Knowing What a Witch Hunt Looks Like

Witch Hunts are usually associated with the middle ages, a time that spanned more than eight hundred years when most of Europe was shrouded in ignorance and superstition. Conversely it was also a time when the population was most fearful of challenging anyone thought to be a witch. Anything could happen if you were foolish enough to do so and it was considered as reckless as challenging one of the blessed saints. Times had to change of course and what with the launching of the printing press and people like William Shakespeare feverishly writing plays to tax the imagination, a new age of practical enquiry emerged. By and by Newton alerted all and sundry to the laws of gravity and Galileo did his dash with astronomy. The Renaissance had truly arrived and along with the galloping progress the Witch Hunt as we know it was more than due to take off with a vengeance.

It wasn’t altogether surprising that arthritic, bad tempered elderly women living alone were first in line for the stake, quickly followed by a colourful variety of other eccentrics, primarily female. You wouldn’t have stood a chance if you read tea-leaves and if you were over sixty and kept a cat you might as well have screamed from the rooftop – come and get me! Owners of black cats wouldn’t need to scream at all. As the arrests mushroomed so did the stories of Satanic gatherings and meet-ups by moonlight. Whispered one to another after Sunday Church services and in the bars of local Inns these tales greatly exacerbated the general anxiety and caused some to suggest that a certain amount of torture might be introduced in order to encourage those already accused to name their accomplices. It was all that people could talk about in some villages and it wasn’t long before even the more level headed and rational were drawn into the frenzy of denunciation. Those named as witches became responsible for all that was wrong with society and within a short space of time local bigwigs had decided that it was primarily because they were also members of a secret society controlled by Lucifer himself who of course had all the organizational skill needed. Even the most educated and influential began to talk about the number of pacts that had been made with the Devil, how many innocent babies were being sacrificed and eaten and the obscenity of the sexual rituals that took place on a regular basis.

Needless to say we would not be so easily persuaded to believe such nonsense these days would we? We would definitely know a Witch Hunt if we came across one but folk were more gullible back then.

However, during the more intellectually and socially backward sixteenth and seventeenth centuries panic regarding witches spread with ease throughout what was considered to be the civilized world. In Scotland alone one thousand five hundred witches were burnt at the stake and in Germany, the efficiency of the populace drove this figure to almost one hundred thousand. In the rather more enlightened atmosphere of England torture to produce confessions and associate naming was not generally approved of and thus only a thousand witches were eradicated. The last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 in the British Isles was Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan, a Scottish Medium sentenced in 1944. The Act itself was not repealed until 1951.

Extraordinary now to look back on such barbaric times isn’t it?

In the late nineteenth century the idea of Baby Farming caused a similar degree of terror but did not last as long and the victims were fewer overall. Perhaps the relative ease of transport via the train system and the regular dissemination of newspapers helped with both the spread of the fear and also the curtailing of it. Amelia Dyer is believed to have murdered hundreds of infants in her care and her crimes led to one of the most sensational trials of the period and shone a very bright light on the practice. Other criminals with a similar bent included Margaret Waters, Amelia Sach, Hans Oftedal, Sarah Makin and in New Zealand, the infamous Minnie Dean. By the beginning of the twentieth century communities throughout the world were totally alerted to the idea of unwanted children being murdered for monetary gain and the merest whiff of suspicion was likely to swiftly lead to a court case.

Now of course we wouldn’t be so easily influenced. Generally speaking we’ve got more sense.

Half a century later in the United States the hunting down and exposing of those with any interest in the idea of Communism led to similar hysterical accusations, exposure and panic. Allegations that Hollywood was rife with communist sympathisers led the House Committee on Un-American Activities to pursue actors, writers and directors with determination and the mere suggestion of a basic admiration for the ideas of Karl Marx or a regard for communal farming might be enough for them to be barred from working in Hollywood. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy took advantage of this widespread paranoia to advance himself politically by accusing State Department employees of communist leanings. Television might well have assisted with the passing of the mania because within a decade or so sanity prevailed, McCarthy's accusations were judged to be unsubstantiated, and the Senate eventually censured him in much the way we might now swiftly censure the wildly successful Matthew Hopkins, once the most successful Witch Finder of the seventeenth century.

Fortunately for the human race we definitely learn from history.

In the years approaching the close of the twentieth century perhaps the foremost obsession that swept through the world concerned the wholesale sexual abuse of children. Foreign Experts ventured far and wide, certainly into New Zealand, armed with their medical qualifications and ran seminars for General Practitioners so that the evil practice could be rooted out as fast as possible. With their help the situation took a smart U-turn and neatly mutated into the Satanic Ritual Abuse of preschoolers and before long it was found to be prospering in places you would never have thought possible a few short years previously.

In Christchurch, the unfortunate Peter Ellis was said to have hung children in cages, urinated over them, forced them to eat his faeces, and stuck needles into their genitals. The three and four year olds trustingly left at the Civic Creche by their well-meaning parents were regularly removed from the facility by him, taken through tunnels which connected with cemeteries, a Masonic Lodge and five star hotels where they were abused by adults dressed in black and wearing terrifying masks. They were forced to participate in mock marriages, buried in boxes, made to watch the torture of animals and encouraged to eat human flesh. Yet in the final analysis nobody seemed to notice any of this at the time, including their parents. The reprehensible Peter was certainly a clever Ritual Abuser and how effectively he was able to pull the wool over our eyes.

The internet was in general terms in its infancy but it certainly served to assist the speed of our acceptance of the horrific accusations. Twenty five years on of course we are infinitely more aware and mindful of the fact that some of Peter’s activities were unlikely – that’s the nature of progress. Regardless of how we might view such allegations today, Peter Ellis, still protesting his innocence, served seven years in prison which wasn’t a good thing at all. Luckily for him, however, the prison population generally not known for their ability to suffer child molesters gladly, did not dish out their own retribution. In fact on the whole they showed a great deal more common sense than the New Zealand judiciary. They jogged along with him quite well and saw no reason to chastise him further. Possibly they were simply not in a position to access internet searches with such ease as the rest of us.

The good thing is that we’ve learned a lot since the early 1990s and we no longer believe in Satanic Ritual Abuse.

It is astonishing how effortlessly we could once upon a time be seduced into the parameters of a Witch Hunt. How cheerfully we seemed to don the mantle of the overseer, how quick we were to point fingers to accuse and condemn. It simply wouldn’t happen now would it? We would recognize the signs immediately.

And before someone mentions the Me Too Movement I simply won’t have it. Those young people used so sickeningly and sordidly need our support and love, not our criticism and condemnation. They would not lie about such serious matters as being touched inappropriately, in a sexual manner and without permission. They who ventured so trustingly into the hotel rooms of movie magnates late at night for a chat and a lie down deserve our sympathy not our censure. The hardy one or two who returned a second time in the desperate hope of a mini-part in the man’s next movie should be awarded medals not have judgement heaped upon them. Their only blunder after all was to become blinded by the position and stature of a manipulative fiend who thought nothing of using his power and influence in order to solicit sexual favours. These hapless victims should be pitied rather than held responsible.

And don’t call the movement to expose the monsters who preyed upon them a Witch Hunt because we all know perfectly well what a Witch Hunt looks like. We’re not stupid!