Mormonism Explained
Investigates · The Satanic Panic File
The Satanic Panic Returns. Is the Mormon Church Covering Up Ritual Abuse?
A Utah podcast says yes. Candace Owens carried it to millions. Here is what the FBI, a $250,000 state task force, two years of police work, and the courts actually found.
$250,000
Appropriated by the Utah Legislature
30 MONTHS
Attorney General task force, subpoena power
4
Independent investigations · 1992–2025
0
Corroborated ritual-abuse rings
Key Takeaways
- Four independent investigations — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1992, a $250,000 Utah Attorney General task force in 1995, Provo police with the Utah Attorney General in 2012–2014, and Utah’s courts through 2025 — have examined satanic ritual abuse claims touching Utah and the Mormon Church. None corroborated an organized ring. Verified
- The claims were first escalated from inside the Church: a 1990 internal memo by a senior Church officer, Bishop Glenn L. Pace, documented members’ accounts and urged they be taken seriously. A state investigation followed. Documented
- The modern revival runs through two named men. David Hamblin’s Utah County ritual-abuse prosecution was dismissed with prejudice in March 2025 — over the state’s own objection — after investigators and prosecutors withheld evidence; a separate, conventionally charged abuse case remained pending in Sanpete County at last report. Documented
- David Leavitt, the former Utah County Attorney named in recovered-memory statements, has never been charged with anything. He has denied the allegations since the day they surfaced publicly. Documented
- The podcast We Are The People Utah revived the claims across 2024–2026. By its own on-air count, it now faces three lawsuits connected to its stories. Documented
- On September 16, 2026, Candace Owens presented versions of these claims to a national audience inside her “Mormon Mafia” narrative. Two defamation suits connected to that narrative are pending. Public claim
- On the podcast’s own channel, episodes accusing the Mormon Church of ritual abuse average roughly 27 times the views of episodes that merely discuss the Church. Data
- No claim of an organized satanic ring operating in the Church — including claims reaching an Apostle of the Church — has ever been verified by any investigation, in thirty-five years. Never verified
- If you or someone you know needs help: Childhelp 1-800-422-4453 · RAINN 1-800-656-4673 · tips.fbi.gov
In October 2026, a Utah political podcast — We Are The People Utah — is once again broadcasting claims that the Mormon Church — formally, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — is concealing satanic ritual abuse. Claims that reach, by implication, an Apostle of the Church.
And this time the claims aren’t staying in Utah. In September, Candace Owens — one of the largest independent broadcasters in America — spent part of an episode presenting them to an audience of millions.
Here is what almost nobody in that audience knows.
The State of Utah already spent a quarter of a million dollars answering exactly this question. So did the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So did Provo police. So did the courts. Four independent investigations across thirty-five years — and every time someone with subpoena power has looked, the answer has been the same.
Zero corroborated rings. Verified
This article is the full record: where the satanic panic came from, the memo critics call a smoking gun, the two named men at the center of the modern Mormon Church ritual abuse allegations, the machine that amplifies them, and the numbers that explain why the claims keep coming back. It’s the record the audience was never shown.
Section I
The History
01It Started With a Book
The modern satanic ritual abuse phenomenon has a documented origin point: Michelle Remembers, a 1980 bestseller by a Canadian psychiatrist and his patient, describing memories of cult abuse recovered under hypnosis. It became a template.
Journalists who later checked the book’s central claims — against birth records, church records, family accounts — could not corroborate them. Documented
What followed through the 1980s wasn’t a series of discoveries. It was a series of investigations. Day-care prosecutions built on suggestive interviews with very young children spread across North America. The McMartin Preschool case — the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history to that point — ended without a single conviction. Documented
And a generation of therapists, some trained in techniques their own professional bodies have since abandoned, produced accounts of ritual rings operating undetected in ordinary communities.
By the end of the decade, the claims had reached Utah. And in 1990, they reached the desk of a Church officer.
