Baby, Cradle and All... .

As charges of abuse at a day care center sweep through a small town, the parents of three children attempt to deal with the allegations that soon metastasize into satanic ritual abuse accusations.The Townsends confront Claire's guilt at placing her children in the center, and Robert's seeming detachment from the turmoil until he discloses that he was molested by an uncle as a child. The Christian fundamentalist Spencer's teenage daughter, Rebecca, resentful of her father's...
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As charges of abuse at a day care center sweep through a small town, the parents of three children attempt to deal with the allegations that soon metastasize into satanic ritual abuse accusations.The Townsends confront Claire's guilt at placing her children in the center, and Robert's seeming detachment from the turmoil until he discloses that he was molested by an uncle as a child. The Christian fundamentalist Spencer's teenage daughter, Rebecca, resentful of her father's authoritarianism, accuses him of sexual abuse. Recently divorced Ada Worthington spars via the telephone with her mother, Pearl, over their own family history. Terry Spathe, an investigator with an agenda of her own, and an increasingly skeptical child therapist, Dr. Hugh Carson, are called in to facilitate the prosecution's inquiry. While acknowledging that child abuse is alive and well in America, the play explores the socio-economic factors of the 19080s that helped foment the hysteria of satanic ritual abuse: displaced guilt of many women returning to the work place, and the bolstering of fundamentalists' world view; and our society's continual collective abuse -- a toxic world, junk food, imagination-ravaging TV, school cut backs, and lack of parent/children time, etc. -- that is conveniently ignored in favor of a more easily indictable scapegoat of the devil and day care workers.