The Brian Mulroney Institute of Government and The Hive for Feminist Research Present

Exploring Questions of Belief, Carcerality, and Colonialism Through the Satanic Panic in The Canadian Panel on Violence against Women (1991–1993)

A Halloween Lunch & Learn

Wednesday, October 30, 2024
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Mulroney Hall 4023

The federal Canadian Panel on Violence against Women (1991-1993) discuss Satanic and “ritual abuse” as a core parts of the problem of violence against women (VAW) in Canada. Its inclusion is no doubt the result of the 1980-90 satanic panic in which claims of abuse of children and women were attributed to occult practices and recovered through unreliable psychological and investigative techniques. Critiques of this moral panic and contemporary evocations of moral panic to minimize movements like #MeToo or explain incidents of VAW include feminist scholars rejecting the elision of the structural and social contexts that contribute to the patterns of VAW and gender-based violence (GBV). By including “ritual abuse” as a core part of the problem, the Canadian Panel on Violence against Women presents an oppositional case in which questions of “ritual abuse” are central to understanding VAW as a structural and social problem. As such, it presents an opportunity to think through questions that are timely as ever. What does it mean to believe women/survivors? What is the significance of reference to Indigenous communities? What does spectacularizing VAW do, and what is its relationship to the carceral system? Leaving aside questions of veracity, this paper explores how the narratives and recommendations related in “ritual abuse” paint a particular picture of the problem of VAW and its implications for anti-violence work. The paper concludes with thinking about how these themes relate to a contemporary context in which GBV has gained traction and where conspiracy theories and misinformation are rampant.

All are welcome.

Bailey Gerrits

Mila Mulroney Chair in Women, Policy, and Governance Leadership.