02The Pace Memo — Read It Again
On July 19, 1990, Bishop Glenn L. Pace — a member of the Church’s Presiding Bishopric — wrote an internal memorandum documenting conversations with roughly sixty members who described ritual abuse, and urging that the matter be taken seriously. Documented
That memo is authentic. It leaked. And for three decades it has circulated online as the single most-cited piece of evidence that the Church knew — and covered it up.
So here is the critics’ case at its strongest. A senior Church officer wrote down that dozens of members were describing ritual abuse. The document was internal. And the Church did not publish it.
Now read what the document actually does. A Church leader gathered accounts. Wrote them down. Escalated them to a standing committee. And argued they warranted attention.
Gathered. Wrote. Escalated. Argued. That’s the profile of a cover-up only if you assume the conclusion.
What happened next is the part almost never mentioned alongside the memo.
03Utah Took It Seriously — and Spent $250,000
Utah’s response wasn’t a press release or an internal review. The Legislature appropriated $250,000. The Attorney General built an investigative task force with subpoena power, staffed by veteran investigators. It ran for roughly thirty months, working ritual-abuse allegations to ground across the state. Verified
30 months · subpoena power · statewide mandate
And this matters more than any rhetorical point either side can make. If an organized ritual-abuse ring were operating in Utah — particularly one implicating prominent people, as the claims held — a state task force with compulsory process and a multi-year mandate is precisely the instrument built to find it.
04Check No. 1 — What a Quarter of a Million Dollars Found
The public report came in 1995. It substantiated no organized ritual-abuse ring. Not in the state. Not in the Church. (Deseret News, April 1995) Verified
Check no. 1 · Utah Attorney General · 1995
Never verified
$250,000 · ~30 months · subpoena power. No organized ritual-abuse ring substantiated, in the state or in the Church.
One of the report’s co-authors, veteran investigator Mike King, addressed the specific claims of satanic abuse reaching the Mormon Church’s senior leadership. His assessment, in one word: “absurd.” Documented
05Check No. 2 — The FBI Ran the Same Check Nationally
Utah wasn’t working in isolation, and its conclusion wasn’t idiosyncratic. In 1992, Kenneth V. Lanning — the FBI Behavioral Science Unit’s specialist on child sexual victimization — published the Bureau’s analysis of ritual-abuse allegations investigated nationwide. (Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of “Ritual” Child Abuse, 1992) Verified
His finding: after years of investigation, no corroborated evidence of organized satanic ritual-abuse rings committing the crimes alleged.
Check no. 2 · FBI Behavioral Science Unit · 1992
Never verified
National case analysis by the Bureau’s specialist on child sexual victimization. No corroborated organized satanic ritual-abuse rings.
And his argument turned on physical evidence. The claims routinely described homicide on a significant scale. Homicide leaves traces. Investigators found none of the physical evidence a homicide leaves behind — a point we draw directly from the investigators’ own published findings.
One more thing, because Lanning was careful about it and so are we. Concluding that an organized satanic ring cannot be corroborated is not the same as concluding nobody was ever abused. Children are abused, at scale, in ways that are documented and prosecutable — and later in this article we’ll show you exactly what those cases look like. The point, his and ours, is narrower and harder: the specific claim of a coordinated satanic ring is the claim that has never survived contact with an investigation.
06Why the First Panic Ended
The eighties panic didn’t end because anyone declared it over. It ended the way unsupported claims usually end. Prosecutions collapsed. Convictions were overturned on appeal. Documented
And the scientific basis for the central mechanism gave way. That mechanism was recovered memory — the premise that trauma can be wholly repressed for decades, then retrieved intact through hypnosis or suggestive therapy. Memory research through the 1990s established that human memory is reconstructive, not archival — and that suggestive techniques can generate detailed, sincerely held, entirely false recollections. Documented
Which brings us to the single most important thing to understand about what came back to Utah twenty years later.
The claims didn’t return with new evidence. They returned with the same mechanism.
Section II
The Mechanism
07A Claim Built With Nothing to Check
Ordinary criminal allegations are falsifiable. There’s a body or there isn’t. A bank account moved or it didn’t. A phone pinged a tower or it didn’t. Investigation resolves them one way or the other.
The organized-ritual-abuse claim is built differently — and the construction is the story. A ring operating across generations, protected by people in power. What would evidence look like? Bodies. Records. Photographs. Financial trails. Defectors.
