All right. So, for this post today, I’m going to be talking about a pretty sensitive subject. And that’s going to be satanic ritual abuse and potential ties to leadership of the Mormon church.
It should go without saying that this is going to be a little bit more of a sensitive subject. I’ll say up front that I have no intention of diving into specific examples—detailed descriptions of what satanic ritual abuse looks like—outside of broad definitions. My goal is just to give an idea of what makes ritual abuse a little bit different than regular abuse (for lack of a better word). Consider this your heads up that this is going to be a sensitive subject.
I typically wouldn’t really give this type of subject very much attention. I certainly never planned on making a post about it. But I did have an interesting conversation the other day with an LDS content creator that I message with sometimes. I was a little surprised when he messaged me saying he had some information regarding something that was about to be made public, and that he would have more details to share once the news broke out.
He was vague about it, so I pushed back a little. What I was told was that in October (2025) a group of people is going to be coming out and exposing leadership of the church with their connections regarding satanic ritual abuse.
The first thing we need to realize is that these fears of satanic cults carrying out ritualistic abuse really peaked in the 1980s and fizzled out going into the ’90s.
The specific claim that there were satanic cults in America secretly abusing children goes back heavily to a book titled Michelle Remembers (affiliate link) This was a best-selling book published in 1980, written by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith.
In this book, the claim was that through therapy sessions, Michelle Smith was able to recall repressed childhood memories where she was ritually abused by a satanic cult. Her descriptions of abuse set the stage for many later claims of satanic ritual abuse.
The details she described included human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, chanting, blood, mutilation, emotional and spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse. Her claims were significant, so people began investigating. Journalists looked into Michelle’s childhood but found nothing that verified her claims. During the 81 days she claimed she was abused by the cult, she was found to be living a normal life.
The events she described should have left physical evidence, but there were no bodies, no missing children, no proof of her claims. Scholars and psychologists generally concluded that Pazder’s therapy methods—particularly his use of recovered memory techniques—likely created false memories through suggestion.
Still, the book struck fear in the American public, Utah included. In the summer of 1985—right in the middle of America’s fear of satanic cults—a resident of Lehi, Utah named Sheila Bowers brought her children to therapist Barbara Snow. During their sessions, Snow concluded that the children had been sexually abused by their babysitter, who happened to be the teenage daughter of the local LDS bishop.
Other parents who had used the same babysitter also brought their children in to see Snow. Soon, these children began reporting abuse as well. Before long, nearly 40 adults were accused by Barbara Snow of participating in satanic ritual abuse.
An investigation followed. The Utah County Sheriff’s Office and the Utah Attorney General’s Office launched a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the claims. For a while, children were removed from the bishop’s home, but they were later returned when investigators found no evidence of abuse.
The case closed in 1990, with only one person—Lehi resident Alan Hadfield—facing criminal charges. He was convicted of sexual abuse, but his conviction had no connection to satanic ritual abuse.
Barbara Snow faced heavy criticism for her therapy techniques. Investigators concluded she was influencing the testimonies of the children. In one case, a 10-year-old girl claimed she was asked up to 50 times in a single session if Hadfield had touched her inappropriately. She eventually said yes because she was afraid Snow would yell at her.
Critics compared Snow’s methods to the same type of “recovered memory” therapy used by Lawrence Pazder in Michelle Remembers.
The allegations in Lehi went further than just local babysitting claims. Some accused leaders of the Mormon church of direct involvement, and some claimed the abuse even took place on church property. That’s when the church itself became directly drawn into the controversy.
One of the most interesting documents that came out of this entire scandal is a memo written in July 1990 by Bishop Glenn L. Pace (link opens a PDF). He sent it to the Strengthening Church Members Committee, summarizing what he had gathered from interviews with alleged victims.
In total, Pace interviewed around 60 individuals who claimed they had been victims of satanic ritual abuse by members of the Mormon church—sometimes even on church property. The victims came from Utah, Idaho, California, Mexico, and fourteen additional locations. The scope of the claims suggested it was widespread and directly tied to church members.
Here’s one paragraph that stood out to me from his memo:
“I go out of my way to not let the victims give me the names of their perpetrators. I have told them that my responsibility is to help them with spiritual healing and that the names of perpetrators should be given to therapists and law enforcement officers. However, they have told me the positions of church members who are perpetrators. Among others, there are young women leaders, young men leaders, bishops, a patriarch, a stake president, temple workers, and members of the tabernacle choir. These accusations are not coming from individuals who think they recognized someone, but from those who have been abused by people they know, in many cases their own family members.”
