"If you didn't believe it, you were suspect. I mean, at best, of not being caring about children, and at worst, that you are a Satanist."
--Debbie Nathan, investigative journalist.
With the shadows of the Satanic Panic falling again in the form of QAnon and online conspiracism, a documentary looks back to the 1980s and, in particular, the role played by that most improbable of bestsellers, Michelle Remembers, co-authored by Michelle Smith, the alleged victim of a vast Satanic cult, and Lawrence Pazda, her therapist. While most of the book's claims have been debunked, Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor's 2023 documentary suggests that the truth behind the deception may be even more sinister than we realize.
Satan Wants You does a decent job of documenting the facts around Michelle Smith's life and the reasons why her story could not be true. Those facts, however, are now widely available. What was new to me was evidence-- uncertain, but credible-- that her therapist and later husband may have been seeking to write a get-rich bestseller in the vein of Sybil. and may have deliberately responded to her because he saw that potential. When Smith began more-or-less stalking him, calling repeatedly and turning up at social events (much to his then-wife's chagrin), he may have deliberately responded to her because he saw that money-making potential. Several questions remain unanswered and, with Pazder's passing, probably unanswerable:
-How much of the story did Pazder invent himself? He did most of the speaking during interviews, because, he claimed, post-therapy, Michelle had re-forgotten the details that appear in the book.
-How much did he ever believe in any of it? He later stated that her memories may have been metaphoric rather literal– but only after the lucrative bookings dried up.
-When, exactly, did they start their sexual/personal relationship? Pazder left his wife, and he and Michelle married at some point.
We also see footage of Pazder in west Africa, where he observed and filmed rituals that clearly influenced the account of rites described in Michelle Remembers. While he saw these things, it seems clear he either did not understand their cultural significance or chose to misrepresent it.
Satan Wants You also documents the role played by her sisters-- who receive no mention in Michelle Remembers. They did what reporters should have, looking at available records. During the time Michelle was supposedly being held captive in some unidentified location for an 81-month ritual, she had near-perfect attendance at school and had her yearbook photograph taken.
The documentary's emphasis on Michelle Remembers means that many of the related elements addressed receive short shrift. For example, we get a clip of Laurel Rose Willson / Lauren Stratford / Laura Grabowski, but no indication of the depth and breadth of her delusional con-artistry (under multiple names). We see no specific reasons for why we should not believe what she is saying, other than she doesn't sound especially credible. And, in a documentary understandably critical of religious fanaticism, we get no sense of the role played by the evangelical Christian magazine Cornerstone (1971-2003) in debunking the Satanic Panic, doing the legwork mainstream talks shows would not.
The documentary does feature extensive commentary by two police detectives, Charles Ennis of the Vancouver Police Department and Ken Lanning of the FBI (the latter of whom was initially open to the possibility that such cults existed). They do a solid job of debunking the claims made by using logic and evidence.
You may want to laugh– but the reality is, you will be angry. No one mentioned in Michelle Remembers went to jail or were even investigated, but they were branded villains, and other people were falsely tried or imprisoned as a result of the cultural delusions and madness of crowds to which the book contributed.
Meanwhile, actual cases of abuse and sexual abuse went uninvestigated, ones that occurred in respectable homes and institutions, and whose perpetrators were not wild-eyed kitten-killing cultists and whose victims, far from having to recover their memories under (mis)guided therapy, could not forget them. That the local Catholic Church helped fund Michelle Smith is an irony not lost, given the number of religious institutions that helped conceal allegations of abuse by individual predators.
Unfortunately, as journalist Debbie Nathan notes, debunking does not make belief, no matter how bizarre and unfounded, disappear. In the minds and hearts of many people, the Satanic Panic never disappeared. Indeed, as the documentary fails to notice, a couple of Smith and Pazder's claims revisit Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the 1903 anti-Semitic hoax that continues to be referenced, directly and indirectly, by the conspiracy-minded but rationally-challenged. We stand on the shoulders of giants-- and in the shadows cast by discredited malcontents.
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