MONTREAL — Three Quebecers have lost an appeal of their conviction in connection with the extreme-sweating death of a woman who was wrapped in mud and cellophane at a spa.
The Quebec Court of Appeal’s decision means Gabrielle Frechette, Ginette Duclos and Gerald Fontaine will head to prison for the death of Chantal Lavigne.
Lavigne, 35, died in July 2011 after a sweating session organized by the accused.
Participants were plastered with mud, wrapped in a plastic sheet and a blanket and had their heads covered with cardboard boxes for nine hours.
A coroner described the process as the equivalent of being cooked alive.
The accused were found guilty in December 2014 of criminal negligence causing death and were sentenced in January 2016.
Frechette, who was considered a spiritual guide and organized the personal-growth seminar in Durham-Sud, was sentenced to three years, while her two assistants were handed two-year prison terms.
As numbers grow, many in impoverished community realize their way of life is unsustainable, but protests expose open resistance from within community ARON HELLER
Times of Israel November 8, 2017
AP — A string of protests by ultra-Orthodox activists against Israel’s compulsory military service has paralyzed Jerusalem in recent weeks in what their leaders had hoped would be a show of strength by the traditionally insular society.
Instead, the demonstrations reflect a desperate attempt by members of a vocal minority trying to preserve a lifestyle that is rapidly changing around them.
Widely seen as a drag on the country’s economy, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox world is being forced to adapt — with growing numbers embracing technology, pursuing higher education, entering the work force and even serving in the army.
Experts say tomorrow’s ultra-Orthodox will look much different from the community that mainstream Israel fears today.
“If you are expecting everything to change tomorrow morning — that is not going to happen. But if this is done quietly and it is not forced upon us, it will happen on its own,” said Gidon Katz, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who runs an advertising and public relations agency in Jerusalem.
For decades, the ultra-Orthodox have leveraged their significant political power into maintaining a segregated lifestyle. They run a separate network of schools, enjoy sweeping military draft exemptions and raise large families on taxpayer-funded handouts.
The system has fed a visceral culture war between the largely cloistered ultra-Orthodox and the secular majority resentful of what it considers preferential treatment.
As their numbers have grown, many in the impoverished community realize their way of life is unsustainable. In a previously unseen phenomenon, the recent protests have exposed open resistance from within the community.
“Judaism never said there was anything wrong with working,” said Katz, noting that it is no longer uncommon to see ultra-Orthodox lawyers, accountants and high-tech executives. “The study of scripture is the highest calling. That’s the ideal but it’s not for everyone.”
The ultra-Orthodox, known in Hebrew as “Haredim,” or “those who fear God,” are the fastest growing sector in Israel. Due to their high birth rate, they now number more than 1 million people, or about 12 percent of Israel’s 8.7 million citizens. The majority live beneath the poverty line, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent think tank.
Their numbers are expected to rise to 14 percent in 2024, 19 percent in 2039 and 27 percent in 2059, the think tank predicted — figures that have sparked fear of Israel’s developed economy being saddled with a workforce that’s not prepared for the modern world.
Gilad Malach, an institute researcher who specializes in the community, said such fears are exaggerated. He believes the modernizing effect will make the Haredi community far more educated and employable, much the way ultra-Orthodox communities in the United States and Europe have adapted.
“The apocalyptic vision will not come to fruition because they will be different,” he said. “For those trying to cling to the old ways, the war is lost.”
Malach estimates about 10 percent of the ultra-Orthodox belong to a modern camp that has embraced technology and modern society, while an equal-sized hard-line group shuns any engagement with the establishment. He believes the remaining 80 percent are open to change, to varying degrees.
The percentage of Haredim entering Israeli universities has more than doubled since 2009, Malach said, though they still only make up 4 percent of the student body.
But Dan Ben-David, a Tel Aviv University economist and president of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, said these figures are misleading.
Most Haredi university students drop out, in large part because of their poor elementary and secondary schooling, he said, adding that working-age Haredim who complete an academic degree has been relatively stable for the past decade.
In contrast, American ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are required to complete a core school curriculum, have more than twice as high a rate of academic degrees.
“There are no shortcuts in life,” said Ben-David. “Wanting to participate in a modern economy without the necessary tools is a recipe for disaster.”
To keep up in a knowledge-based marketplace, Ben-David said Haredi children must receive a basic education that would give them the skills to “pull their weight” in the future.
For decades, secular-led Israeli governments have maintained the status quo, either because of their dependence on ultra-Orthodox political kingmakers or fearing an angry backlash.
The most contentious issue has been induction in the military. Draft exemptions go back to Israel’s establishment in 1948, when the government allowed several hundred gifted students to pursue religious studies to help rebuild great schools of Jewish learning destroyed in the Holocaust. Over the years, the numbers have ballooned, creating widespread resentment.
Repeated efforts to find compromise have failed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government recently rolled back previous legislation that had aimed to increase conscription — only to be struck down by the Supreme Court. The court has demanded new legislation within a year.
In the meantime, most Haredi men have the option of receiving repeated deferrals, as long as they register with the military — a loophole embraced by the Haredi leadership.
