[Music]
CLAUDIA: This is very unnatural for me to speak to the media. I don't -- I don't
really have a lot of interest in having anything to do with the media.
LISA: I'm sitting across from Claudia Bryden in a hotel room in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan. It's a meeting that, after months of back and forth, I didn't think
was going to happen.
CLAUDIA: But the reason I'm here mainly is, well it's partly because you're a
very tenacious woman.
[Laughter]
LISA: Claudia is long out of policing, but she still carries herself like a cop, with a
straight-spined confidence. She measures her words carefully. Nearly 30 years
ago, Claudia was at the centre of an infamous case, in the tiny prairie town of
Martensville. But she's kept quiet since. Until now.
CLAUDIA: I feel like now is a good time. It's the first time in a very long time, that
it's felt right.
The investigation started out very simply and started out small, like, you know, a
lot of large cases do, and there were no signs of anything really unusual at the
beginning. It was -- it was just a matter of, you know, a parent reporting that their
child had been abused, and that's where it began.
LISA: What started with a single allegation grew into something bigger and
farther reaching than anyone could have imagined.
CLAUDIA: Interviewing children is tough, and listening to them is hard, and
watching them cry, as they talk. And seeing their parents off, sitting in the
distance crying, and of course you have, you know, I needed to stay composed. I
still have scars on the inside of my cheeks. I would swallow my own blood in the
middle of interviewing children, because I did not want to show that this was
difficult for me to get through as well. And so yeah, I have permanent scars from
biting down, just to try to get through things.
LISA: After months of investigation, gruesome details begin to emerge,
of sexual abuse and torture, and of rituals as terrifying as they are bizarre. And
these details would connect Claudia's case to a rash of others, across this
continent and beyond.
VOICE 1: It's like a bad dream. It's not something you’d think happened in small
town Saskatchewan.
CLAUDIA: Twenty seven years later, sitting here, recalling these things, it is
horrible to think of the stuff that went on.
SAMANTHA: This isn’t a work of fiction. This is a work of history.
VOICE 2: It wasn’t the lack of corroborative evidence that concerned me, it was
the lack of corroborative evidence, when there should have been corroborative
evidence.
JOHN: How do you get over something like this? Our lives are gone. Our
reputation is gone. My job is gone.
VOICE 1: It seems to be a memory that everyone still carries.
JOHN: Sitting here today, all these years later, it's like, I don't even want to hear
that. It's not me. I never did it. But that is what is going to be associated with me,
until I go to my grave.
VOICE 3: Their innocence was taken away...
RANDY: They’re gonna come and steal some children, and use them for their
rituals...
LISA: I'm Lisa Bryn Rundle. And this is ‘Uncover, Satanic Panic, Episode 1:
'It Was Such a Perfect Place.’
[Music]
LISA: Throughout the 80s, a strange phenomenon was sweeping North America.
Underground Satanic cults were believed to be torturing and terrorizing children,
forcing them to take part in sadistic rituals, then deftly covering their tracks.
Scores of perpetrators, allegedly committing the most heinous crimes
imaginable, against hundreds of children. A new term is coined to describe this
emerging epidemic, ‘Satanic ritual abuse.’
VOICE 5: In ritual abuse, in addition to assaulting a child physically and sexually,
there is an attempt to turn the child around, in terms of what a child's belief system is.
LISA: Cases popped up in Jordan, Minnesota, Kern County and Manhattan
Beach, California.
VOICE 5: They have been indicted, after all, on the belief that they sexually
assaulted and terrorized more than 100 children in their care.
LISA: Then in Florida, North Carolina, Arkansaw, Texas...
REPORTER: She and her 3 year old brother were involved in numerous sex acts
with their parents and others, and were forced to take part in rituals where
animals were sacrificed, and the devil was summoned. The judge was told about
allegations of murder and mutilation.
LISA: There were 30, 60, 100 child victims, targeted by 7 perpetrators, or 24, or
36. And it spread further still, taking root in cozy Canada.
REPORTER: The sensational child abuse case gripped the city of Hamilton for
16 months. As the revelations of two little girls grew more and more bizarre. They
said they were forced into sexual activity, pornography, even cannibalism. 
LISA: The allegations were, horrifying. But the truth was almost as disturbing.
After dozens of exhaustive investigations, no conclusive evidence of these
crimes was ever found, anywhere.
But there were trials, and convictions, and people did go to prison. Some, for decades. 