The claim
An organized ring, protected from above
The check
Four investigations, 1992–2025
No evidence found
No bodies, records, photos, trails
“The cover-up”
Absence becomes the proof — and the loop reseals
The self-sealing construction: every failed check is absorbed as evidence of a deeper cover-up.
Investigators found none of it — four separate times. And here’s how the claim absorbs that: the absence becomes the proof. No evidence? That just shows you how deep the cover-up goes.
That isn’t a conspiracy that evaded four independent investigations. That’s a claim built with nothing to check.
What this article is not doing
Section III
The Modern Mormon Church Ritual Abuse Allegations (2012–2026)
08Check No. 3 — 459 Pages
Then it resurfaced.
In 2012, three adult daughters of a Provo psychologist produced written witness statements — ultimately 459 pages — describing what they said happened to them as children. The accounts emerged through recovered-memory processes. They named between 140 and 160 people. Documented · per court filings
Provo police investigated for roughly two years. Their summary finding: no corroborating evidence aside from the witness statements — no photos, no video, no DNA. Documented · per court filings
The statements described killings. Investigators identified none of the physical record a homicide leaves behind.
In 2014, the Utah Attorney General’s office declined to prosecute — the findings didn’t meet the reasonable-likelihood-of-conviction standard. That’s check number three. Documented
Check no. 3 · Provo Police + Utah Attorney General · 2012–2014
Never verified
Two years on 459 pages of witness statements. No corroborating evidence beyond the statements; prosecution declined.
2012
459 pages of witness statements produced through recovered-memory processes; 140–160 people named.
2012–2014
Provo police investigate for roughly two years; no corroborating evidence beyond the statements.
2014
Utah Attorney General declines to prosecute.
May 2022
County releases the 459 pages publicly after a records request.
Dec 2022
A Florida Substack begins republishing the statements as fact — without the findings attached.
Then, in 2022, after a separate and unrelated accuser came forward, the county released those 459 pages publicly in response to a records request. And that’s the hinge of this entire story. Documents that police and prosecutors had examined and set aside became raw material for anyone who wanted to republish them — without the findings attached.
09The Hamblin File
That Provo psychologist has a name you will now hear everywhere these claims travel: David Hamblin. His case file is the single most instructive document in this entire story — because it has been to court. Twice.
2012: Hamblin is charged with 18 felony counts. In 2014, prosecutors dismiss the case. 2021: the Utah County Sheriff’s Office opens a new investigation, and on May 31, 2022 announces it publicly — ritualistic child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking, spanning three counties and two decades. (Daily Herald, May 31 2022) Documented
Hamblin is arrested that August. A special prosecutor takes the case. And then it collapses — not because a jury weighed the evidence, but because investigators and prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to the defense. In March 2025, Judge Roger Griffin dismissed the ritual-abuse case with prejudice — over the state’s own objection — citing the “quantity and quality of prosecutorial missteps.” (KSL, March 2025 · Salt Lake Tribune, March 21 2025) Documented
2012
Charged — 18 felony counts.
2014
Dismissed by prosecutors.
2021
Reopened— Utah County Sheriff’s Office begins a new investigation.
2022
Announced publicly May 31; arrested in August. Special prosecutor appointed.
Mar 2025
Dismissed with prejudice— over the state’s objection, for withheld evidence.
With prejudice means terminal: those charges can never be refiled. The sheriff’s office called the dismissal “abhorrent” and stood by its investigation (KSL, April 2025); investigators told reporters they remained confident in their evidence (FOX 13 Investigates). The defense disputed that account. Contested
And we should be precise here, because precision is the point. The March 2025 dismissal ended the Utah County ritual-abuse prosecution. A separate abuse case against Hamblin was still pending in Sanpete County at last report — an ordinary criminal case, conventionally charged, moving through an ordinary court.
Case
Status
Dismissed with prejudice — March 2025
What it means
Case
Status
Conventionally charged — pending at last report
What it means
That distinction is the whole story in miniature. Individual abuse allegations get investigated, charged, and tested in court — as they should be. The organized satanic ring is the claim that has never survived that process. Not in 1995. Not in 2014. Not in 2025.
