Two decades ago, hundreds of people in psychotherapy began claiming that they could recall long-buried memories of having taken part in satanic rituals involving animal and human torture and sacrifice

Yet the FBI was unable to confirm any of these reports. Based on what you have learned so far, how might you explain such "memories"?
What will be an ideal response?

Therapists who uncritically assumed that satanic cults were widespread may have asked leading questions and otherwise influenced their patients. Patients who were susceptible to their therapists' interpretations may have then confabulated and "remembered" experiences that did not happen, borrowing details from fictionalized accounts or from other troubling experiences in their lives. The result was source misattribution and the patients' mistaken conviction that their memories were real.