Modern Witch Hunts.

After writing about she who must not be named, I've been thinking a bit more about the whole topic of the bogus Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) scandals, concocted by an alliance of Freudian Quacks, Evangelical Christians and Radical Feminists. The obvious comparison to make is with medieval witch hunts.

Witch hunts were quite common in the middle ages but by the early modern period they were confined to just a few sects- notably the puritans. Whilst there is a puritan influence on the UK it isn't geographically concentrated enough to separate it from other cultural effects. In the United States however it is different because one part of the country, New England, was settled by puritans and their descendants spread across certain regions of the country- through New York state, the Upper Midwest, the Pacific North West and parts of coastal California. So if the SRA is a modern version of witch hunting then one would expect the cases to be concentrated in those areas. This dialect map gives some idea of what I'm talking about because language is a cultural marker:

So using lists of these cases from Imaginary Crimes, Wikipedia and any other source I came across I'd estimate the distribution of the cases to be:

New England- 4 cases
Upper Midwest- 6 cases
Pacific North West- 6 cases

New York City- 2

Midland - 3

California- 5 cases

South- 11 (3 North Carolina, 3 Texas, 4 Florida* & 1 Mississippi)

Rockies- 1

By my estimate of the 37 cases (which often involve multiple suspects) at least 16 are from areas shaped by the puritan diaspora. Puritan influence was also present in shaping the culture of California and the Rockies, so that's another 6. All of which backs my hypothesis that the ritual abuse scares are secular reinvention of witch hysteria.


* Three of the four Florida cases were from Miami, when the future US Attorney General Janet Reno was the State Attorney responsible for prosecutions.