Good essay on remembering satan by lawrence wright

The reminiscently titled Remembering Satan is written by Lawrence Wright, a writer of the New Yorker. In this compelling read, the author brings out the peculiar claims of abuse – sexual abuse leveled against an Olympia sheriff’s deputy, Ingram. These claims are made in 1988 by Julie and Erica Ingram, the two daughters of the sheriff’s deputy. Initially, the claims were about child molestation. However, the allegations later developed to include rape and torture. In his investigations, Lawrence also delves into the reasons behind Ingram’s corroboration of the claims by recovering memories of the satanic rituals, which involves other members of the Olympia police force as well as him. He examines the peculiar case of the memories of abuse in Ingram’s family as well as the flawed investigations, which followed.
The Ingram’s family was hard working and Christian Fundamentalists. Their father, Paul Ingram and his wife Sandy were loving, but strict parents to their five children. Their daughter, Ericka, accused their father of sexual abuse at the age of 22 years, having been prompted by church counselor at a retreat. Her younger sister, Julie, later expanded the charges to include her father’s poker buddies. Believing that something wrong might have happened to the kids, the investigators, who were Paul’s juniors at the Washington sheriff department uncritically, accepted the charges. After quickly eliciting a confession from Paul, and steering him to implicate two of his friends, Paul is arrested alongside his counterparts. The investigators bring up Satanism in their investigations. Paul also memorizes the cult rituals he committed. His family members, particularly Ericka, claim that she watched 25 babies being sacrificed. While under pressure, the other family members give confessions, which are inconsistent of each other’s confessions.
In this book, Paul Ingram was ultimately tried and convicted of the offence of molesting his two daughters Ericka and Julie. The trial and conviction was based on the recovered memories, which have been considered fictitious by most of the readers of this book, especially considering the different confessions from the members of the family. The memories and recollections shift from the accusations of child abuse to the satanic rituals. He began remembering the incidents in therapy. After the prosecution brought in a psychologist to question the accused, it was concluded that he could have been possibly innocent of the charges laid against him. However, they held that he could have been guilty of being highly suggestible to trances and having a dangerous eagerness to please the authorities.
The case presented in this book highlights the mechanics of victimhood, the susceptibility of memory, the dangerous culture of abuse specialists, the amateurish, the hysteria resulting from the atavistic mass fears as in this case the satanic rituals, and the venal culture of Christian publishers out to make money through defining strange religious things, which they consider to catch the attention of the information-hungry audiences. While writing this compelling read, Wright ensures that he highlights some of the vices, which the American community has allowed to infiltrate into its culture. Some of the American Christian families are alleged to participate in satanic rituals. Even though getting accurate evidence for or against these claims is not easy, the allegations are consistent to the theme presented in Lawrence’s narrative. He intertwines the elusive threads of culture into his gripping story. In addition to the rituals presented in the narrative, the child molestations and rapes are also a common phenomenon in the society today and in the context of the narrative. The author, therefore, accurately highlights the challenges that the society face in his artistic style. even though some of the content of the narrative seems imaginary, the author is keen to highlight every aspect of injustice to different parties – while the daughter are molested by their father and raped by their father’s buddies, the investigations are flawed and the investigators unfairly treat Paul Ingram through the prosecution.
Were there real incidents of child abuse, molestations and rape in Ingram’s family? This question seems difficult to answer in the narrative. Even the accused, Paul Ingram, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, cannot accurately answer this question. Ingram is unable to comprehend the fact that his daughter could possibly fabricate lies against him to implicate him during the trial. The prayer induced trance also led to the manufacture of increasingly monstrous events. The conclusions made by the author in this narrative even bring more light to the context of the writing as well as its significance. He indicates that, the memories of the Ingram’s family were merely fantasies aggravated by the fundamentalist religion, aroused by the satanic ritual hysteria that they have watched on television by people like Geraldo Rivera, and caused by the willingness of the society to embrace the recovered phenomenon of memory.
This narrative is equally relevant today since most of the American families undergo similar incidents as is witnessed in the narrative. The children in the American families are often fascinated by the things that they see on television, read in books, or watch in movies, and would want to translate these occurrences into real life situations.