10The Leavitt File
The second name is David Leavitt — and in 2022, he was the sitting Utah County Attorney.
On May 31, 2022, the sheriff’s office announced its investigation. The next morning, Leavitt called a press conference and announced something extraordinary: he was in the file. (Salt Lake Tribune, June 1 2022) Documented
A 151-page document labeled a victim statement — part of the same recovered-memory set police had examined a decade earlier — named Leavitt and his wife among more than a dozen people, with allegations that included cannibalism and the ritual killing of children. Leavitt’s answer, on camera: “There is no organized ring of abuse.” (ABA Journal, June 2022) Documented
The sheriff disputed his framing. The two held dueling press conferences. Twenty-seven days later, Leavitt lost his primary.
And whatever you think of his politics — plenty of Utahns had opinions — here is the record: four years on, no charge of any kind has ever been filed against him. Documented
Charges filed against Leavitt · 2022–2026
An attorney representing two others named in the statements says more than 140 people were falsely accused in those documents. His clients have formally asked the Attorney General to end the investigation and declare the allegations unfounded. Documented
In 2026, new claims were layered on top — a contested adoption, a castle in Scotland, a federal investigation a former analyst says was improperly closed. Each is presented as confirmation. None has produced a charge. Public claim Never verified
The pattern should be familiar by now: the accusation is treated as the evidence.
11The Florida File
Meanwhile, within months of the 2022 records release, a Substack launched from Fountain, Florida — run by a man writing under the name “Goel,” Hebrew for avenger — republishing the statements as established fact, naming living people, publishing home addresses. Documented
His objective wasn’t implied. He published it: to “financially cripple this group … up to and including the [LDS] church.” Documented · his own publication, Dec 19 2022
Then it escalated — the home addresses of one couple’s three daughters, suggestions that followers watch homes around family birthdays, an AI deepfake of an accused man appearing to confess. Two Utah courts have now issued civil stalking injunctions against him, one in a twelve-page ruling holding that the First Amendment does not protect conduct meeting the stalking statute. (Sanpete Messenger · Salt Lake Tribune, Feb 25 2025) Documented
12From Substack to Studio: We Are The People Utah
In 2024, a Utah political podcast — We Are The People Utah, which broadcasts as We Are The People Radio — brought the Substack’s author into the studio for three episodes. That’s the bridge: a Florida newsletter became a Utah broadcast. Those three episodes landed the show in court — on January 3, 2025, a Spring City couple filed a defamation suit in Utah’s 4th District Court naming the show, its LLC, and its hosts, Jason and Alexia Preston, citing fifteen statements alleged to be false. Documented
And the show kept going. A self-described mind-control survivor implicating a former United States senator and the Church. A guest naming Church leaders as “handlers.” An episode whose claims reach, by implication, an Apostle of the Church. And in July 2026, a nearly three-hour episode reviving the Leavitt claims — alleging, by the show’s own description, that the Church’s abuse help line shut an investigation down. That help-line claim is unverified as presented; for what the litigation record actually shows about the Church’s help line and abuse reporting, see our evidence review, Mormon Abuse: What the Evidence Actually Shows. Public claim
By its own on-air count, the show now faces three separate lawsuits connected to its stories. Documented
13The Amplifier: Candace Owens
Then, September 16, 2026: Candace Owens. Her show reaches millions. She devoted part of an episode to the Leavitt allegations — the cannibalism claims, the so-called “LDS Church of Satan” — presented as a story the mainstream won’t touch. Public claim
It arrived inside a running narrative she calls the “Mormon Mafia” — a series of claims tying Latter-day Saints to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Those claims have drawn criticism across the spectrum, including from within her own movement and from Latter-day Saint commentators, as unsupported by evidence. (Deseret News, Oct 2025) Never verified
And there’s a legal record forming around those claims. A Utah man — a Latter-day Saint who says she falsely tied him to the killing — is suing her for defamation. (Salt Lake Tribune, Sep 29 2026 · KUTV) So is Charlie Kirk’s former head of security. (Salt Lake Tribune, May 1 2026) Both cases are pending; the claims in both complaints are allegations. Documented
Step back and look at the supply chain. Recovered-memory statements that four investigations could not corroborate. A Florida newsletter that republished them as fact. A Utah podcast that gave them a studio. And now a national broadcaster with an audience of millions.
