The long shadow cast by Martensville’s ‘Satanic Panic’

Martensville today is one of Canada’s fastest-growing bedroom communities. But back in the early 1990s, rookie police officer Claudia Bryden was drawn into a bizarre case there, as she investigated a complaint about an alleged sexual assault at a home daycare. From there, mass hysteria and a web of suspects grew. On this episode of This Is Saskatchewan, we look back at the era of the “Satanic Panic”, one that still casts a dark shadow over innocent people wrongly accused of horrific crimes – and at why those rumours felt so easy to believe.