Initial publicity came via Lawrence Pazder's 1980 book "Michelle Remembers" and was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors, and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular, and religious conferences, as well as through the attention of talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, which, as one researcher put it in 2017, "involved hundreds of accusations that devil-worshipping paedophiles were operating America's white middle-class suburban daycare centers."