It started with a case in a California preschool. Then another just up Interstate-5. Before long, there were two similar cases in Texas. Bizarre tales of the occult, animal sacrifice, and child abuse were coming out of day care centers all over the country, fueled by eyewitness reports from kids themselves. Child care centers closed down; parents chanted “we believe the children” at courthouses. History remembers this period, which started in the early ’80s, as the “Satanic Panic”—the same era in which Christian fundamentalist fervor flared up across the U.S. Dozens of child care providers were handed long prison sentences over these stories, which were proven untrue years, sometimes decades, later.
By 2000, the outcries had left the news cycle. Then in 2013, Greg Kelley—a star football player from Leander High School who his peers described as smart, hardworking, and committed to his sport—was arrested for molesting a 4-year-old boy at the in-home day care where Kelley was living at the time. By the time his trial took place in 2014, another 4-year-old at the home said Kelley assaulted him.