But Shmuel Auerbach, a prominent Jerusalem rabbi with some 25,000 followers, rejects even this model. When some of his followers were jailed for refusing to register, thousands took to the streets of Jerusalem, halting the city’s light rail system and snarling traffic at major intersections.
But in a dramatic shift, some Haredi counter-protesters showed up and cursed the demonstrators.
The Israeli military says the number of Haredi soldiers has surged thanks to its efforts to cater to their needs, such as providing strictly kosher food, limiting contact with female soldiers and a schedule synchronized with prayer times.
The military said 2,850 Haredi soldiers enlisted last year, a 30 percent increase from 2014. In all, there are currently 7,000 Haredim in uniform.
The Hebrew University’s Amiram Gonen, director of the center for the study of ultra-Orthodox society at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, said Auerbach’s followers are shrinking in a world that realizes it needs to adapt.
“There is no earthquake, but there is a dynamic of new norms creeping into the society,” he said.
The judicial committee of a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses asked the Supreme Court of Canada today to rule that Canadian courts do not have the authority to review the expulsion of one of their members — arguing that judicial review by the courts should not extend to decisions by private and voluntary associations that have no effect on the public at large.
The Highwood Congregation, located in northwest Calgary, brought its appeal to Ottawa after Randy Wall took the congregation to court for expelling him from the church. The congregation’s judicial committee “disfellowshipped” Wall in the spring of 2014 after his family reported to the group’s elders that he had been drunk on two occasions and was verbally and emotionally abusing them — and after determining he was not “not sufficiently repentant” for those actions.
After three internal and unsuccessful appeals, Wall applied for judicial review of the congregation’s decision-making process, insisting it was flawed and that the congregation’s judicial committee had “breached the principles of natural justice and the duty to be fair.” Both the Court of Queen’s Bench and Court of Appeal in Alberta declared that it is within the jurisdiction of the superior court to review Wall’s case.
The congregation’s appeal of those two rulings, heard by the Supreme Court Thursday morning, has attracted a lot of attention from legal experts and religious communities across the country. Echoing the congregation’s plea today in the packed Ottawa courtroom were 12 religious, political and civil liberties groups — all of them unanimous in arguing the top court should not interfere in the membership decisions of religious bodies.
The consequences of such interference, they said, would be detrimental to the self-determination of religious groups.
“It (would) fundamentally alter our nation and not for the better,” counsel for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms said in court.
“The wish or desire of one person to associate with an unwilling person (or an unwilling group) is not a legal right of any kind,” the group wrote in its written submission to the Supreme Court. “For a court, or the government, to support such a ‘right’ violates the right of self-determination of the unwilling parties.”
This question of jurisdiction is one that has been explored and decided on by the courts — including the Supreme Court of Canada — in the past. Case law shows the top court has recognized the the autonomous ability of religious and private voluntary associations to govern their own affairs and dictate who can and cannot be a member of a congregation.
The courts have determined, however, there is room to intervene in specific cases when a membership decision turns on property or civil rights — or is of “sufficient importance to deserve the intervention of the court.”
Wall — who does not dispute the allegations against him that formed the basis of the congregation’s decision to kick him out — argues his case meets those requirements because his “disfellowship” caused him to lose business clients, suffer “significant economic harm” and experience fraught family relations.
In return, the congregation argues that neither Wall’s property rights, nor his civil rights, were affected by their decision. Justice Russell Brown also remarked during the hearing that “one does not have a justiciable right to earn a living.”
The congregation also argued that it did not ask or force its members to boycott Wall’s business — but people choose to do so in line with their religious convictions. Counsel for the congregation also said that “the door is not closed” to Wall and he can be reinstated in the congregation in the future.
More generally, the congregation argued that it would be inappropriate for the courts to review the internal decision-making processes of religious groups because those processes are ecclesiastical.
In a news release, the Association for Reformed Political Action — one of the 12 intervening groups — said the case before the Supreme Court has “profound implications for the separation of church and state” and it believes the court should maintain a hands-off approach to membership decision-making by religious groups.
“Secular judges have no authority and no expertise to review a church membership decision,” the association’s director of law and policy, André Schutten, wrote in the statement. “Church discipline is a spiritual matter falling within spiritual jurisdiction, not a legal matter falling within the courts’ civil jurisdiction. The courts should not interfere.”
The Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association took a slightly more nuanced position, arguing in its factum that “there will inevitably be cases where judicial intervention in the decisions of religious groups is ‘warranted'” but courts “should intervene … only in the rare case where required by a prevailing public interest.”
Thursday’s hearing was heard by all nine justices on the Supreme Court bench. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said the court will reserve its decision after today’s hearing.
Overflow seating was set up in the front hall of the Supreme Court to accommodate all the people who came to see the hearing live.
After years of silence, Dianne Lake – the youngest member of the infamous cult – finally tells her story in captivating, harrowing new book
Elizabeth Yuko Rolling Stone November 2, 2017
When Dianne Lake joined the Charles Manson's "Family," she was just 14 – the youngest recruit. A slight, comely girl with a cherubic face framed by shoulder-length ginger hair, Lake had recently started embracing the hippie attire and lifestyle proliferating in California by 1967, when she first met the clan. She spent two years with them, but since she didn't participate in the murders – and even testified against Manson et al during their capital trial in 1970 – Lake largely become a footnote to their history. But now, 50 years after she first stepped into Charles Manson's blacked-out bus, Lake is telling her story.
