The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic: A Sociological Analysis

Abstract

A new type of sex crime was discovered in the United States in the 1980s – the sexual abuse of young children in ghastly rituals performed by devil worshippers who happened to be their day care providers. ‘Ritual abuse’, as this new sex crime came to be termed, appeared to be epidemic during that decade; hundreds of day care centers were investigated and scores of providers were arrested and prosecuted. This article asserts that the day care ritual abuse scare was a moral panic, in fact, the ‘purest example’ of a moral panic in that the putative threat to children had to be wholly constructed. Using the key sociological elements set out by Cohen (1972/2002), this article analyzes the day care ritual abuse moral panic and concludes by discussing additional key elements that will facilitate future sociological analyses of moral panics.