NCJ Number
126252
Date Published
1991
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Child sexual abuse accusations are compared to the accusations of witchcraft in the 17th century. Themes focused on include the perversion of empiricism, the discovery of false accusations, and the debate over whether witchcraft charges by youngsters were produced by meanness or were the product of a disorder defined as hysteria.
Abstract
A fundamental theme in the comparison of accusations of witchcraft and accusations of child abuse is that child sexual abuse laws can be perverted by those seeking to achieve notoriety, personal vengeance, psychological ease from their own impulses, or verification that the poor behavior of bad people has bad consequences. There is an inherent deficiency in efforts to equate unfounded charges of child sexual abuse with malevolent accusations of witchcraft in the 17th century. Child sexual abuse is real; witchcraft may not be. The witchcraft trials arose public hysteria; there have been instances of fictitious charges of child sexual abuse that have received undeserved official and public support. Given the lesson of "hysteria" of the witchcraft period, it seems wise to be vigilant about the legitimacy of complaints of child sexual abuse and not to abandon the stringent protection of an accused person in child sexual abuse cases. 56 references.