It was a world turned upside down, the result of a strange kind of mass panic,
that swept up police, prosecutors, psychologists, social workers, journalists,
parents and children. Fear had conjured into being a new kind of truth, one that
didn't require proof, but was fueled instead by unshakable belief alone. And that
made it very real for all involved. Including those of us who were just watching
from afar. The 80s was the decade I went from being a little kid to a proto-adult,
and Satan was really, everywhere. There were so many stories about cults, and
sacrifices, and rituals, and worse. And I didn't really question any of it. It just
twisted its way into the Rubik's Cube of my consciousness, and stayed there,
unsolved. By 1992, that confounding puzzle would make its way to the quiet
prairie town of Martensville, Saskatchewan. The chaos that followed became
known as the ‘Martensville Nightmare.’
And nearly 30 years later, the people touched by it all, are still picking up the pieces. 
[Music]
LISA: So tell me the story, you know, if we were at a dinner party and I said 'Oh,
you worked in Martensville around that time, what happened?'
RANDY: [Long sigh] Wow. [Laughing] I don't know if we’d -- could complete
dinner, um...
LISA: When Randy Chudyk moved to Martensville in the late 80s, he liked the
place immediately, a kind of snug oasis, under the great dome of prairie sky.
RANDY: It was a smaller community, just north of Saskatoon. Very quiet
community, it was off the main highway, and it -- really tight knit group of people
that lived in that community.
LISA: Martensville attracted so many young families, people started calling it
‘Diaper-ville.’ There were somewhere shy of 4000 people living there at the time,
but the town had its own municipal police service, and Randy was pretty happy to
become one of its handful of officers.
RANDY: Ah, you know what, I thought I was going to be in Martensville for my
whole career. Honestly, it was just like, it was such a perfect place. Um -- close to
a big city, but you didn't have all those big city problems. People were really,
really nice and welcomed me and my family, and we made some good friends
there. And yeah I thought I was gonna be there for a long time.
LISA: But it wasn't all perfect. In 1991, as summer descends into fall, the
Martensville police service is a bit of a mess. According to the province's police
commission, longstanding problems are coming to a head. Files mishandled or
misplaced altogether, generally shoddy police work and mismanagement. One
officer is off on suspension, and so is the chief, another officer is off with an
injury. All of which leaves the modestly staffed Martensville police service, 
pretty much unable to serve.
CLAUDIA: I was one, of a number of constables, that were hired to help fill the holes.
LISA: Claudia Bryden is home in Saskatoon, caring for her two young children,
when she gets a call asking if she can help out.
CLAUDIA: 'Cause it was only supposed to be four to six weeks. Right? Very
temporary.
LISA: Claudia had started her law enforcement career at a small detachment of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP, one prairie province over, in Manitoba.
It was the kind of posting where you might be the only law
enforcement officer for miles, where you can find yourself completely on your
own facing any number of calls, from break ins, to assaults, to murders. It was
tough work, but Claudia found great purpose in it. Nevertheless, 7 months in,
when her husband, also a cop, got a job in Saskatoon, Claudia resigned. And so,
with two small children at home, she hadn't been planning to go back to work
quite yet.
CLAUDIA: I hadn't been to Martensville, you know, until I was there two nights
before, because I was sworn in with a few other people, but I didn't know
Martensville at all. So, my first shift was an orientation shift, and I was taken to
the Sterling home, for coffee.
LISA: That would be the home of Ron and Linda Sterling. Ron is assistant
deputy director of a correctional centre, not far out of town. He's buddies with
some of the local police officers, and the Sterling house is a frequent hang out.
Linda Sterling runs a home daycare.
CLAUDIA: For some reason it was very important, for me to be taken there the
first night. You know, they were very friendly, you know, said I could come there
any time for coffee, and they offered to babysit my kids, if I needed a daycare,
and I said, “thank you, no, I've got that covered.”
LISA: When I imagine Claudia, and Ron, and Linda meeting for that first time,
they all seem so small, oblivious to the storm gathering above them, in the vast,
inscrutable sky. It was about to hit, hard and fast, upending their lives.