Pace also wrote about the credibility concerns raised by the bizarre nature of the victims’ stories and their psychological conditions:
“Some have said that the witnesses to this type of treatment cannot be trusted because of the victim's unstable condition and because practically all of them have some kind of dissociative disorder. In fact, the stories are so bizarre as to raise serious credibility questions. The irony is that one of the objectives of the occult is to create multiple personalities within the children in order to keep the secrets. They live in society without society having any idea that something is wrong. Since the children and teenagers don't even realize there is another life occurring in darkness and in secret. However, when 60 witnesses testify to the same type of torture and murder, it becomes impossible for me personally not to believe them.”
Because so many victims described similar experiences and overlapping details, Utah officials grew concerned that ritual abuse could actually be happening. This led to a formal government response.
In March 1990, the Utah government created the Utah State Task Force on Ritual Abuse. Its purpose was to gather and analyze information about ritual abuse in Utah, educate the public, and train professionals—including physicians, law enforcement, court officers, child welfare workers, mental health providers, educators, and even religious leaders.
As part of this effort, the task force officially defined ritual abuse to distinguish it from other forms of abuse. Their definition read:
“Ritual abuse is a brutal form of abuse of children, adolescents, and adults consisting of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and involving use of rituals. Ritual abuse rarely consists of a single episode. It usually involves repeated abuse over an extended period of time. The physical abuse is severe, including torture and sometimes killing. The sexual abuse is usually painful, sadistic, and humiliating. Ritual abuse is by definition not a crime of impulse but a crime committed with malice aforethought.”
This shows how seriously Utah took the issue. But the panic wasn’t just confined to Utah. Across the United States, fears of organized satanic cults ritually abusing children were widespread.
In January 1992, the FBI released an Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of Ritual Child Abuse. It acted as a manual for investigators on how to approach such cases.
One of the strongest warnings the guide gave was that it’s easy to get swept up in the fear and sensationalism surrounding satanic ritual abuse. Over-sensationalism could cause investigators to see Satanism where it didn’t actually exist. The report put it simply: “The eye can see what the mind perceives.”
At the same time, the guide admitted that no one can prove with absolute certainty that such activity has not occurred. But the burden of proof rests on those making the claims. In other words, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. And the argument that satanists are “too organized” or law enforcement is “too incompetent” only goes so far in explaining the lack of evidence.
Most accusations of satanic ritual abuse faded as the ’90s went on. This mirrored what happened across the rest of the United States. Still, even today, new accusations occasionally surface. Many of them directly name leaders of the Mormon church—sometimes very high-ranking leaders—as participants.
If you search online, you’ll find witness testimonies that sound convincing. And as much as we might want to say this type of abuse doesn’t happen, we can’t deny that humans are capable of some truly atrocious things.
The problem is that witness testimonies alone don’t qualify as solid evidence. As the FBI pointed out, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Without physical evidence, these testimonies can only go so far.
So where does that leave us? Personally, I have no idea if the LDS creator who reached out to me actually has information that will shed new light on this subject.
But to me, the claim that Mormon leaders are secretly running a vast, organized network of satanic ritual abuse, managing to avoid detection by authorities, and leaving behind zero physical evidence feels like a stretch. That doesn’t mean we can say it’s impossible—it just means that, right now, there isn’t evidence to support it beyond victim testimonies.
I f anything undeniable comes to light, I’ll make a follow-up post. So stay tuned for that.
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P.S. There’s a book that’s been recommended to me. I haven’t read it and it’s not the central focus here, but if anybody wants to check it out, it’s called Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History by David Frankfurter (affiliate link). I’ve read summaries and reviews of it. It seems to be a good overview of some of these conspiracies surrounding satanic cults throughout history, so I'll just leave this here for anyone intrigued
Check Your Understanding:
Test how well you understand the history, panic, and evidence issues around satanic ritual abuse claims tied to Mormonism.
1. What triggered the author to start looking into satanic ritual abuse and Mormonism?
2. What was “Michelle Remembers,” and why was it important?
3. What major criticism did journalists and scholars have of the claims in “Michelle Remembers”?
4. In the Lehi, Utah case involving therapist Barbara Snow, what was the final outcome of the major investigation?
5. What makes Bishop Glenn L. Pace’s 1990 memo historically important?
6. How did the Utah State Task Force on Ritual Abuse define ritual abuse?
7. What key caution did the FBI’s 1992 Investigator’s Guide give about ritual abuse allegations?
8. What is the author’s current position on claims that LDS leaders run a vast satanic ritual abuse network?
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