Pace Memorandum - Background

Background

The SRA moral panic began in the 1980s as children in the United States, subjected to coercive interviewing techniques at the hands of zealous social workers, made unsubstantiated allegations of bizarre Satanic rituals and horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of day care workers. As the decade unfolded, clients of believing therapists began to make similar allegations, which are now generally seen as confabulations caused by iatrogenic therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis and automatic writing rather than the discovery of repressed memories. Despite the similarities between the allegations of adults and children, investigations produced only circumstantial, and in many cases contradictory evidence of the patients' disclosures. The court cases surrounding SRA allegations (such as the iconic McMartin preschool trial) were among the most expensive and lengthy in history and produced no convictions or convictions based solely on the testimony of children that were frequently overturned or dismissed upon appeal. The panic subsided in the late 1990s, but in the early 1990s while it was still a substantial concern, adherents in the LDS Church began telling leaders of the church that they had been subjected to SRA by their relatives—often parents—and other members of the church.