|
Title: |
Witch Children: From Salem Witch Hunts to Modern
Courtrooms
 |
| Author: |
Hans Sebald |
| Publisher: |
Prometheus Books, © 1993 |
Prometheus
Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Buffalo, NY 14228-2197
(716) 837-2475
$22.50 (c)
Hans Sebald is a German sociologist who has completed a history of
European witch craft, mostly in Germany. His goal of this book is (1) to
cover history, (2) to give the history of the witch bay in detail, (3)
to give an introduction of child psychology, and (4) to compare today's
witchhunts with those of the past. He covers 1, 2, and 4 quite well but
lacks details on child development.
Sebald notes that Europe experienced some 100,000 deaths of witches and witch
children by burning at the stake. He observes that "The accusation of witchcraft
was a convenient weapon with which to exact revenge because it required little,
if any empirical proof" (p. 41). He warns that "Accusations of witchcraft
commonly implicated members of the community against whom children held a grudge
and against whom they could not apply other forms of revenge and punishment" (p.
55).
He presents painfully gathered research on the number of children killed in
Europe because they were assumed to be possessed by the devil. The "state of
possession" used by the courts and community as proof contained weapons and
strategies designed to accuse people with impunity and to give credibility to
the most exotic evidence. Children were viewed as "esteemed mediums" no matter
what they said.
Sebald criticizes Philippe Aries' Centuries of Childhood (1962, New York:
Vintage Books) (
) for its failure to look at children drawn into the witch trials. He also notes that Aries did not deal with the children of common people and
disagrees with the suggestion that the concept of children did not exist prior
to the 17th century. He similarly decries Rousseau's impact on our assumptions
about children's development and our naive belief in children's concepts of
fairness, honesty, and caring.
Sebald refers to the "American witch syndrome" and is disturbed by the fact
that we are repeating this same syndrome today. He refers to Jean Piaget's
observations about suggestibility and draws several conclusions about children
and suggestibility:
| 1. |
The younger the child, the more suggestible he or she is. |
| 2. |
Recall can be thoroughly distorted by biases and notions internalized
by the child prior to interrogation. |
| 3. |
The incomplete mental Gestalt of child allows for unencumbered
responses, sometimes of an exceedingly inventive and imaginative nature. |
| 4. |
The very incompleteness of child's mental Gestalt allows
self-brainwashing, the belief in the reality of one's confabulations. |
| 5. |
Closeness in world view between the questioner and the questioned
furthers the persuasion process. |
| 6. |
Young children tend to experiment with lies, often testing the limits
of adults' credulity. |
| 7. |
Absolutism in attitudes contrasts with behavioral relativism; that is,
children defend honest and fair play on the verbal level but violate them
on the behavioral level. |
| 8. |
Older children develop the type of situational ethics whereby they see
nothing wrong with lying if it leads to the punishment of a "bad person." |
| 9. |
Information or misinformation embedded in the questions deepens
children's suggestibility if such material is supplementary rather than
contradictory to the key issue. |
| 10. |
Suggestibility is significantly enhanced by the interrogator's status:
the higher the status, the higher the suggestibility. |
| 11. |
Interpretive and leading questions are powerful magnets extracting the
right responses. |
| 12. |
Repetitive questioning deepens the child's tendency to cater to the
leading question. |
| 13. |
Once suggestions are planted, children can carry them over to
succeeding interrogators. |
| 14. |
The stronger an interrogator conveys his or her view, the more
suggestible the child becomes and the greater the compliance with the
view. |
| 15. |
The greater the ambiguity of the key event, that is, the more it
resembles a social Rorschach situation with an amorphous structure, the
more productive the impact of leading questions. |
| 16. |
Children's testimony may contain personal motives, such as punishing
certain individuals or sometimes simply reveling in the glory of feeling
powerful. |
| 17. |
Children believe in legendary figures, illusory as they may be, if
told so by parents. Children whose parents tell them otherwise exhibit
disbelief in the figures. |
Maybe the assumption of children's innocence was needed to support the need
for protective service in some people's mind, despite much research to the
contrary. Not even sibling abuse challenges this assumption. This book is
recommended for all therapists, attorneys, social workers, expert witnesses, and
psychologists who by mistake may be the new inquisitors.
Reviewed by LeRoy Schultz, Emeritus Professor, West
Virginia University.