459 pages of statements
2012 · recovered memory
Florida Substack
Dec 2022 · republished as fact
Utah podcast studio
2024–26 · We Are The People
National broadcast
Sep 16 2026 · Candace Owens
Corroborated evidence added at any stage: zero.
The claims never got stronger. The microphone got bigger.
14Check No. 4 — The Courts
Thirty-five years after the Pace memo, here is the ledger.
The Four-Checks Ledger · 1992–2025
Year
Investigation
Result
No rings corroborated
Year
Investigation
Result
Zero substantiated
Year
Investigation
Result
Declined · no evidence
Year
Investigation
Result
Dismissed with prejudice
Zero corroborated rings — in the state or in the Mormon Church. And the satanic abuse claims that reach the Church’s senior leadership, including an Apostle of the Church? Never verified. Not by the FBI. Not by a quarter-million-dollar state task force. Not by two years of police work. Not by the courts. The investigator who co-wrote the state’s report called them “absurd.” Never verified
Meanwhile, nearly every case still alive in this story’s courtrooms points at the publishers of the accusations, not at the ring they allege: three lawsuits against the podcast by its own on-air count, two defamation suits against its loudest amplifier, and two stalking injunctions against the Substack’s author. The exception proves the rule — the one live criminal case, in Sanpete County, is a conventional abuse prosecution, charged the way real cases are charged. Documented
Section IV
The Motive and the Cost
15Why It Keeps Coming Back: The Numbers
Why does this keep happening? We counted.
Every episode on the Utah show’s public channel — all 167 of them, categorized and tallied from public YouTube counts in July 2026. Politics episodes average about 1,900 views. Ritual-abuse episodes average about 21,000. Eleven times the audience. Data
All 167 episodes on the show’s public channel · public YouTube counts, July 2026
- Politics episodes≈ 1,900
- Ritual-abuse episodes≈ 21,000
11×the audience, for the same microphone — before the Church is even mentioned.
SOURCE: PUBLIC YOUTUBE COUNTS, SCREENSHOTS JUL 2026 · YOUTUBE-ROUNDED
View as table
| Episode topic | Avg. views |
|---|---|
| Politics episodes | ≈ 1,900 |
| Ritual-abuse episodes | ≈ 21,000 |
Now run the Church test. Episodes about the Mormon Church average 751 views. Episodes accusing it of ritual abuse average about 20,000. Twenty-seven times. Talking about the Church doesn’t draw an audience. Accusing it does. Data
Church-framed episodes on the same channel · public YouTube counts, July 2026
- Episodes about the Mormon Church751
- Episodes accusing it of ritual abuse≈ 20,000
27×Misinformation in. 27 times the audience out.
SOURCE: n=11 vs n=16 CHURCH-FRAMED EPISODES · PUBLIC YOUTUBE COUNTS, JUL 2026
View as table
| Episode framing | Avg. views |
|---|---|
| About the Mormon Church | 751 |
| Accusing it of ritual abuse | ≈ 20,000 |
Eleven of the channel’s twelve most-watched videos are ritual-abuse content. And the show’s episode on a real, documented federal abuse case drew about 11,000 views — against 68,000 for an unfalsifiable ritual-murder episode. Data
That isn’t a byproduct of the content. It’s the selection criterion. The incentive doesn’t run toward what’s true. It runs toward what can’t be checked.
The full anatomy of that machine — the complete episode data, the revenue surfaces, and where the audience gets sent — is its own investigation: How a Utah Political Podcast Turned Unsubstantiated Accusations Into Money, Power and Influence.
16What Real Cases Look Like — and Why the Difference Matters
Here’s the contrast that cuts through everything else in this file.
