Inquisitions, Witch Hunts and Salem in Sydney

A brief history of persecution

Introduction

This brief history examines famous witch hunts and then moves to the modern phenomenon of child molestation cases where allegations are made in the context of attacks on non-conformist groups or religions. A similar mass hysteria and prejudice, as well as trial by a sensationalist and prejudiced media co-exists as a reaction to the accusations, and the desire to persecute frequently overrides the search for the factual truth and impartial justice. Social hysteria and “moral panics” are historical phenomena which occur across the historical ages in periods of deepening social conflict, tension and upheaval - and the reaction that they can generate.

The following historical episodes demonstrate the terrible price paid for these unsubstantiated accusations, which had enormous ramifications for those accused.

The social phenomenon of witch hunts

In witchcraft cases, a witch hunt occurs when often innocent people are accused of a crime which is impossible to rebut by factual means, and rational thought and procedure are abandoned in the effort to persecute someone who is often considered non-conformist or an “outsider”. How does one defend against an allegation that you are doing the devil’s work?

Historical witchcraft accusations justified feelings of anger and hostility towards those with money or power, or gave an explanation for unusual illnesses. It reflected social tensions including the impact of disruptive economic and social change.

Some historical literature strongly supported the persecution of witches and often carried illustrations which were pornographic. The allegation is so disgusting that once someone is accused, there is a virtual automatic presumption of guilt. Accusations of child abuse were often levelled, as the community was loath to believe that children could lie to such an extraordinary degree and create such obscene narratives. As a result these situations frequently led to mass hysteria. In such a context, the position of the accused became extremely perilous, as they were caught up in a social phenomenon which was not factually or rationally engendered.

From The Crucible by Arthur Miller:

“Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God’s fingers? I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem - vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Proctor, Act 2, p. 73)

Inquisitions

The inquisitions (especially in Spain) might also be described as The Time of Relentless Terror, and an example of authoritarian power abused as a mechanism of repression and destruction. Inquisitions are perfect examples of the terrible results of the abuse of power, unchecked by democratic or legal systems.

From the fourth to the seventh centuries the churches gained enormous power over society, and eventually also obtained significant judicial power, alongside the temporal authorities. Church authorities arrogated to themselves the right to find and punish heretics. In 726 when the last Duke of Rome was deposed Pope Gregory seized power usurping the civil government. By 1022 certain incontestable and absolute truths had been declared and for the first time people were burned at the stake for heresies. Free speech, which had never been a general right, no longer existed at all. It is documented that by 1314 heretics were being burnt alive publicly. Even the bones of buried heretics were disinterred and burnt. On the issue of absolute truths and heresy, in many ways the history of Nazi Germany was a repetition of the intolerance of non-conformist views, including religious beliefs and the rejection of science and reason. Jews and scientists were driven out of Germany and destroyed in the holocaust.

The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to enforce religious and social conformity. The form of questioning during the inquisitions was intensive repetition of questions, accompanied by sleep- and food-deprivation, with the accused having no right to counsel. The few lawyers who represented clients accused by the Inquisition feared heretical accusations being levelled at them when their clients were found guilty, which was almost invariably the case. If repeated questioning and other deprivations failed to elicit the desired answers, the next form of interrogation was torture. If someone left the official religion that was considered as bad as outright heresy.

The Inquisition also included the persecution of Jews. In 1480 at Toledo the ancient regulations prohibiting Jews from many activities were renewed. Jews were required to wear some distinguishing mark and inhabit separate quarters, they were subject to a curfew and they were prohibited from several professions including physicians, surgeons, merchants, barbers and innkeepers, which left only usury, or money lending.

