The child witch syndrome: Satanic child abuse of today and child witch trials of yesterday

Abstract

If history repeats itself there are special reasons to pay attention to those phenomena that tend to return in new disguises. The seventeenth-century child witch trials among the Basques and in northern Sweden seem to be such a phenomenon. During the last 15 years the western world has experienced these trials in a new and refined disguise. A number of parents and employees of nursery schools have been tried for abusing children in organized Satanic rituals. A comparison of the historical and modern child witch syndromes shows the following parallels: association with moral panic; breakdown of solidarity; a saturation point; the argument that the crime is of such a secret kind that it cannot be exposed without slackening legal procedures; witch signs and witch tests; absence of physical evidence; brainwashing; moral pressure during interrogation of witnesses; unconscious influencing of the witnesses; contamination of evidence; irregularities in the interrogation procedures; consistency of confessions one with another is taken as proof that they are true. The article concludes that judges, legal experts and social workers of today may learn a great deal from how the problems were handled by the Spanish Inquisition.

Key Words:

• Spanish Inquisition
• child witches
• witch-craze
• Satanic child abuse
• false confessions
• Alonso de Salazar Frías (Spanish inquisitor)