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Joost Engelberts investigates how a conspiracy about satanic ritual abuse can escalate into a socially explosive story. Who are the people involved? What exactly is being alleged? And how can a local event grow into a national phenomenon?
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At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of people laid flowers at the cemetery in Bodegraven. The incident was prompted by a former resident who claims to have been a victim of ritual abuse as a child by a satanic cult consisting of influential figures. He alleges that several children were tortured and murdered. What began with the laying of flowers quickly escalated. Calls for violence, serious threats, and even a death list circulated. Joost Engelberts investigates how this bizarre situation could arise, what exactly is being claimed, and who is behind it.
Joost Engelberts discovers that the Bodegraven conspiracy is particularly prevalent in radical Christian circles. He investigates what exactly constitutes a satanic cult, who believes in it, and what they believe. What is this based on? Simultaneously, the police and the judiciary are trying to get a handle on the disruptive influence of these theories. Although no one initially wants to talk to him, Engelberts eventually succeeds in penetrating the truth and uncovering the stories.
Stories of satanic abuse regularly surface around the world. For example, in the United States, where theories about repressed memories and split personalities merge with infanticide and satanic abuse. It began with a bestseller, written by a psychiatrist and his patient, about alleged satanic abuse. This book led to a public panic: the so-called Satanic Panic. Joost Engelberts retraces the steps and discovers how a form of therapy is also being applied in the Netherlands and how news programs have uncritically covered the stories of satanic abuse for years.
The idea that an evil elite abuses and murders children to serve the devil sounds unbelievable. Yet it's taken seriously by journalists, politicians, and therapists. A detective team that investigates child pornography daily devotes two years to thoroughly investigating claims of child abuse by a cult. But what happens when their research findings are ignored, distrusted, or even suppressed by those same journalists, therapists, and politicians because they don't fit? And what is the effect on the people who are identified, hounded, and threatened as perpetrators?