In France the Huguenots (a Calvinist branch of Protestantism) were banned after the harsh edict of Compiegne in 1557, which outlawed Protestantism and imposed the death penalty not only for heresy but for a wide range of offences against the church. After the king’s mother became concerned about the Huguenot’s political influence, she gave approval to the Roman-Catholic plot to assassinate the Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard II de Coligny and the 1572 “Saint Bartholemew’s Day Massacre” which saw Huguenot homes and shops in Paris pillaged and their occupants brutally murdered and thrown into the Seine. The bloodshed spread to the provinces and up to 70,000 Huguenots were killed, which was justified by French royalty who claimed there had been a plot against the Crown, and celebrated by both King Philip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII.

For centuries up until 1813 the inquisitions continued amongst wars and the change of monarchies, the Reformation and 44 Inquisitor-Generals. No complete records were kept but it is estimated that in the Spanish Inquisition alone about 300,000 people were either burnt to death, punished or otherwise condemned to severe “penances”.

The Salem Witch Hunts

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were based on the testimony of 4 children, Ann Putnam, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. Residents of Salem in Massachusetts, were accused, tried, convicted and executed for the alleged crime of being witches. The girls went into fits, appearing to vomit up bent nails and pins which they alleged had been placed in them, allegedly claiming that they had been physically afflicted by witchcraft. All of these allegations would of course in modern times be treated with deep skepticism as either the product of fantasy, psychiatric illness or malice (but with some exceptions, see below). 19 people in Salem were sentenced to death and with over 100 people in the surrounding area having also been accused.

By the early 1700’s several of the child-accusers had recanted their testimony and begged forgiveness from the surviving family members of the executed defendants. In 1706 the most notorious, Ann Putnam, made a statement to the pastor of the Village Church stating that she had been under a delusion caused by Satan. Hardly a confession of guilt, but a recognition of the false character of the allegations. None of the accusers suffered any penalty.

As a result of these confessions of lying, for 200 years after the Salem trials, society and the courts considered these experiences as grounds for treating with great caution the uncorroborated testimony of children at trial. Only in more recent times has this caution been reversed in favour of prosecutions in a social context more favourable to the exercise of authority, and a decline in rational and critical thinking, to the point where a challenge to the allegations of a child is considered a heresy. In periods of great social tension, emotional responses can become ascendent over rational consideration.

Child molestation claims and “Cult” connections

The 1983 McMartin Preschool case

In 1983 a mentally ill and unbalanced mother, Judy Johnson, accused the sole male teacher Ray Buckley at the McMartin Preschool in Los Angeles of sexually abusing her 2 year old son, who attended there. It transpired eventually that she had recently separated from her husband and was having a difficult time with alcoholism, as well as facing severe financial difficulties.

The police contacted other parents and requested that they ask their children what they had seen. By 1984 it was claimed that 360 children had been abused; children were placed into counselling with suggestive techniques but initially said they had not seen anything, however under further intensive questioning started to fabricate events of an extraordinary kind, which led to charges against several members of the McMartin family, who ran the preschool. The allegations were absurd and unbelievable, including not only acts of sexual abuse against children in their care, but also satanic rituals in secret underground tunnels, flying witches, orgies at car washes and airports, children being beheaded or flushed down toilets, and animal sacrifices.

The hysterical reaction in the community caused further utterly unfounded claims to be made, such as the Mayor’s wife being accused of driving around with corpses in her car, which the media reported as truth. During the trial it was revealed that police had withheld from the defence letters Judy Johnson had written, admitting that she could not tell the difference between truth and fiction.

Despite the fact that there was no evidence found to support the allegations, the defendants were denied bail. The case lasted 7 years with no convictions, and the remaining charges were dropped in 1990. The trials cost the state $16 million, the most expensive series of criminal trials in American history. The McMartin Preschool teachers had to sell their homes to pay for legal expenses.

The intense hysteria and satanic-moral panic at this time was a very similar scenario to the witch hunts in the 13th and 14th centuries which have been referred to above, and child abuse accusations in America skyrocketed. Douglas J. Besharov told the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families that of the 1.9 million reports of child neglect or abuse received in 1985, 65% (or over a million) proved to be ‘unfounded’ (Ed Roger, United Press International, “False accusations of abuse devastating to families” 1 January 1989).

