Reports of the abduction phenomenon have been made all around the world, but are most common in English-speaking countries, especially the United States.[3] The first alleged alien abduction claim to be widely publicized was the Betty and Barney Hill abduction in 1961 Support groups for people who believed they were abducted began appearing in the mid-1980s. These groups appear throughout the United States, Canada and Australia.
The 1980s brought a major degree of mainstream attention to the subject. Works by Hopkins, novelist Whitley Strieber, historian David M. Jacobs and psychiatrist John E. Mack presented alien abduction as a plausible experience.[19] Also of note in the 1980s was the publication of folklorist Thomas E. Bullard's comparative analysis of nearly 300 alleged abductees.
Jacobs and Hopkins argued that alien abduction was far more common than earlier suspected; they estimate that tens of thousands (or more) North Americans had been taken by unexplained beings.
The precise number of alleged abductees is uncertain. One of the earliest studies of abductions found 1,700 claimants, while contested surveys argued that 5–6 percent of the general population allege to have been abducted.
wikipedia Satanic panic
The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA), sometimes known as ritual abuse, starting in North America in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today
A 1994 article in the New York Times stated that: "Of the more than 12,000 documented accusations nationwide, investigating police were not able to substantiate any allegations of organized cult abuse".
International spread
In 1987, a list of "indicators" was published by Catherine Gould,[64] featuring a broad array of vague symptoms that were ultimately common, non-specific and subjective, purported to be capable of diagnosing SRA in most young children.[41] By the late 1980s, allegations began to appear throughout the world (including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia), in part enabled by English as a common international language and in the United Kingdom, assisted by Gould's list of indicators.
In 1986, the largest symposium on child abuse in history was held in Australia, with addresses by vocal SRA advocates Kee MacFarlane, Roland Summit, Astrid Heppenstall Heger, and David Finkelhor.[66]
In 1987, writings on the phenomenon appeared in the United Kingdom along with incidents featuring broadly similar accusations such as the Cleveland child abuse scandal; allegations of SRA in Nottingham resulted in the "British McMartin", advised in part by the British journalist Tim Tate's work on the subject.[41] Along with the list of indicators, American conference speakers, pamphlets, source materials, consultants, vocabulary regarding SRA and allegedly funding were imported, which promoted the identification and counseling of British SRA allegations.[41][57] The Nottingham investigation resulted in criminal charges of severe child abuse that ultimately had nothing to do with Satanic rituals, and was criticized for focusing on the irrelevant and non-existent Satanic aspects of the allegations at the expense of the severe conventional abuse endured by the children.[67]
In 1989, San Francisco Police detective Sandi Gallant gave an interview with a newspaper in the United Kingdom.[68] At the same time, several other therapists toured the country giving talks on SRA, and shortly thereafter SRA cases occurred in Orkney, Rochdale, London, and Nottingham.[69]
In 1992, charges were laid in the Martensville satanic sex scandal; charges were overturned in 1995 on the grounds of improper interviewing of the children.[70][71]
A wave of SRA accusations appeared in New Zealand in 1991, and in Norway in 1992.[72]
In the mid-nineties in Egypt, tabloids such as Rose Al Youssef started publishing articles about an alleged subculture of Satan worshipping and rituals spreading among the teens and youth of the middle and upper-middle class and associating it with heavy metal music, bands, symbolism, and graffiti. The original article published on 11 November 1996 was written by Abdallah Kamal, but soon other writers and journalists, including Adel Hammuda and others. The public intrigue eventually led to the security apparatus raiding the homes of some young people in the music scene and their friends, confiscating posts and tapes and CDs, forcing short hairstyles on them and subjecting them to religious reformation sessions, before releasing them,[73][74] but the scare continued to be stirred from time to time until the mid-2000s, and became books and talk shows.
In 1998, Jean LaFontaine produced a book indicating allegations of SRA in the United Kingdom were sparked by investigations supervised by social workers who had taken SRA seminars in the United States.
In 2021 and 2022, two consecutive reports by Swiss Television journalists Ilona Stämpfli and Robin Rehmann [de] presented evidence that conspiracy theories closely related to the Satanic panic were still held by various groups and individuals in Switzerland, among them teachers, psychotherapists, high-ranking police officers, and a senior physician of Clienia, the largest private psychiatric clinic group in Switzerland.[75][76] As a reaction to the first documentary, two of the interviewed teachers as well as the senior physician were let go by their employers.[77][78]