The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic - Softcover

Mary De Young

9780786418305: The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786418303 ISBN 13: 9780786418305

Publisher: McFarland & Co, 2004

In the United States during the early 1980s, hundreds of day care providers were accused of sexually abusing their young charges in satanic rituals that included blood drinking, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. The panic surrounding the ritual abuse of children has spread quickly to Canada, Europe, and Australasia, and its rapid dispersion has been unimpeded by international investigations that found no evidence to corroborate the allegations and warned that a moral panic was thrusting them into professional public attention. This work is a sociologically based analysis of the day care ritual abuse panic in America. It introduces the concept of moral panic and analyzes its relevance to the ritual abuse scare, explores the ideological, political, economic, and professional forces that fomented the panic, discusses the McMartin Preschool case as the incident that brought attention to satanic menaces and children, and examines the dialect between the various interest groups that stirred up and spread the moral panic and the day care providers accused of ritual abuse.

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About the Author:

Mary de Young, a professor of sociology at Grand Valley State University, lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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