Do You Know the Muffin Man?

Being a victim myself, every parent should be aware of the signs. This might be a good example. Maybe watch this one with your child, talk with them about the movie and look for the signs.

Back in the 80's, a wave of fear spread through North America with the belief that underground satanic cults were infiltrating all parts of society, including day-care centers. A rash of charges were brought against day-care workers all over the U. S., as well as Canada and other parts of the world on suspicion of sexually abusing children as part of organized satanic rituals. Despite children reporting fantastical and in some cases physically impossible occurrences, there were trials and many people did go to prison. Those who weren't found guilty, had their lives ruined. The satanic panic was all made possible by overzealous prosecutors, therapists, mental health workers, law enforcement, religious fundamentalists, and fearful parents. The media accepted it without any skepticism. However, there was little or no evidence ever found in any cases. No blood, no dead babies, no nothing. It was all mass hysteria. The idea of satanic ritual abuse was a hoax. Children were asked leading and suggestive questions, and often interviewed dozens of times. Children who said nothing happened, we're not believed. They were only believed after giving investigators the answers they wanted to hear. It was a modern day witch hunt.

Sadly this film is just one more example of how the media played a role in the satanic panic. When people abandon reason in favor of emotion and superstition, it can have terrible consequences. This movie creates a narrative that plays into the fears of the time and passes the story off as being based on facts. Besides wrongful convictions, one of the biggest tragedies of the satanic ritual abuse panic is that so many children in these cases may now as adults still believe that they were victims of SRA. How traumatic must that be? Finally, while police and prosecutors were chasing and charging people in imaginary satanic cults with horrific crimes, real cases of child abuse, often perpetrated by family members, went unpunished. I guess it's easier for people to accept that bad things happen in the world because of "the Devil", than to have to face and try to solve complex societal problems like poverty, income inequality, social justice, racism, and sexism.

Ugh. Yes, it's exactly like the McMartin mess, or the horrific arrests in Wenatchee, Washington. In the movie, the mother keeps aggressively questioning her little boy, over and over and over, until he finally tells her what she obviously wants to hear. The court investigators and "therapists" repeat the pattern. The questioning itself is sexually creepy, a relentlessy repeated assault in its own way.

The moviemakers throw in a doctor talking about physical evidence of abuse, maybe to justify the film's point of view: that two- to four-year-olds never make "things like this" up. Well, they will if every adult they know is asking them to. The way this piece endorses such discredited interrogation techniques makes watching it an exercise in frustration for anyone who knows what it takes to get a successful prosecution in real life.

(They also add a special arrest incident towards the end to "prove" their case -- no parallel to this fictional incident ever occurred in real life. Can't say more here without turning this into a spoiler, but you'll know it when you see it.)

Yes, children are abused, sometimes by paid care providers. But to watch a movie which affirms the ludicrous, hysterical accusations against so many totally innocent people, to watch re-creations of the trials that ruined the lives of countless children as well as the lives of the accused -- I didn't think I'd last until the end. It's just too sad, and made more so by the writing team's seeming endorsement of the abusive, paranoid, obsessional questioning techniques that started -- what can we call it? The bonfire of the sanities?

No one I know has ever been accused of child abuse, thank heaven, but my 12-times-over-great grandmother was accused of witchcraft and killed for it. Mobs filled with what they think is holy anger are just as dangerous now as three hundred years ago. Sensational drivel like this -- "These accusations of Satanic abuse are cropping up all over the country, there must be something there!" "So tell the jury that!" -- just eggs them on.

And whoever thought it was a good idea to have kids under ten, some of them under five, play these roles? It's traumatic to watch them delivering their lines; how much more traumatic was it to act these parts? The moviemakers' commitment to fight child abuse apparently doesn't apply to themselves. And what were the child-actors' parents THINKING? "Melinda" (uncredited, at least in the version on the A&E Network in 2005, but I think it was Cassy Friel) and "Teddy" (Brian Bonsall) were terrific. Professionals or not, though, they were too young to be exposed to this material, much less to be paid to act it out. Despite ruthlessly exploiting these real-life children, "Do You Know The Muffin Man" got an Emmy nomination for directing -- which just goes to show how crazed things were, back in 1989.

I have to confess that this film scared the pants off of me. This was mostly from the stand point that things can go on in our world like this, and we don't even see them.

Whether or not this is based on the McMartin trial is immaterial. The point is that abuse occurs in this world, and the sad reality is that it can be performed by the kindly grandmother who lives next door as well as anyone. To shrug that off by saying it was produced to assure that a famous court case was not judged fairly is to deny the horror that some people go though on a daily basis. Whether that be by systematic or organized abuse in our preschools or the drunken father or mother in the child's home, it happens.

While the adult performances in and the direction of this film are not exactly top-notch, I had to hand it to the kids (Brian Bonsall and Stephen Dorff). They did a fantastic job.

I saw this movie in a psych class and I thought it was wonderful. It was very educational and I don't think it should be compared to the McMartin trial. In the movie the people being accused weren't punished nearly severe enough and watching it was upsetting but much better than ignoring a hard subject matter. I would recommend anyone to see it. It's important to be informed about things like that and this movie did a horrible wonderful job of doing that.