Part memoir, part compelling true-crime narrative, Lake's new book, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside the Cult, and the Darkness that Ended the Sixties, is a painfully relevant account of manipulation, abuse and masculinity so toxic it ended in murder. And though it doesn't add much new information to the canon, Lake offers a detailed, heartfelt and strangely relatable telling of how a teenage girl fell in love with one of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century, and how she ultimately fought her way out.
Lake takes her time setting up her story. The first third of Member of the Family takes place before she even meets Manson, walking readers through her unorthodox upbringing from Minnesota to California. "It's been really good for me to unburden the secret and the shame and untether myself from that association by accepting it and realizing that I was a victim," Lake tells Rolling Stone. "It has helped me understand a lot about myself."
With an eccentric, overbearing artist father and a mother who did everything she could to temper his emotions, Lake spent her formative years moving between temporary homes, which included a large home in a middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, a trailer her father traded that house for, an apartment in the city's housing projects, a California beach bungalow and a retrofitted bread truck.
"As misguided as this seems today, they believed in what they were doing, giving up their own security to pursue what they hoped would be a better life for us and for the world," Lake writes.
Consequently, long before Lake joined the Family, she was forced to grow up fast. Her first exposure to sex came at the age of nine, when her grandfather molested her in a bathtub. In addition to a father who appeared to be more interested in dropping out of society than raising a family, Lake also contended with parents who not only took drugs like marijuana and LSD, but also shared them with her when she was as young as 13.
In the summer of 1967, Lake was living with her parents and two younger siblings at a well-known commune called Hog Farm, but was asked to leave because she was "jail bait" – 14 and sexually active. When Lake left Hog Farm to move in with a couple, her parents gave her a note, essentially emancipating her. After the couple introduced her to Manson, that note became the stuff of legend – it would go down in Family lore as a letter handing her directly over to Charles Manson.
Like many of the other women in the Family, Lake's recruitment into the group involved being made to feel as though she truly belonged and was wanted, as well as a sexual encounter with Manson, who she describes as being "magnetic."
"He took his time to explore my body," Lake writes of their first time together. "He avoided the places that made me purr until I could barely stand it. After a few minutes, he put himself inside me while staring into my eyes. He was tender as he held me up to meet his deep thrusts. When he finished, he sighed; I exhaled and realized I was hooked." But it was more than sex: Lake makes it clear that she was in love with him, too.
The beginning of her time with Manson and his girls was marked by group acid trips and orgies, sermons and sing-alongs, as well as dumpster dives for food. The Family led a largely transient life, moving between various houses in Topanga Canyon before landing at Spahn Ranch. But alongside the free love and shunning of worldly possessions in favor of a simpler life, there was also sexual and psychological manipulation and abuse.
From the beginning, Manson did little to hide his true colors. He could change his demeanor and entire face at will, immediately morphing between being impish and playful to acting demonic. After years of watching her mother read her father's temperament and acting accordingly, Lake put those skills to use with Manson. She learned early on to anticipate his needs, taking cues from his erratic behavior.
Lake writes about happier times as well, including life as one of the most famous house guests of the 1960s, when she, Manson and other Family members moved in with Beach Boys' drummer Dennis Wilson in the summer of 1968. She tells Rolling Stone how she "just fell in love with that house and the grounds," including the sprawling estate, complete with a pool, a swing, and "a really fancy log cabin" – a far cry from a remote, crumbling movie set.
"It was really just a handful of us and Charlie that lived there," she says, noting that unlike some accounts, the entire Family didn't move in with Wilson; half went to Mendocino, another hippie enclave in northern. Lake enjoyed the dynamic of living with a smaller group of people; on top of that, she says that Manson was happy there – something important when your quality of life is largely dependent on one person's mood.
It was also exciting. Bands came through frequently; Lake says Manson and Wilson had what appeared to be a genuine friendship and camaraderie – that is, until Wilson and others in the music industry tried to turn Manson into a marketable rock star.
Used to getting his own way, Manson did not react well to getting feedback and direction on his not-yet-existent music career in the studio. Lake doesn't know what happened after she left the room, but notes that, according to other accounts, he may have pulled a buck knife on the rest of the Beach Boys. No matter what occurred, that was the beginning of the end for the Manson Family.
But it wasn't until the following year that things really came to a head. Lake recalls the night when she saw Leslie Van Houton frantically burning items in the fireplace, later piecing together that it occurred on the night that Van Houton, along with other Family members, murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their home. Lake never participated in any of the murders, but says that when the other women told her about their involvement crimes – which left a total of seven people, including actress Sharon Tate, dead – she was disturbed by their casual attitude about the crimes. "They were almost gleeful," she tells Rolling Stone. "It just shows how far gone they had descended into this madness.
In October 1969, Barker Ranch was raided by police and the Family members present – including Lake – were arrested. Because she was 16 years old, Lake was taken to a mental institution instead of remaining in jail with the rest of the girls. Upon her release, a police officer and his family took her in as a foster child, where she was living when it came time to face Manson and the three girls who committed the murders in court.
