Believe the Children

Believe the Children was an advocacy organization formed by the parents involved in the McMartin preschool trial to promote the idea that allegations of Satanic ritual abuse were factual and not a moral panic. The organization's name was based on the slogan that the children, who were the primary sources of information about the alleged abuse (no physical evidence or corroboration was found for the allegations), should be believed without question. The organization became a clearinghouse for information about ritual abuse from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. Few, if any, of the claims of ritual satanic abuse promoted by Believe the Children have been substantiated.