{"id":1287,"date":"2010-01-16T16:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T16:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1287"},"modified":"2010-01-16T16:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T16:47:00","slug":"martha-coakley-sounds-like-a-salem-witch-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1287","title":{"rendered":"Martha Coakley Sounds like a Salem Witch-Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the 1980s, real people went to real prisons on the strength of children’s fantasies. Many of these were people who operated preschools and had devoted their lives to child care.<\/p>\n

The 1987-90 McMartin Preschool trial, described as the most expensive criminal trial in American history, produced no convictions<\/a>–but you can imagine the effect on the defendants’ lives.<\/p>\n

The West Memphis Three <\/a>were victims of the same prosecutorial hysteria over “satanism.”<\/p>\n

The Amirault family trial in Massachusetts was another<\/a>. To quote Dorothy Rabinowitz, author of No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times<\/a>\"\":<\/i><\/p>\n

The accusations against the Amiraults might well rank as the most astounding ever to be credited in an American courtroom, but for the fact that roughly the same charges were brought by eager prosecutors chasing a similar headline\u2014making cases all across the country in the 1980s. <\/p>\n

Those which the Amiraults’ prosecutors brought had nevertheless, unforgettable features: so much testimony, so madly preposterous, and so solemnly put forth by the state. The testimony had been extracted from children, cajoled and led by tireless interrogators.<\/i><\/p>\n

It’s like Salem 1692 again: letting kids fantasize and treating those fantasies as evidence in court. “Spectral evidence.”<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts will select a replacement for Senator Edward Kennedy.<\/p>\n

The Democrats are running Martha Coakley, a former district attorney and state attorney general, who still thinks the Amiraults’ case was handled correctly and who has fought to keep Gerald Amirault in prison because she thinks he is some kind of satanic mastermind.<\/a><\/p>\n

She is a Democrat, I’m a Democrat. But I don’t care if she likes kittens and puppies and takes good care of her aged parents. <\/p>\n

For that reason alone–for being the spiritual descendant of the Salem witch-hunters–if I lived in Massachusetts, I would not vote for Martha Coakley.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b> Civil-liberties writer Randy Balko examines Coakley’s record<\/a>. It sounds like she believes that the cops are always right and the courts never make a mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the 1980s, real people went to real prisons on the strength of children’s fantasies. Many of these were people who operated preschools and had devoted their lives to child care. The 1987-90 McMartin Preschool trial, described as the most expensive criminal trial in American history, produced no convictions–but you can imagine the effect on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[103,29],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-massachusetts","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11842,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11842","url_meta":{"origin":1287,"position":0},"title":"Salem Museum Gives In, Exhibits 1692 Witch-Trial Materials","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2017, Donna Seger, a history professor at Salem State University (Massachusetts) wrote an open letter to the leadership of the Peabody Essex Museum, a big, rich institution in downtown Salem that along with being a major art museum, controls (and usually hides) the town's historical archives. Her letter stated,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Massachusetts\"","block_context":{"text":"Massachusetts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=massachusetts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/sewall-256x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9439,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9439","url_meta":{"origin":1287,"position":1},"title":"Salem, Arkham, and H. P. Lovecraft","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"What Bourbon Street is to New Orleans' French Quarter, Essex Street is to Salem, Mass. When it's party time (October), this is where the party happens. Otherwise, it is the chief tourist-commercial street, whether you want the Peabody Essex Museum, Christian Day's witch shop,\u00a0or The Witch House, which was actually\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Massachusetts\"","block_context":{"text":"Massachusetts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=massachusetts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/essex-st-west-vertical.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8868,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8868","url_meta":{"origin":1287,"position":2},"title":"They Were Not Witches \u2014\u00a0They Are Our Martyrs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the memorial created in 1992 for the victims of the Salem trials in Salem, Mass. Each \"bench\" contains the name of an accused person: \"Margaret Scott. Hanged. September 22, 1692.\" Walk there, and you know that it has become a shrine. Then you realize that you are walking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/red-coat-3.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9245,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9245","url_meta":{"origin":1287,"position":3},"title":"Our Salem Film Festival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompted by J. W. Ocker's A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, M. and I held a little Salem film festival. (We skipped The Lords of Salem.) In order of creation, we watched these three movies:\u00a0 Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985), Hocus Pocus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4119,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4119","url_meta":{"origin":1287,"position":4},"title":"Pentagram Pizza for April 21st","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Week-old pizza from the back of the refrigerator ... \u2022 Here's an idea for a novel: \"two down-on-their-luck entrepreneurs who stumble upon the idea of reviving for-profit idolatry. Selling statues of household gods to the masses, and building a neo-pagan religion around it.\" Um, I think that people have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/pentagrampizza-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1700,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1700","url_meta":{"origin":1287,"position":5},"title":"The ‘Old Religion’ of Pendle Hill","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In the early 17th century, a condemned witch goes to the gallows, saying under her breath an incantation of the Old Religion. Only the incantation invokes the Virgin Mary, Ave, Regina Caelorum, and the old religion is Roman Catholicism, made virtually synonymous with treason during the reigns of Edward VI,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}