An in-depth history of the "Satanic ritual sex abuse" panic of the 1980s and 1990s.

Communities throughout the United States were convulsed in the 1980s and early 1990s by accusations, often without a shred of serious evidence, that respectable men and women in their midst—many of them trusted preschool teachers—secretly gathered in far-reaching conspiracies to rape and terrorize children. In Satan's Silence, Debbie Nathan and Mike Snedeker examine the forces fueling this blind panic.