Real sexual abuse cases involving Mormons — members, local leaders, even the occasional prominent name — look nothing like the ring claims. They have charging documents. Docket numbers. Plea agreements and convictions. They are prosecuted in state courts and federal ones. They are reported, tracked, and litigated — and we track them: our running review of Mormon church sexual abuse allegations, lawsuits, and the Church’s reporting policies is here: Mormon Church Abuse Lawsuits: Is Abuse Being Covered Up? Documented
Court record
Real cases
- Charging documents and docket numbers
- Plea agreements and convictions
- State and federal prosecutions
- Falsifiable, tested, appealable
Never verified
The ring
- No bodies, records, photos, or trails
- Absence of evidence read as cover-up
- Four investigations, zero corroboration
- Built so nothing can be checked
Documented accountability is how victims actually get justice. Unfalsifiable accusations are how they lose the spotlight.
17Who Pays for the Panic
The panic doesn’t threaten the powerful. It costs two groups — and neither one is a platform.
Real victims — the kind with charging documents, the kind whose cases can actually end in accountability — now compete for attention against content engineered to be unfalsifiable. And they lose. The verified federal case drew 11,000 views. The unfalsifiable ritual-murder episode drew 68,000.
And the falsely accused become victims of a second kind. In Spring City, a pottery shop that stayed unlocked for forty-five years installed electric locks and cameras. More than 140 people sit named in documents four investigations could not corroborate. And a Utah man is suing a national broadcaster over a claim he says upended his life. (Sanpete Messenger, Feb 2025 · Salt Lake Tribune, Sep 29 2026) Documented
Utah, for its part, has kept taking the underlying crime seriously: in 2024, lawmakers advanced legislation specifically criminalizing ritual abuse of a child. (NBC News, Feb 2024) Nobody in this story ignored abuse. The record shows the opposite.
18The Record Isn’t Hidden
Nobody ignored these claims.
The FBI investigated. Discredited. Utah spent $250,000. Discredited again. Police investigated for two years. Discredited again. The courts dismissed with prejudice. Discredited again.
- 1992The FBIDiscredited
- 1995Utah AG · $250KDiscredited
- 2014Provo PD + AGDiscredited
- 2025The CourtsDiscredited
Thirty-five years. Four investigations. Zero corroborated rings — and zero verified claims against the Church or its Apostles.
The record isn’t hidden. It’s just fewer views and less money than the accusation.
Our own standard, applied to us
Every claim in this article carries a verdict stamp — VERIFIED, DOCUMENTED, PUBLIC CLAIM, CONTESTED, NEVER VERIFIED — and every figure is source-tagged. Court records are linked where public. Where a figure is modeled or awaiting a second verification pass, we say so on the page. If we got something wrong, tell us and we will correct it in public, with a dated note: corrections@mormonismexplained.org.
Updated October 2026: added the Hamblin and Leavitt case files, the Candace Owens amplification record, the current litigation ledger, and an expanded FAQ.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Updated October 2026. This FAQ now covers the Hamblin and Leavitt cases, the We Are The People Utah podcast, and the Candace Owens claims.
Did Utah investigate satanic ritual abuse claims?
Yes — repeatedly. Utah’s Legislature appropriated $250,000 and the Attorney General’s office ran a roughly 30-month criminal investigation with subpoena power in the early 1990s; its 1995 report substantiated no organized ritual-abuse ring in the state or in the Mormon Church. Provo police investigated 459 pages of witness statements from 2012 to 2014 and found no corroborating evidence beyond the statements, and the Attorney General declined to prosecute in 2014.
What is the Glenn Pace memo?
An authentic internal memorandum written July 19, 1990 by Bishop Glenn L. Pace of the Church’s Presiding Bishopric, documenting accounts from roughly 60 members who described ritual abuse and urging the matter be taken seriously. Critics cite it as evidence of a cover-up, but the document records a Church officer gathering accounts and escalating them for attention — and a $250,000 state investigation followed within roughly a year.
What did the FBI conclude about satanic ritual abuse?
In 1992, Kenneth V. Lanning of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit published the Bureau’s analysis of ritual-abuse allegations investigated nationwide. He found no corroborated evidence of organized satanic ritual-abuse rings committing the crimes alleged, and noted that the homicides the claims described would have left physical evidence investigators did not find.