The 1992 Wenatchee Case in Washington State

The Wenatchee case, sometimes described as America’s most notorious child abuse scandal, arose in 1992, when Detective Robert Perez’s foster daughter alleged sexual abuse, later expanding her claims to dozens of adults and locations. 43 adults were arrested and charged with approximately 30,000 counts of sexually abusing 60 children. 18 people were convicted and sent to prison.

Perez and the Child Protection Service rallied the community into a crusade and decided that all the children would be forced to undergo therapy, fueled by a mistaken belief that 3 out of 4 of all children have been abused.

A year after this so-called therapy, the children had “disclosed” that they had been mistreated by their parents, as well as other incredible allegations including child sex rings, ritual murder, cannibalism, evil robots, and men wearing black suits and sunglasses molesting children on the altar of the local Pentecostal church.

The children were then removed from their homes and sent to live in foster homes. Two of the children went to Perez who drove them around and asked where they had been abused. They identified the local Pentecostal Church and accused most of the members.

Vulnerable and mentally disabled parents were aggressively questioned until they also confessed and accused neighbours, friends and relatives as their accomplices in the most bizarre and ritualistic sex orgies.

Children who failed to cooperate were threatened with arrest, removed from school, neighbourhoods, churches and family members, given medication and subjected to recovered memory therapy. They were also locked away for extended periods in mental facilities for whole days where confessions were forthcoming and the list of abusers grew as they spoke out to save themselves.

Those who attempted to speak out were punished - a child welfare supervisor who voiced questions about Perez’s interrogation techniques was placed on leave and eventually fired. A social worker who challenged the CPS methods was arrested for witness tampering. The Chelan County Commissioner, Earl Marcellus, was given similar treatment after one of Perez’s foster daughters confided that she had lied.

However in 1995 a comprehensive study entitled the Wenatchee Report was released by public defender Kathryn Lyon. She documented numerous abuses of investigative standards and due process by Perez and the CPS. In the same year Pastor Robert Roberson was arrested after speaking out against the same official misconduct.

Wall Street Journal reporter Dorothy Rabinowitz commented in her book No Crueler Tyrannies that a small but determined group of Wenatchee residents questioned the arrests and demanded accountability and tried to find defense lawyers. The leaders of this group had a car window shot out, a rock thrown through a living room window, eggs thrown at their house and abusive letters sent. In the end they mortgaged their house to pay for the defense costs of one of the accused couples. In 1998 the Seattle Post assigned two investigative reporters to the story and in its series The Power to Harm documented the violations of law, procedures, civil rights and human rights by various public officials.

The University of Washington Law School formed the Innocence Project Northwest, which succeeded in establishing the innocence of all those accused, with a 1998 appeals courts overturning all convictions.

In 2001 a Spokane County Court jury found Wenatchee County guilty of negligence and awarded $3 million in damages to a couple who had been wrongfully convicted. A few months later a mentally handicapped couple won back parental rights to four of their five children; the fifth one had been adopted.

The activities of the Cult Awareness Network in imposing conformism

Cult Awareness Network (CAN) was an American based organization which claimed to be non profit, yet charged very high fees for its services and consisted of a group of people who were less than truthful about their qualifications, background training and experience.

It existed to supposedly “rescue” individuals from the clutches of alleged cults and put them through a deprogramming exercise. The main problem was that if those individuals were happy and did not wish to leave the organizations to which they were attached, they were therefore kidnapped or removed without their permission, arranged by well-meaning parents for a fee of up to $40,000.

In essence this is a form of “witch hunting”, which involves accusing a religion or group of being a “cult”, and the attendees being “brainwashed” or “coerced”, in order to justify forcibly removing someone from the group.

The “deprogramming” involved kidnapping and holding the person against their will, and exposing them to at best coercive techniques, but often extending to restraining and drugging them, brutal physical and sexual assault, sleep deprivation and other abusive behaviour - reminiscent of the torture inflicted during the witch hunts and inquisitions of earlier centuries.

