacrifices. Despite the absence of evidence corroborating the children's accounts, many of the day care providers were convicted, and to the cheers and jeers of their deeply divided communities, were sentenced to what often were draconian prison terms. In the accusatorial post-McMartin climate, day care providers, surrogate parents to this country's youngest children, took measures to protect themselves from their false allegations (Bordin 80-81). They installed video cameras to record all of their activities, opened up private spaces to public view by taking down doors to bathrooms and closets and, fearing the act now could be misinterpreted, stopped hugging and holding their young charges. State legislatures also took measures. They hurriedly passed laws that mandated the fingerprinting and criminal records check of all current and prospective day care providers; state licensing agencies tightened regulations and by legislative fiat were given more teeth to enforce them. Yet insurance liability premiums soared, forcing many small day care centers out of business and many more, unlicensed and uninsured, to go underground. Heralded at the start of the decade as playgrounds for children, day care centers were feared at its end as playthings of the devil. The aim of this present article is to analyze the moral panic about satanic day care centers that spread across this country during the 1980s. First, it examines the cultural context of the moral panic by focusing on the social forces and strains peculiar to that decade that not only gave rise to it, but that made what at first blush must appear to be the most innocuous of social institutions, the local day care center, the scene of the most horrific of sex crimes. Second, it interprets the McMartin Preschool case as the trigger that set off the moral panic, and then analyzes the roles that interest, grassroots, and professional groups played in spreading it across the country. Third, the article explains why, after nine long and bitter years, the moral panic finally ended and what "moral," if any, can be derived from it. Cultural Context of the Moral Panic An insightful examination of the social change most critical to the rise of the satanic day care center moral panic during the 1980s is provided by David Bromley and Bruce Busching who examine the changing relation between what they call the convenantal sphere and the contractual sphere of social life at the beginning of that decade. The convenantal sphere is that of the family. Within it, relations are built upon mutual commitment, bonding, and emotional expressiveness, and are articulated through the logic of moral involvement and unity. The contractual sphere, in contrast, is that of the market economy where relations are based upon mutual agreement, negotiation, and exchange, and are articulated through the logic of vested interest and shrewd involvement. …