Attorneys warned her not to testify against Mason in court on account that she potentially could have been charged with perjury after she misrepresented events during her initial statement following the Family's arrest. In spite of that, Lake decided to testify.
Before her day in court, Lake says her biggest fear was not being charged with perjury, but seeing Manson in person again. Specifically, she notes, "that he'd have a hold on me – maybe from the good memories – or that he'd have this psychological control or input on me."
In fact, the opposite happened. On the witness stand, when asked if she was still in love with Mason, Lake said, "I guess so," at which point Manson shouted at her "You loved everybody. Don't put it all on Mr. Manson." The entire courtroom erupted in laughter, and in an instant, Lake says she felt as though God had lifted a veil from her eyes.
"Suddenly my eyes were open and I had him for the con that he probably always had been," she tells Rolling Stone. "Seeing his antics in the courtroom made me realize that that connection was gone."
Since she testified against Manson in court, Lake has only had contact with one other former member of the Family – Barbara Hoyt, who she visited Barker Ranch with 10 or 15 years ago. Lake visited Barker Ranch again recently during the process of writing the book, as well as going back to Spahn Ranch for the first time since the Family's arrest, which she says was "really an eye opener." It was much smaller than she remembered, and she had trouble getting oriented at a place she once tried to make her home.
Though Lake has been able to revisit some of the Family's former locations, other former members remain behind bars. When asked if she thinks Van Houton should receive parole for the murders of the LaBiancas, Lake says that that's "between the governor and God," adding that she's "not afraid if she gets out."
Lake says that if she could ask Manson one question today it would be whether he truly believed he was Jesus Christ. "I know he's not, but did he? Or does he still believe it?" she adds. "But no matter what I would ask him, I doubt very much I'd get an honest answer. He would be playing to the audience."
Lake hopes that the book helps people be aware the people they encounter. She finds it amazing that her story is becoming public at the same time as so many allegations are made against powerful men in the entertainment industry, following years of women remaining silent because they were ashamed.
"There are men out there who have no qualms about using you for their own purpose," she says. "It's a powerful position to be in for them, and it's so easy for lonely, disenfranchised kids, young adults to be drawn in. Be wary because people take advantage of people."
MOSCOW, November 2 (RAPSI) – Alleged founder of Kaula Dharma sect Sergey Kiriyenko, who stands charged with sexual assault and tortures, has been extradited from Bulgaria, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office reports via its Telegram channel on Thursday.
According to prosecutors, his accomplice Tatiana Severtseva has been extradited earlier on the same charges.
Investigators claim that in 2015 Kiriyenko organized a group bringing followers of the east techniques together. Adherents were to honor and implicitly obey the sect leader. Kiriyenko beat, emotionally and sexually abused the group members including children, the statement reads.
FaithLeaks.com is a non profit media organization founded on the belief that increased transparency within the religious organizations results in fewer untruths, less corruption, and less abuse. The organization provides sources and whistleblowers the technical ability to anonymously submit sensitive documents for use by professional and citizen journalists for starting and expanding news reporting, public commentary, and criticism related to religion.
FaithLeaks is a project by the Truth and Transparency Foundation, a non profit founded by Ryan McKnight and Ethan Dodge in November 2017.
Peggy Fletcher Stack Salt Lake Tribune November 6, 2017
Get ready to be scrutinized, “high-demand religions” (whoever you are).
MormonLeaks.com, which until now has focused exclusively on publishing purloined papers from within the LDS Church, is expanding into the larger universe of religious organizations.
The Nevada-based nonprofit announced that it is expanding its publication channels with the launch of FaithLeaks.com.
Like MormonLeaks, FaithLeaks is rooted on the premise that “increased transparency results in fewer untruths, less corruption and less abuse in any organization,” founder Ryan McKnight said in a news release. “It provides the same service of anonymizing sources from all religions, religious nonprofits, cults, and creeds with documented information they believe deserves to be made public.”
MormonLeaks began in late 2016 with the goal of providing a means whereby disgruntled or disillusioned Latter-day Saints could post internal and confidential documents without fear of discovery.
Since then, it has published on its website pay stubs of top LDS officials, minutes of meetings with church authorities, PowerPoint presentations about groups and individuals the faith considers apostate and private correspondence between leaders and members.
At the same time, McKnight and the site’s technical adviser, Ethan Dodge, have received queries from people eager to replicate MormonLeaks to divulge documents about other denominations.
At the end of July, Dodge, a cybersecurity expert who also goes by the moniker “Privacy P. Pratt,” gave a presentation to a packed audience at DefCon, the nation’s largest conference of hackers.
“A significant number of folks who aren’t Mormon understood our motives and the effects of our work,” said Dodge, who, like McKnight, has resigned from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Many attendees came up afterward, wanting help setting up a similar site.
“When it got right down to it, they didn’t want to put in the amount of work Ryan and I have put into MormonLeaks — anywhere from 20 to 60 hours a week,” he said Monday. “But the demand was obvious. Transparency is grossly lacking in so many of these groups.”
For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology are two faiths that could be considered “high-demand religions,” Dodge said, but the label might apply to any denomination, “depending on how believers allow that faith to control their lives.”
Is the team expecting lawsuits?
