Remembering Satan: A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory (1994)

Fascinating true crime case from New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright—one of those vaguely creepy miscarriages of justice along the lines of what's seen in the documentary, Capturing the Friedmans, where it gets hard figuring out the good guys from the bad, and there's an undertowing urge to wish you'd never heard about any of it. In this book, Wright details the story of Olympia, Washington, sheriff's deputy and fundamentalist Christian Paul Ingram, whose teen daughters, on the basis of so-called recovered memories, accused him in 1988 of involvement with a Satanic cult, which physically and sexually abused them in ritual fashion. Their stories are unbelievably horrific—dismembered babies, gallons of blood, revolting sex, lots of chanting and finger cymbals. Not surprisingly, almost no physical or corroborative evidence supports their claims. Bizarrely, upon being arrested Ingram furrows his brow and starts recovering memories of his own. Near or shortly after the trial he finally came to his senses (as I read it) and recanted all. But too late. In the end he went to prison for well over a decade. The daughters have evidently never wavered. Those choosing to believe them over the father account for the lack of evidence Napoleon Dynamite style: "IDIOT! It's Satan. Of course he's going to get rid of the evidence." There's a cautionary tale in here somewhere.

In case it's not at the library. Also more information here.