In the end members of CAN were prosecuted for illegal activities including kidnapping, abduction and assault.

One notable member of CAN was Steven Hassan, who worked for CAN as a deprogrammer until the organization was dissolved.

Several people who were subjected to deprogramming stated that they were subject to physical and mental abuse including being forcibly imprisoned, bound by hands and feet, deprived of sleep, not allowed to shave or wash and denied all privacy including not being allowed to urinate in private. Another victim said she was thrown off a bed and threats were made about breaking her leg if she tried to escape. She was taken to an isolated house where for eight days her captors forced her to listen to materials critical and abusive of her religious beliefs. All this time, whilst suffering the foregoing indignities, she was consistently harassed and ridiculed by her captors.

Cult Awareness Network went into voluntary bankruptcy after being found guilty in a multimillion dollar judgment in 1995, because of its involvement in the strongly coercive deprogramming of a Pentecostal Church member.

Modern day “deprogrammers” appear to have renounced illegal methods but the practice remains entirely coercive and baseless. There is no sound psychological reasoning or methodological rigour. The oft-quoted “expert” of the Anti-Cult Movement is Margaret Singer, whose report on “brainwashing” was rejected by the American Psychological Association because it lacked the necessary “scientific rigour and evenhanded critical approach”; Singer was later rejected by judges as an expert witness in four court cases regarding her alleged expertise with respect to “brainwashing and mind control”.

Prejudice and hysteria: the case of The Family in NSW 1992

In May 1992 police and state welfare officers raided the homes of people belonging to The Family International, also known as the Children of God, in Sydney and Melbourne. Over a hundred children were removed.

No evidence of criminal wrongdoing was found and the children were found to be healthy and free of abuse, and eventually were released back to their parents, and the case was dismissed. The actions of police and community services came under fire in 1993 when documents were tabled in parliament showing that the raids were conducted without any proper evidence, which was also later confirmed in a 1999 judgement in the Supreme Court. A civil action against the Department of Community Services on behalf of the children stated they had been illegally and unlawfully arrested, falsely imprisoned and held against their will, and resulted in a settlement with reportedly large compensation payments.

Prominent religious scholar Dr J. Gordon Melton in 1993 described the raids, which had also occurred in France, Spain and Argentina, as the result of a “vicious attack” on new religions by the Cult Awareness Network. He said the anti-cult network had “adopted a new tactic of filing false reports of child abuse” against various groups and in particular had systematically facilitated ex-members of The Family to file false reports.

Dr Melton said “We are living in an era where government is finally taking account of child abuse and we pass laws to compensate for our past non-involvement that cause us to act before there is any evidence… so the action is taken before any account of judicial hearing or any kind of search for evidence or accumulation of evidence or examination of the report takes place. In this particular case, what we have discovered is that some people have found this switch in the law and are taking advantage of it and are drawing in the police and the social worker authorities to do their dirty work for them.” (ABC radio interview, “The Religion Report” 10 September 1993).

Kenja Communication and the Dyers trials 1993 to 2002 - Salem in Sydney

The background

Throughout 1992, two disgruntled former Kenja participants — one who was asked to leave after striking a child and another for the misappropriation of Kenja funds in her possession on 3 separate occasions — tried through ties with CultAware to bring civil claims for compensation against Kenja for “brainwashing” them. This failed.

After that four young women, daughters of the women associated with this failed legal effort were canvassed by CultAware personnel to be part of new tactics in the campaign to destroy Kenja. Police went to their homes, emerging with allegations against Ken Dyers. The girls did an initial interview with Stephen Mutch, a politician linked with CultAware, in the Parliament in Victoria, and said, while laughing, that they were “motivated by hate for the group basically”, and that they would “like to close the group down if possible”.

The case

Following the girls’ allegations, Dyers was prosecuted in 1993 on 16 counts of sexual assault. The defence case was that the allegations were part of a conspiracy to frame-up Dyers with sex allegations. The trials continued for many years, resulting in Dyers’ complete exoneration. In respect of one particular matter there was an appeal to the High Court in which Dyers was successful and the case reinforced the legal requirement of fairness in the conduct of criminal trials.

