Satanic ritual abuse hysteria-4

 The Satanic ritual abuse hysteria died down between 1990 and 1994.[65] In the late 1980s, the Satanic Scare had lost its impetus following increasing scepticism about such allegations,[74] and a number of those who had been convicted of perpetrating Satanic ritual abuse saw their convictions overturned.[75] In 1990, an agent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ken Lanning, revealed that he had investigated 300 allegations of Satanic ritual abuse and found no evidence for Satanism or ritualistic activity in any of them.[75] In the UK, the Department of Health commissioned the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine to examine the allegations of SRA.[76] She noted that while approximately half did reveal evidence of genuine sexual abuse of children, none revealed any evidence that Satanist groups had been involved or that any murders had taken place.[77] She noted three examples in which lone individuals engaged in child molestation had created a ritual performance to facilitate their sexual acts, with the intent of frightening their victims and justifying their actions, but that none of these child molestors were involved in wider Satanist groups.[78] By the 21st century, hysteria about Satanism has waned in most Western countries, although allegations of Satanic ritual abuse continued to surface in parts of continental Europe and Latin America.