Michelle Smith

Michelle Smith was the author along with Dr. Lawrence Pazder of the 1980 book Michelle Remembers, an alleged autobiography of her childhood abuse by a Satanic cult. The book gave a significant boost to the "Satanic ritual abuse" scare, yet as with most books in the sensationalist Christian-books-on-Satanism market, it was exposed as fraudulent. It was found that most of the book's content came from Dr. Pazder's studies of African rituals and not from Michelle Smith's childhood. When questioned about this, Pazder actually defended himself by claiming that he and Smith never claimed the events in the book had really happened! Nonetheless, this book along with similar tall tales of Mike Warnke and John Todd launched a panic within American Christendom over Satanism that continued throughout the 1980s and 90s.