I've been fascinated by reading about the daycare child abuse and satanic ritual abuse moral panics of the 1980s.

But one thing that seems wrong to me is the description of the panic as something that occurred and then was more or less debunked and ended.

To me it seems like the idea that there is constant ongoing ritual child sexual abuse, and shadowy rings that perpetrate it in a coordinated way, was more or less accepted and incorporated into popular culture in the 80s and 90s. In other words, the ideas behind the panic were taken as true even as actual cases were debunked or at least seriously doubted.

Would anyone be able to point me to reading on this topic or summarize some of the current thinking on it?