Have satanic ritual abuse claims about the Mormon Church ever been substantiated?
No. Four independent checks — the FBI in 1992, Utah’s Attorney General in 1995, Provo police with the Utah Attorney General in 2012–2014, and Utah’s courts through 2025 — produced zero corroborated ritual-abuse rings across thirty-five years. Claims implicating the Church’s senior leaders, including an Apostle of the Church, have never been verified by any investigation.
What is We Are The People Utah?
We Are The People Utah is a Utah political podcast, broadcasting as We Are The People Radio, that has aired ritual-abuse claims about the Mormon Church across 2024–2026 — including three 2024 episodes featuring the author of a Florida Substack that republishes uncorroborated recovered-memory statements as fact. A Spring City couple sued the show for defamation in January 2025, and by the show’s own on-air count it now faces three lawsuits connected to its stories. The suits are pending; their claims are allegations.
What did Candace Owens claim about the Mormon Church?
On September 16, 2026, Candace Owens devoted part of an episode to Utah ritual-abuse allegations naming former Utah County Attorney David Leavitt — including cannibalism claims and a so-called “LDS Church of Satan” — presented as a story the mainstream won’t touch. The claims she presented are the same recovered-memory material that four investigations could not corroborate. They aired inside her broader “Mormon Mafia” narrative connecting Latter-day Saints to the killing of Charlie Kirk, which has never been verified.
Is Candace Owens being sued over these claims?
Two defamation suits connected to her “Mormon Mafia” narrative are pending: one filed in May 2026 by Charlie Kirk’s former head of security, and one filed in September 2026 by a Utah Latter-day Saint man who says she falsely tied him to Kirk’s killing. Both complaints are allegations; neither case has been decided.
Who is David Hamblin?
David Hamblin is a former Provo-area psychologist at the center of Utah’s modern ritual-abuse claims. He was charged with 18 felony counts in 2012 (dismissed in 2014), then investigated again beginning in 2021 and arrested in August 2022 after the Utah County Sheriff’s Office publicly announced a ritualistic-abuse investigation. In March 2025, a judge dismissed the Utah County ritual-abuse case against him with prejudice. A separate, conventionally charged abuse case remained pending in Sanpete County at last report.
Why was the David Hamblin case dismissed?
Not on a jury verdict. In March 2025, Judge Roger Griffin dismissed the Utah County ritual-abuse case with prejudice — over the state’s own objection — after finding investigators and prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to the defense, citing the “quantity and quality of prosecutorial missteps.” With prejudice means the charges can never be refiled. The sheriff’s office called the dismissal “abhorrent” and stood by its evidence; the defense disputed that account.
Does the Hamblin dismissal prove ritual abuse happened — or that it didn’t?
Neither. The dismissal was about how the case was handled: withheld evidence and prosecutorial missteps, not a weighing of the underlying claims by a jury. What the broader record shows is narrower: across four independent investigations since 1992, the specific claim of an organized satanic ring — in Utah or in the Mormon Church — has never been corroborated.
Who is David Leavitt, and was he ever charged?
David Leavitt is the former Utah County Attorney (and brother of former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt) named — along with his wife — in a 151-page recovered-memory statement released publicly in 2022, with allegations including cannibalism and ritual killing. He denied the allegations the day after the investigation was announced, saying “There is no organized ring of abuse.” He lost his 2022 primary 27 days later. No charge of any kind has ever been filed against him. An attorney for two other people named in the statements says the documents falsely accuse more than 140 people.
Did a Mormon apostle cover up ritual abuse?
No such claim has ever been verified. Allegations reaching an Apostle of the Church circulate in podcast episodes and online documents, but across the FBI’s 1992 analysis, Utah’s $250,000 investigation, two years of Provo police work, and the court record through 2025, no investigation has corroborated any ritual-abuse ring in the Church — let alone one protected by its senior leaders. A co-author of the state’s 1995 report called claims implicating Church leaders “absurd.”
Did the Church’s abuse help line shut down a ritual-abuse investigation?