Yes, Dodge said, but MormonLeaks and FaithLeaks are prepared for them and remain undeterred by the prospect. The LDS Church, for instance, previously accused the site of copyright violations.
“We felt maybe there was a need to widen our net and broaden our mission,” McKnight said in an interview. “These tools give power back to the people, who may have been previously silenced.”
Still, determining the veracity of leaks from so many sources will be “magnitudes more challenging than it is with MormonLeaks,” McKnight acknowledged. “Not only because we don’t have the same level of sourcing, but because our own personal knowledge of many faiths is lacking.”
McKnight and Dodge, the two co-founders for FaithLeaks, have established relationships with people from various religions who “might be able to help us with the vetting process,” McKnight explained. “The more salacious a document is, the more proof it will require.”
Both sites have been put under the umbrella of a newly formed nonprofit called the Truth and Transparency Foundation, which can accept tax-deductible donations.
“We will just put documents out as we have been doing, and let the public and media decide their significance,” Dodge said. “That’s worked well so far.”
CRANBROOK, B.C. — Winston Blackmore’s application challenging the constitutionality of Canada’s polygamy law was adjourned Tuesday before it even started.
The problem is that Blackmore’s lawyer, Blair Suffredine, has missed a long string of filing deadlines that were meant to keep this court process on track.
He failed to give notice of a constitutional challenge in the original pretrial conferences. He missed the deadline for filing the application after he indicated during Blackmore’s polygamy trial in April that he intended to make a constitutional application.
Suffredine also missed Justice Sheri Ann Donegan’s Oct. 2 deadline for filing the Blackmore affidavit, a set of agreed upon facts and a book of authorities.
On Tuesday, Crown prosecutor Peter Wilson told the judge that he only received Blackmore’s latest affidavit late Monday night and in a format that he couldn’t open on his computer.
Normally, Wilson said he would object to the filing, “I am painfully aware that Mr. Blackmore is due his day in court.”
And while the prosecutor said he he hadn’t intended to cross-examine Blackmore on the original affidavit, he needed time to review the new one and to prepare to question Blackmore on what he’s filed.
As for the material that he needs to review? It’s in Wilson’s office in Vancouver.
“In 35 years, I have never stood up to cross-examine a witness without being prepared and I’m not prepared to do that,” he said. “It’s not fair that I’m put in that position now.”
As Wilson predicted when he began his remarks, the judge was not happy.
“This is an important case and fairness is integral to the entire process including fairness to the Crown to be properly prepared,” she said. “With reluctance I will adjourn even after all of the steps that have been taken to manage to get to this point.”
In court, Suffredine said, “Certainly, I agree I have difficulty meeting deadline. But the affidavit is 80 per cent the same as what given recently.”
The Doctors November 6, 2017 How far would you go to “fix” a troubled teen? The Doctors investigate camps, programs, and treatment centers that are designed to help troubled teens.
Mexican police have detained a polygamous cult leader wanted in the United States on charges of pedophilia and who is a suspect in the murder of three U.S. citizens in Mexico.
Orson William Black Jr. was arrested in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua along with his four wives and 22 other people, including minors, state prosecutors said in a statement.
In a joint operation with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), about 100 police officers swooped down on three houses and two ranches where Black and his followers were living, the statement said.
The arrests followed an investigation into the September 10 murder of three U.S. citizens in the region, aged 15, 19 and 23.
Black is a suspect in the murder of three men, but has not yet been charged. He is also facing human trafficking charges.
For now, Black and others arrested are accused of entering Mexico illegally, and animal cruelty, after police found butchered and frozen animals on the properties.
Black had been wanted in the U.S. for 15 years on pedophilia charges in the U.S. state of Arizona, before fleeing to Mexico.
Sarah Pulliam Bailey THE WASHINGTON POST October 31, 2017
Speaking from a stage encircled by 12 large wooden crosses, Gabriel Camargo held up wads of fake Brazilian money, showing his flock what could be theirs.
"God will bless you if you give a lot more to the church," said Camargo, a Pentecostal pastor with the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.
Then he extended an arm and pointed a black pouch toward his parishioners in the working-class neighborhood of Osasco.
Pick up your wallets and purses, he said, instructing his flock to look for Brazilian reais. About a dozen people hurried forward to dump bills and coins into the bag.
Those without cash didn't have to worry: An usher held out a credit card machine. "You'll have so much money" after giving generously to the church, the pastor boomed, that "smoke is going to come out of the machine."
In a country struggling with the worst economic crisis in its history, with long lines at unemployment offices and public health clinics, perhaps it's not surprising that Brazilians are increasingly drawn to the promises of personal wealth.
The belief that faith can lead to riches — known as the prosperity gospel — is a form of Pentecostalism, a Protestant movement that, in a modern-day version of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, is challenging the dominance of the Catholic Church in Latin America's most populous country.
Brazil, which has the most Catholics of any country in the world, is undergoing religious debates similar to those sparked in 1517 by a fiery German preacher named Martin Luther — over church riches and corruption, political power, and the proper way to read the Bible. By 2030, Catholics, now the religious majority in Brazil, are projected to become a religious minority.
