Details

Release year: 2001

Storyline

In 1982, parents Scott and Brenda Kniffen are arrested on false accusations of ritualistic child abuse; their children are taken into custody and manipulated into believing the lies being told about them. Based on a true story.

Top credits

Directors

Arvin Brown

Writers

Deborah Serra

Cast

Virginia Madsen — Brenda Kniffen
Jeffrey Nordling — Scott Kniffen
Graham Beckel — Denver Dunn
Robert Joy — Sam Bennis

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Did you know

• After they were found to have mishandled many of the abuse cases of the early 1980s, the legal officials involved in the case faced much public scrutiny and many lost their jobs; as the film's ending text states, one of the lawyers who had coached the Kniffen boys into confession did indeed end up working for minimum wage as a cashier afterwards, while others continued to work within the court system until at least 2009, facing little to no serious consequences for the way they responded to the cases. As was later revealed after the making of this film, most of the legal team involved with the prosecution had read the now-debunked true-crime novel "Michelle Remembers", about a case of alleged satanic-ritual abuse syndrome.