[Music]
LISA: In the last days of September,1991, a Martensville mom, a nurse, notices
redness and broken skin on her child's bottom. The girl is two and a half, and
she's had some diarrhea, but what her mother sees strikes her as something
angrier than a typical diaper rash. She asks her daughter what happened. The
girl says that a stranger had, quote, "been poking her." Later that evening, her
mother asks about it again. The toddler says the stranger poked her with a pink
rope. That was Thursday. On Friday, when her mother asks again, the girl tells
her that the stranger lives at Linda's, Linda Sterling's, where she goes to
daycare. Over the weekend, the parents ask more questions, and the girl
provides more details. By Monday, they reach out to the Martensville police. The
girl's father explains that, based on his daughter's descriptions, he believes she
has been sexually assaulted by Ron and Linda's adult son, Travis Sterling. 
The parents take the child to a doctor, who sees no signs of abuse, but they remain
convinced.
CLAUDIA: When I tell people, you know, it's a good thing I didn't know what was
coming because I would have run, I would have been gone.
LISA: Officer Claudia Bryden is handed the file on October 1st. She's just a day
into her investigation, when the station secretary hands her a game-changing
little rectangle of paper,
an index card from the station's filing system for old cases.
CLAUDIA: They had a cardex., you know, those little rolly things, and they had
the names of accused in this rolodex, and she had gone through there and she
found a card with Travis Sterling's name on it, and there was just very basic
information. So, his name, his date of birth and the allegation, sexual assault.
LISA: Travis Sterling had been accused of sexual assault by someone else.
Claudia goes looking for the old case file, and finds a single page, crumpled and
torn, shoved in the back of a filing cabinet
CLAUDIA: You know, as an investigator, when you -- when you trip across an old
complaint like that, it sends up a big red flag. And I had a very bad feeling, you
know, and that feeling only got worse when I found, actually located the physical
file, and discovered that nothing had been done.
LISA: The complaint dates back to 1988, a 9 year old girl had reported being
groped, repeatedly, while at the Sterling daycare. According to a deeply reported
magazine story, police did interview Travis, but charges were never laid. One of
the investigating officers said the parents didn't seem inclined to proceed, but the
girl's mother said she never heard back from the police. And by the time Claudia
went looking, the paperwork had gone missing.
CLAUDIA: It's actually a miracle, in my opinion, that that complaint was even
found. And so, I dug through, and there it is, and I pull it out, and it is not three
pages, it's one. And stapled in the top right hand corner are three tiny little pieces
of paper with some handwritten scribbles on it. And so a file had been
opened, the complainant was identified on the report, the accused was identified
in the report, but no police work was done. There was no statement from the
child victim. There was no statement from the child's parent. No -- nothing had
been done. Not even the most basic of police work had been done.
LISA: Two days later, 22 year old Travis Sterling, is arrested and charged with
one count of sexual assault, in relation to that 1988 complaint.
CLAUDIA: The next, very next priority, of course, was to identify as best as
possible, other potential victims. It was a problem to have this daycare still
operating, while we were actively investigating these types of complaints. We
had a duty to protect the public.
LISA: Claudia contacts as many families as she can, whose children have been
to the daycare, and along with the growing case, there are growing challenges.
Unlike at the RCMP, there are no detailed policies or procedures for what she's
facing in Martensville. There's the difficult work of interviewing children, almost all
under 10 years old. And then, there are the challenges coming from her new colleagues. 
CLAUDIA: I was not treated very nicely by some of the members in the office,
they resented me because, I think simply, I was a woman, and I was ex-RCMP,
and I was in their space, right?
LISA: A corporal, from the Saskatoon Police, comes to assist with the
interviewing of kids. At first, the children have nothing to report. Nothing bad
happened. But over time, they begin to offer different answers, pointing the finger
at Travis's parents, Ron and Linda. One child accuses Ron of forcing him into a
sexual act at gunpoint. Another alleges Linda forced him to take his clothes off
and took pictures. Ron and Linda are ultimately found to be innocent of all
crimes, but that wouldn't happen for a long time. More charges are laid. This time
against Travis, and Ron, and Linda. Multiple counts of sexual assault, uttering
threats, pointing firearms. Then, the children say there are others who hurt them,
and the number of suspects just keeps climbing.
[Music]
[Music]
CLAUDIA: This case, as you know, started out very simply and very small. And
within a pretty short period of time it grew, and I could see that, you know, the
needs of this file were going to be significant. And it wasn't long, it was only a few
weeks into it, where the actual physical size of the file was becoming
unmanageable. You know most of these files...
LISA: Not long after Claudia started working the case, the suspended
Martensville police chief is forced to resign, for unrelated misconduct. A chief
from a neighbouring police service takes over, temporarily, but he works 25
minutes away, in the rural municipality of Corman Park, and he doesn't come out
to Martensville much.