Pentecostalism, which is sweeping across Latin America and Africa, is also challenging Catholicism worldwide. The Catholic Church has 1.1 billion members worldwide, about half of all Christians. But much of the global growth in Christianity is found in Pentecostalism, with about 300 million followers, according to the Pew Research Center.
Known for charismatic practices such as the laying on of hands for healing, exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and its emphasis on cultivating a personal relationship with Jesus, Pentecostalism has done a particularly good job of adapting itself to Brazilian culture, with pastors who tend to look and talk more like their flocks than Catholic priests do.
The prosperity gospel has spread quickly in poorer neighborhoods as the unemployment rate has climbed to a record 13 percent. The movement's promises of a better material life through actions such as giving and prayer, as well as its strict social rules in Brazil banning urban ills such as drinking and smoking, give followers a sense of structure and agency over their lives, said Paul Freston, a sociologist and an expert in Pentecostalism in Latin America.
"You learn to see yourself as an agent who has possibilities, who has the ability with God's help to achieve things, to get control of yourself," Freston said. "It doesn't mean you become rich, but it often means you rise from absolute destitution to dignified poverty."
Money matters
Much as they do in the United States, prosperity-gospel pastors also serve as role models for wealth attainment. Yet standing by the pool outside his $1.5 million house, Silas Malafaia, one of Brazil's most famous prosperity preachers, insists he doesn't live extravagantly.
Malafaia is one of the country's most prominent and controversial preachers, wielding enormous political clout on behalf of the evangelical population. In Brazil, the term "evangelical" is used synonymously with "Protestant," and about 70 percent of the country's Protestants are Pentecostal.
Many Brazilian pastors, like Malafaia, take their cues from prominent American prosperity-gospel preachers who have grown in influence as advisers to President Trump — even though only 3.6 percent of Americans are Pentecostal, compared with about a quarter of Brazilians. Evangelicals in Brazil have harnessed a voting bloc in the National Congress that enables them to lobby against gay rights and abortion and for the death penalty and limited government.
"Pentecostals have been a decisive element in tilting the Brazilian agenda toward conservative views and policies," said Joanildo Burity, who researches Brazilian evangelicals and politics.
Wearing a purple shirt, his hair slicked back, the 59-year-old Malafaia compared himself to evangelist Billy Graham, who was a friend of several U.S. presidents. There's nothing wrong with ministers having wealth if they get their money through side projects, he said, as he does through his spiritual bestsellers.
Pastors should also be compensated for the size of their ministries, Malafaia said.
"God wants me to be mediocre? The devil would give riches to everyone else," he said.
Malafaia said he is like Luther because he, too, wants the Bible in the hands of average parishioners instead of interpreted for them primarily by a religious elite.
"Have you ever seen the pope with a Bible in his hand?" Malafaia said. "The Catholic Church doesn't incentivize you to have the Bible in your hands. Catholics believe in leaders and the pope. Evangelicals believe in the Bible."
Indeed, most of the 4,000 people who streamed into his Assembly of God Victory in Christ church in a lower-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro for a Thursday night service came bearing Bibles in their hands. But even many Protestants in Brazil find it laughable that Malafaia is leading a reformation, because they believe leaders who focus on prosperity are selling a false gospel.
They put Pentecostalism's promise of personal wealth in exchange for donations on a level with the Catholic Church's sale of indulgences in exchange for the forgiveness of sins in the 16th century, a practice that was famously criticized by Luther.
Augustus Nicodemus Lopes, a Presbyterian minister, called the churches that promote a prosperity gospel "cults" and criticized their pastors for distributing healing cloths anointed with oil while asking for donations. "They're saying, 'Your pocket needs religion,' " Lopes said. He hopes for a reformation in Brazil — of Pentecostal churches.
Catholic Church competes
Pope Francis took his first overseas trip to Brazil right before it hosted the World Cup and the Olympics, when the country was riding a global commodities boom to prosperity. Many people here at the time felt the 2013 papal visit confirmed Brazil's position at the top of the world.
Manuel Jose da Penho and his wife, Maria, remember the exhilaration they felt when the pope showed up at their home. The couple recalled how their parish held Mass just once on Sundays before Francis's visit. Now the parish offers two Masses on Sundays and five on weekdays.
"After he came it was like a spiritual revival," said da Penho, who recently listed his two-bedroom house in a Rio de Janeiro slum for a premium price with the pitch "Pope Francis was here."
But experts say it's still too soon to tell whether enthusiasm for the first Latin American pope can counteract the rise of Pentecostalism, which had been well underway before the pope's visit.
The 2014 recession in Brazil complicated the church's challenge.
Now even with a popular pope, the church is desperately trying to keep young people like 28-year-old Marina Silva, who is unemployed, from leaving the faith. The prosperity gospel's promise of riches, however, is just one front in the competition.
Sipping orange juice in a Sao Paulo cafe before her next job interview, Silva explained that Brazilians are known for picking and choosing from different traditions in everything from food to art and music.
"We don't have strict characteristics," she said. "We mix things together to make them good. We are not like good little lambs."
To win over Brazilians, the Catholic Church is attempting to appeal to people such as Silva by mixing in charismatic components of Pentecostalism that have more emotional elements, including catchier music.
