The feature that seems to distinguish cases of satanic abuse from the accusations of witchcraft with which I have compared it is that it involves sexual activities with children. While witches may be accused of forbidden sexual practices and attacks on children in many parts of the world, and descriptions of the witches' sabbath might include the killing and eating of babies, it is only in twentieth-century Western society that sexual acts with children have come to form the central focus of accusations of supreme evil. Allegations of witchcraft have shown an ability to adapt and reflect changing issues, expressing new anxieties in the present and new fears for the future in old but potent forms (Comaroff 1994; Meyer 1995). Allegations of satanism resemble accusations of witchcraft in their adaptability. The rediscovery of the cruelty suffered by children at the hands not only of malevolent outsiders but of their own parents, who have long been taken for granted as their instinctive protectors, has been a growing social issue since the 1970s (La Fontaine 1990). As Jenkins puts it, ‘Ritual (satanic) abuse represented a third stage in what was almost an evolutionary process’, the first two stages being sexual abuse at home and the uncovering of paedophile networks (1992: 17).

Cases of satanic abuse were distinguished from other cases of the sexual abuse of children by elements seen as ‘bizarre’, ‘sinister’, and ‘frightening’ by the adults who reported them.