CLAUDIA: I was 32 years old. I had a little bit of experience in my background
coming in to this whole situation. And I quickly recognized that, and you wouldn't
need a lot of experience to recognize that this case needed a lot of attention, a
lot of expertise, a lot of bodies. And so, you know, I began asking, I asked fairly
early on, you know, are we doing everything -- this is a common question I would
ask, are you sure we're doing everything we need to be doing? And he was, 'Oh
yes, yes.' And not much time would pass, and I would ask him again, you know,
can we get the RCMP involved in this? And he was adamant that that was never gonna happen.
LISA: In court, the interim chief would dispute this. But a later review, by outside
investigators, confirmed that, quote, "the frustration that has been articulated by
Claudia Bryden, appears to be legitimate, and compounded by the fact that she
received no consistent direction, either from police supervisors or Crown
prosecutors."
CLAUDIA: And so, it was troubling for me because, by November, I was literally
drowning in this file.
LISA: Then, the case takes a hard turn, into unknown territory. Children start
talking about rituals and sacrifices. They report being taken to a blue building, out
of town. Some call it the ‘Devil Church’. There, they say, they were injected with
drugs, and tortured. The children allege they were forced to watch people being
dismembered, even killed. They say they saw people have their eyes plucked out
and were forced to drink blood. They describe enduring all manner of abuse,
according to court records, hoisted in cages, locked in freezers, and forced to
perform sexual acts with the adults, and with each other. Each horrifying story
builds on the next. The Sterlings, and others, are accused of belonging to a
secret cult, ‘The Brotherhood of the Ram’. And if you think it couldn't possibly get
any worse, there's this. First one child, then another, tell Claudia that the other
adults wore uniforms, like hers, police uniforms. The children had said officers
were involved, but couldn't always specify which ones, it could be any cop.
[Music]
LISA: At what point did you realize that you and other colleagues of yours were
under suspicion?
RANDY: It probably wasn't till about two or three months into the investigation.
LISA: And remember, Randy Chudyk, the cop who loved Martensville? He's now
working alongside Claudia.
RANDY: We were all brought into the chief's office and we were all told that we
were subjects of the investigation, as a result of the interviews. And at that point
in time, we were kind of really shocked, because none of us, well myself, and I
know two of the others -- two of the members that I worked with at that point in
time, had basically no knowledge of this daycare, or any of the children that even went to it.
LISA: What did that feel like, to be told that you were in essence, being investigated?
RANDY: Initially I was very mad and I went, no, yeah, do whatever you want but I
am not part of this. I'm not involved, never been involved. Now you're being
accused of, not only being a pedophile, or involved in child abuse, but you're also
accused of being in a satanic cult. And, I mean, just separately, it's -- it's an
amazing, unreal type of situation, but to put them together it was -- it was almost
to the point where it was unbelievable.
LISA: What was the mood around the office?
RANDY: You try and go about and do your job to the best of your ability, but you
look at everybody differently. You look at everybody going, 'are they involved?'
And it not only became very hard to work, like be in the office, be in the
station, but it was also very hard trying to do your job in the community.
LISA: Yeah. What was it like going for groceries and walking around town?
RANDY: Um, it was hard. There were comments and, you know, obviously
once people caught wind of this investigation and everything else like
that, they looked at the police department completely different. And, you always
had the looks of, ‘Wow, is he involved or does he know what's going
on?’ Or any of that stuff. And, you know, people just treated me differently, um,
and I know a couple of the other members, they were treated differently as well,
and so was their families.
LISA: So, here's a funny thing about a very small police department. There are
so few officers, and the investigation is so big, that they have to hurry up and
clear some of them, so they can help with the investigation. So, Randy lets
himself get hooked up to a lie detector.
RANDY: To my knowledge, I'm the only one that took the polygraph, and I
passed the polygraph and was cleared.
LISA: And he moves from being a suspect in the case, to helping work it. Fall
hardens into winter, and the unrelenting cold makes it hurt just to breathe. The
investigation has taken over Claudia's life.
CLAUDIA: I was working around the clock, on something I should have been
working on in an office at work. You know, I was trying to manage my home.
I had two little children and a husband and a house to care for, and at one point,
you know, the file was in a kind of a vulnerable position, and I had, you
know, there was a need to secure it. And I was left holding the bag on that.