Catholic priests such as Marcelo Rossi, who has sold millions of CDs, have become increasingly popular. Rossi's Masses attract people from all over the city to his outdoor sanctuary.
At a recent service Silva attended, teenagers took selfies, live-streamed the service on Instagram and swayed along with their hands waving back and forth as if they were at a rock concert.
"Glory, glory hallelujah." Rossi sang, holding out his mic.
The competition for souls is so fierce in Brazil that every church must try mightily to stand out from the rest, said Odilo Scherer, archbishop of Sao Paulo.
"Today, people go by their personal subjective tastes and experiences," said Scherer, who was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI. "In our Brazilian context, religion is presented as a product in a marketplace which seeks to please the customer and present a product that is appetizing."
Church patrons outside a Pentecostal re-creation of Solomon's Temple in Sao Paulo wait in line to collect water believed to have healing properties. (Lianne Milton/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
Charges of corruption
To stand out in this marketplace and demonstrate their wealth and power, Pentecostal congregations have built enormous churches across the Brazilian landscape. Amid Sao Paulo's high-rises sprawls one compound that is perhaps the most lavish of all — a re-creation of the biblical Solomon's Temple.
Inside, an auditorium that seats 12,000 is flanked on both sides by menorahs, a nod to the church leaders' love for Jewish symbolism. Security guards in black suits buzz about as female ushers in white tunics and gold sashes hold large golden baskets in preparation for the offering. After services, members flock to a water fountain to fill up empty bottles with water that has been blessed.
The temple's construction in 2014 carried obvious symbolism: The biblical story of Solomon suggests that when he was king of Israel, he asked God for wisdom and was granted wealth, as well.
The massive church has also come to symbolize a challenge facing Pentecostalism in Brazil. Much like leaders of the Catholic Church in Europe during Luther's time, some prominent Pentecostals have become embroiled in high-profile political and financial scandals.
Edir Macedo, pastor at the temple and founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God denomination, has fought allegations of corruption, including that his church siphoned billions of dollars set aside for charity. In 1992, Macedo spent 11 days in jail on charges of charlatanism .
Still, Macedo maintains enormous reach through TV and social media, and his political endorsements are hugely influential. A 2015 Datafolha poll showed that his church was considered the fifth most-influential institution in Brazil, above the presidency. The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Macedo's nephew, is a bishop in the denomination.
Other prominent Pentecostals have been involved in scandals splashed across Brazil's front pages. Megachurch pastors Estevam and Sônia Hernandes were arrested in 2007 in Miami and pleaded guilty to illegally smuggling money into the United States. A prominent Pentecostal, Eduardo Cunha, was the first major politician sentenced to prison this year in a huge corruption scandal called Operation Car Wash that has ensnared many high-profile politicians.
"What makes this scandalous, of course, is that the evangelicals set themselves apart rhetorically as a force for moral goodness and order," said Eric Miller, a professor at Geneva College in Pennsylvania who studies Brazilian religion.
Even so, many Brazilians are already jaded by political bribery in the country in general, so it's difficult to say whether scandals are enough to turn people away from Pentecostalism, Miller said.
But the Catholic Church has at least one advantage over its Pentecostal counterparts in Brazil. While it doesn't promise riches, it tends to do a better job of providing social services such as food and shelter, said Celso Rudeck, a pastor in a Catholic parish across the street from the re-creation of Solomon's Temple.
So sometimes when former Catholics tire of praying for money without result, they return to the flock for help in this world, he said.
Bailey reported this article on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project.
A perpetual injunction against a former Church of Scientology (CoS) member which prevented him from harassing or besetting two current members has been lifted by the High Court, writes Ann O'Loughlin.
Mr Justice Seamus Noonan said Peter Griffiths (63) had apologised and accepted it was wrong and unlawful to follow Zabrina Collins and Michael O'Donnell around when they delivered CoS-funded "Truth about Drugs" leaflets on December 20, 2014.
The judge was satisfied Mr Griffiths was a truthful witness and, by and large, a law abiding citizen. He also had regard to the fact that his fellow defendant, John McGhee, an embalmer from Clara, Co Offaly, was the main protagonist in the harassment on the day the CoSmembers were followed around the streets of north city Dublin.
Mr Griffiths, of Teeling Street, Ballina, Co Mayo, had brought an appeal against an injunction first granted a few days after the December 20 incident, preventing him, and Mr McGhee from door stepping, intimidating, approaching, harassing or videoing Ms Collins, who is a CoS director originally from Donegal and now living in Tyrellstown, Dublin, or Mr O'Donnell, of Cherrywood Lawn, Clondalkin, Dublin.
The injunction applied to interference at the plaintiffs' homes, place of work or CoS premises. It was later made perpetual when the case was remitted from the High to the Circuit Court.
Ms Collins and Mr O'Donnell opposed Mr Griffiths appeal over the permanent nature of the injunction. They said it should stay in place because Mr Griffiths' behaviour towards them had got progressively worse over a number of years until the injunction was granted.
Mr Griffiths believed the injunction was too wide because it prevented him from engaging in peaceful protest. Mr McGhee did not appeal.
Lifting the injunction on Wednesday, Mr Justice Noonan said the test for a perpetual injunction was whether a substantial risk of danger existed.
