A Dutch conspiracy theory so wild it makes QAnon look sensible. You won't believe where this goes.
6.041 minSeason 1 • Episode 4
LatestThe idea that an evil elite abuses and murders children to serve the devil sounds unbelievable. Yet it's taken seriously by journalists, politicians, and therapists. A detective team that investigates child pornography daily devotes two years to thoroughly investigating claims of child abuse by a cult. But what happens when their research findings are ignored, distrusted, or even suppressed by those same journalists, therapists, and politicians because they don't fit? And what is the effect on the people who are identified, hounded, and threatened as perpetrators?
Joost Engelberts investigates how a conspiracy about satanic ritual abuse can escalate into a socially explosive story. Who are the people involved? What exactly is being alleged? And how can a local event grow into a national phenomenon?
Direction
Engelberts builds tension like a horror filmmaker.
Production
Intimate access to believers at their most vulnerable.
Creator
Joost Engelberts
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The satanic panic template keeps resurrecting because it fills a need for cosmic meaning in mundane places.
Engelberts previously covered flat-earthers; this is his thesis on how conspiracy communities become substitute families.
NL