LISA: Vulnerable because the physical file, with all the notes from the
investigation, lived at the Martensville police station, surrounded by potential suspects. 
CLAUDIA: The file also ended up in our basement, and we were basically tied to
our house. It was…
LISA: You were guarding it?
CLAUDIA: Well it was never vulnerable to, you know, it just meant that one of us
was always at home. It never should have been there. I used to field calls at 2 in
the morning, from a parent that was in tears because their child had just had a
nightmare and had run in, and you know this was…It was -- the file grew quickly,
because of the number of people that became involved. I had a duty to serve and
protect those people. But personally, yeah, it was very difficult, it was exhausting.
LISA: When did the Satanism part first come to your attention?
CLAUDIA: So this would be in 1992, probably starting in February or March. The
kids were in regular counseling, who -- you know, who wanted it, or whose
parents it was made available to them, and I got a phone call from one of the
counsellors when I was at work one day, and she asked me questions about
ritual abuse, if I had, you know, if I had ever heard of it or, um. And I said no. And
I hadn't, you know, it was nothing I had ever had an interest in.
LISA: Finally, a new chief of police, Mike Johnston arrives in Martensville. And
under his leadership, the investigation focuses in on possible Satanic connections. 
CLAUDIA: So the chief was fielding calls from, you know, members of the public.
And he was receiving information, and that's where the term ‘brotherhood of the
ram.' I first heard that after Mike Johnston had received information from the
public. And so, you know, he acted on information that was coming in as he saw
fit, in order to run the police service, and protect the town.
LISA: It's 1992 and as the great thaw of spring is finally underway, a tip comes in
from a local pastor. He's heard that a group Satan worshippers has its sights set
on Martensville.
They would arrive in the dead of night, and they'd be armed, and bent on
destruction. The chief dispatches an urgent memo to his officers, putting them on
high alert. They brace for a fight.
MIKE: And he authorized us to go ahead and bring in our own guns, and just be
as heavily armed as possible. And at the time, I've got to admit, that I've never
been more scared in my life.
LISA: Martensville police officer, Mike Swann, in a 2003 CBC interview.
MIKE: I told a friend of mine, if something did happen to me, that he would make
sure that Barb and the kids were looked after.
LISA: Randy Chudyk also remembers that night.
RANDY: We were gonna be attacked, basically is what he said. So we had to be on
alert and that we were going to be inundated with things, and we would have to
deal with them. Basically they were gonna come in and attack the town, and burn
things down, and attack all the churches, and they were gonna come in and steal
some children, and use them for their rituals. Going through everything that
happened, and then getting this, it just shakes your foundation, and sends
shivers down your back. Then you start to think, well maybe this was real.
Maybe there is some truth to all of this.
[Music]
LISA: Before long, nine people would face nearly 180 of the most terrible
charges. Only two of which would ultimately stand, both against Travis Sterling,
and neither having anything to do with Satanic ritual abuse. So, where did the
panic come from in Martensville, and beyond? How did a hysteria manage to
cloud the thinking of so many otherwise rational people? And if we don't
understand that, could it happen again?
[Music]
LISA: Coming up on ‘Satanic Panic’.
DAN: Everything looked suspicious. There's blue buildings everywhere. Is that it?
And if that's it, what do we do? Like, do we roll up? And what if they grab me and
cut my head off?
HEATHER: I am reading, in the 20th century, the 17th century Salem Witch Trials.
CLAUDIA: If you dare suggest that this was all made up, I would fear for your safety.
JOHN: When you're not guilty of anything, never did anything. I mean, what are you gonna say?
SAMANTHA: The next morning, my grandma, and my aunt were at the door,
and picked me up, it was early, I'm sure they came as soon as they could.
I've heard since how horrific that night was for them, because they didn't know
either, if they'd ever see me again [crying].
[Music]
LISA: ‘Uncover, Satanic Panic’ is written and produced by me, Lisa Rundle, and
Ilina Ghosh.
Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly.
Chris Oke is our story editor.
Our digital producer is Emilie Quesnel.
Evan Aagaard is our video producer.
Original music by Olivia Pasquarelli.
Tanya Springer is the Senior Producer of CBC Podcasts.
Arif Noorani is our Executive Producer.
Special thanks to Mitchell Stuart.
Whether you lived through the ‘Satanic Panic’ or if this is the first time you're
hearing about it, either way, we'd love to hear from you. Find us on Facebook
and Twitter @CBCPodcasts.