During this period academics, particularly in America, argued the use of the word “cult” incited prejudice, hate and antagonism towards non-conformist groups, in the same way as racially stigmatized words.

The Defence

Lead defence counsel in the Dyers trials was Henry di Suvero, an experienced criminal defence and civil rights lawyer. Di Suvero had been involved in major civil rights cases in the United States including representing defendants accused during the McCarthyite witch hunt against Communists. Di Suvero was a lawyer in the Chicago 8 trial on the team defending Abbie Hoffman. He also worked with the defence team in the frame up of Angela Davis, and was lead counsel in the Fort Dix stockade rebellion case in 1969, defending anti-war soldiers. Di Suvero was well aware of the tactics of conspiracy, frame-up and the witch hunt - and the role of the State, politicians and the media in them.

The defence case at the trials of Ken Dyers was that there was a conspiracy to destroy Dyers and Kenja Communication as a non-conformist, or “new religion” group. During the course of the trials, the atmosphere in the court was tense, fraught with conflict and prejudice. The judge closed the court to the public for certain periods against the objection of the defence, which a higher court later described as a “serious error”. The prosecutor engaged in misconduct and defence counsel described the proceedings as “oppressive” and “like a star chamber”, which he had not experienced since representing clients before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthyite witch hunt in the United States.

Defence counsel’s summing up to the jury compared the allegations made at the trial to the Salem witch hunt in the following passage:

What I will do is to set forth what I believe has been the chronology of collusion in this case and the reason why it becomes important is because if they got together to make up their evidence then that affects their credibility…

… we say that the evidence in this case clearly shows that the case is a sham. It is a marriage of convenience between revenge and pay-back of two families and the political opportunism of the novice witch-hunter, Stephen Mutch. It is an abuse of legal process and it debases genuine complaints that otherwise would come forward. The case was designed, constructed, tried and brought forward to appeal to prejudice and hysteria about new ideas in cults. It is a cynical prosecution of anything other than mainstream ideas. It is the legal repression of a group through the prosecution of its leader: ‘cut off the head and the body will die’.

Let us look at the legal mechanics of the case, it began in the Parliament in the office of Stephen Mutch. That legislative cowboy rides off to Melbourne to further his witch-hunt. He is called by Annette Stephens and he interviews [the two girls]. Then he is given a Ministerial reference and the matter is sent to the police and it results in one of the shoddiest police investigations since that of Harry “The Hat” Blackburn. The girls are interviewed by Mutch and then by the police. There is no significant corroboration that is marshalled by the police.

Dyers is arrested and interviewed for three hours and twenty minutes and there are no admissions. Bail of 100,000 is called for and there is a condition that he not attend the Kenja premises. This is an enormous political victory without a single fact being determined. It is hysteria on the march and it finds its legal form in this prosecution.

…

Now every age I submit to you has its own particular witch hunts. It is the challenge of new ideas that creates the opposition to that. …

In terms of the witch hunt, my submission is that this is almost identical to what happened in Salem, Massachusetts and I call this case Salem in Sydney because in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600’s three young girls terrorised the community by shaking and trembling in little theocratic courts and pointing the finger at people that they said were witches and cast spells on them. It is captured in the play by Arthur Miller called The Crucible which is on the HSC suggested reading. The difference between what happened in Salem and what happens here is really the difference between a theocratic judge and having a jury make the determination.

… we make the point that a political trial doesn’t have to be overtly political. It becomes a political trial when it serves a political end and here the political end that was being served was the destruction of a group, and then it was something that Mr Mutch was really quite candid about and that was what he was all about.

(NSW District Court Transcript Regina v Kenneth Emmanuel Dyers; 27/3/96 p1-2, 28/3/96 p55)

Dyers’ innocence was ultimately established after a decade of litigation.