That claim aired in a July 2026 podcast episode and is unverified as presented. Questions about the Church’s abuse help line are legitimate and litigated — our separate evidence review, “Mormon Abuse: What the Evidence Actually Shows,” covers what the lawsuits and the Church’s published policies actually document — but no investigation connects the help line to the satanic-ring claims examined in this article.
Why do satanic panic claims about the Mormon Church keep spreading if they’ve never been verified?
The incentives are measurable. On the Utah podcast’s own channel, ritual-abuse episodes average about 11 times the views of its politics episodes, and episodes accusing the Mormon Church of ritual abuse average about 27 times the views of episodes that merely discuss the Church. Eleven of the channel’s twelve most-watched videos are ritual-abuse content. Unfalsifiable accusations draw audiences that documented cases don’t.
What is recovered-memory therapy, and why does it matter here?
Recovered-memory therapy rests on the premise that trauma can be wholly repressed for decades and then retrieved intact through hypnosis or suggestive techniques. Memory research established in the 1990s that memory is reconstructive, not archival, and that suggestive techniques can produce detailed, sincerely held, false recollections. It matters because Utah’s modern ritual-abuse statements — the 459 pages at the center of today’s claims — emerged through recovered-memory processes, the same mechanism behind the discredited 1980s panic.
What was the McMartin Preschool case?
The emblematic case of the 1980s satanic panic: a California day-care prosecution built on suggestive interviews with young children that became the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history to that point — and ended with zero convictions. Appellate courts later overturned convictions in similar cases nationwide as the panic’s methods collapsed under scrutiny.
How are real Mormon church sexual abuse allegations different from satanic panic claims?
Real cases are falsifiable and get adjudicated: they have charging documents, docket numbers, plea agreements, and convictions, in state and federal courts. The Church has faced real abuse lawsuits, and we track them — see our running review of Mormon church abuse lawsuits. The organized satanic ring is different in kind: it is constructed so that absence of evidence is read as proof of cover-up, which is why it has never survived an investigation.
What should I do if I suspect a child is being abused?
Report it. Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453. RAINN: 1-800-656-4673. Report online child exploitation to the FBI at tips.fbi.gov. If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. Individual reports of abuse deserve trained investigators — that is the system that produces real accountability.
Sources
- Utah Attorney General ritual-abuse investigation report, 1995.
- Kenneth V. Lanning, Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of “Ritual” Child Abuse, FBI Behavioral Science Unit, 1992.
- Glenn L. Pace memorandum, July 19, 1990 (authenticated; internal Church document).
- Deseret News, “Report finds little proof of ritual abuse,” April 1995.
- Provo Police Department investigative summary and Utah Attorney General declination (2014), per court filings.
- Daily Herald, “Sheriff’s Office investigates allegations of ritualistic sexual abuse, trafficking,” May 31, 2022.
- Salt Lake Tribune, Leavitt press conference coverage, June 1, 2022.
- ABA Journal, June 2022.
- KSL, Hamblin dismissal, March 2025; Salt Lake Tribune, March 21, 2025; KSL, sheriff’s office rebuke, April 2025; FOX 13 Investigates.
- Sanpete Messenger, “No checks against false claims by internet ‘warriors’”; “Bennions win first battle in quest to clear their names,” Feb 2025; Salt Lake Tribune, Feb 25, 2025.
- 4th District Court defamation complaint, January 3, 2025; 6th District Court civil stalking injunctions (Oct 2024, Jan 30 2025).
- Deseret News, Oct 2, 2025; Salt Lake Tribune, May 1, 2026; Salt Lake Tribune, Sep 29, 2026; KUTV, Sep 2026.
- NBC News, “Utah advances bill to criminalize ‘ritual abuse of a child,’” Feb 2024.
- We Are The People Radio episode listings and on-air statements, 2024–2026 (archived screenshots; subject pages deliberately not linked). View-count data: public YouTube counts, July 2026.
Mormonism Explained is an independent 501(c)(3) investigative publisher. We are not owned, operated, or funded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Companion study: Mormon Church Abuse Lawsuits: Is Abuse Being Covered Up?