Lauren Stratford and Mike Warnke were a big deal in some Christian circles in the 70s and 80s. And on national television once their stories became famous. Both offered up vivid stories of experiences with satanic rings, as victim or participant. They gave talks, wrote books, sold tapes about their firsthand knowledge of satanic ritual abuse.
Some friends of mine were investigative journalists for a Christian magazine that began looking into their stories. They found that when you tracked down the names and places mentioned by these two that their stories fell apart. They were both frauds and the magazine exposed them in some heavily researched articles in 1990. Stratford turned out to have had a history of mental illness. Warnke didn’t have that excuse, he knew what he was doing and he was making good money selling his BS to an eager audience.
But before they were exposed they really got the satanic ritual abuse idea planted, and Stratford even managed to insert herself in the McMartin case, which itself was a product of the panic that they had unleashed- Stratford claiming that she and the elderly Mrs McMartin had been lesbian lovers. This was just more of her insanity.
Anyway echoes of that SAR hysteria continue on today. People make unsupported claims that come right out of the stories spun by these two, or really three since there was a third player, one John Todd. Anytime you hear stories of ritual abuse start looking to see if there is any real evidence being offered, or if there is just a lot of excitement and a good story and a bunch of dots being connected.
It only benefits the cults involved to keep people in the dark about what cults do. And let’s be honest, the contention that Satanic ritual abuse of children is a 70’s and 80’s thing is a diversion. Satanic cults are all just variants of the old Baal worship cults which existed in ancient Israel. Those cults practiced child sacrifice. Ritual abuse of children in particular is central to Satanic philosophy. One less well-known group describes a ceremony involving the blood of a Christian child. It is an extreme expression of rejection of the God of the Bible - to corrupt and harm the youngest, most vulnerable, and most innocent among us. Crimes against children are simply more horrific, more of an abomination than consumption of human waste, cross-dressing, deviant sexual behavior, pornography and the drug trade, but they are just another “tool in the toolbox” for violent cult sociopaths.