In this case, there was only one incident complained of, the following around of Ms Collins and Mr O'Donnell as they delivered leaflets in 2014 for half an hour.
Ms Collins and Mr O'Donnell had been awarded damages for harassment and assault, €3,500 against Mr McGhee and €2,000 against Mr Griffiths over that incident.
Since the injunction was granted nearly three years ago, there has been no suggestion Mr Griffiths was in breach of it, the judge said.
Taking these factors, and the fact that Mr Griffiths had apologised and was not the main protaganist on the day of the incident, the judge was satisfied the behaviour complained of "is small and certainly does not amount to a substantial risk it will recur".
He hoped Mr Griffiths had learnt his lesson from this saga and will stay well away from plaintiffs in the future. If not, he may expect the court to take an extremely serious view of any potentially unlawful acts that may occur.
However, the judge said even if he is wrong in that conclusion there was still another significant factor relating to the question that a plaintiff must have "clean hands" when they seek injunctive relief.
This was well explained in a 1972 case co-incidentally involving CoS founder L Ron Hubbard, who sought an injunction preventing Cyril Vosper, a former CoS member, from publishing a book critical of its practices and philosophies (entitled "The Mind Benders").
In that case, Mr Justice Noonan said, an English judge refused to grant Hubbard an injunction on the basis that CoS had been protecting their secrets by "deplorable means" as evidenced by CoS' own code of ethics. Hubbard therefore did not come to court with clean hands, the English judge said, when asking the court to protect those secrets by means of an injunction preventing publication.
Ms Collins, who had been ordered by the Circuit Court to pay Mr Griffiths €5,000 over untrue allegations she made about him following a talk on scientology he gave in a Dublin school, had herself engaged in an attempt to demonise and discredit Mr Griffiths, Mr Justice Noonan said.
This attempt to undermine any criticism he (Griffiths) had, legitimate or otherwise, of the CoS, cannot be viewed "as other than a failure to come to court with clean hands".
The judge dissolved the perpetual injunction and adjourned the question of costs for two weeks.
Two towns on the Utah-Arizona line have agreed to pay $350,000 to people who allege they were wrongly arrested by police loyal to a polygamous sect.
The settlements noted in court records last week resolve two civil rights lawsuits against Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., and their joint police force, referred to as marshals. The towns are the longtime home of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
The settlements arrive as Arizona’s police regulators are seeking to remove six of the community’s seven marshals for allegations including making false arrests, failing to investigate crimes and lying to investigators.
The plaintiffs’ attorney in both lawsuits, Bill Walker, on Thursday said the settlements are “significant victories” for his clients. He also called the payouts further proof that the marshals still favor members of the FLDS and why the state of Arizona should boot them.
“I think it pretty much puts the last nails in the coffin of these marshals,” Walker said.
The lawyer for Colorado City, Jeff Matura, on Thursday said the towns were not admitting any wrongdoing. The settlements, he said, are “a business decision to limit the exposure and settle the case.” The money will be paid from city funds, Matura said.
Seth Cooke and a company he formed, Prairie Farms LLC, will receive $200,000, according to Walker and Matura.
Cooke and another man named Patrick Pipkin in 2015 obtained an agreement from the owner of an old Colorado City zoo to farm and ranch on the property.
Pipkin and Cooke went to take possession of the zoo, and a third man, Andrew Chatwin went with them. The towns’ marshals arrived and said the three were trespassing. Pipkin and Cooke refused to leave and were arrested and booked into jail on suspicion of trespassing for the first time on Oct. 13, 2015.
Four days later, Pipkin and Chatwin returned to the zoo and were arrested again. Pipkin and Chatwin settled their cases in August and received a combined $221,000.
In the second lawsuit recently settled, Isaac Wyler and his girlfriend, Twila Carstens, will receive a total of $150,000. On Dec. 23, 2015, they were changing the locks on a home in Hildale where sheriffs deputies had recently served an eviction.
According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, marshals arrived, accused Wyler and Carstens of trespassing and handcuffed and arrested them. Wyler and Carstens also accused the marshals of taking them to the Arizona side so sheriff’s deputies from Utah couldn’t provide assistance.
The marshals have been the subject of scrutiny for years as a series of civil rights lawsuitshave made their way through the courts. Then in November of last year, Arizona’s police regulators, called the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, voted to begin the process of removing six of the marshals. The marshals have remained on the job while they appeal. An appeal hearing has still not been scheduled.
Matura on Thursday said the standards and training board during the summer had asked his clients for more records about past incidents involving the marshals. Matura said the marshals have thus far not provided those records.
Matura explained he was trying to ascertain whether the records are part of the ongoing case against the marshals or part of a new investigation. Fact finding has ended for the current case, Matura said, and if Arizona is starting a new investigation, the marshals have a right to be informed of that before any records are provided.
“We’re trying to figure out why, what the scope of this request is,” Matura said.
Jack Lane, the director of the standards and training board, on Thursday declined to specify which records he requested, but said they address issues that have been raised previously. Providing them could be beneficial to the marshals, he said.
“It’s possible that these documents might actually clear some of these matters up that have been brought to the board,” Lane said.
The charges against the marshals include falsely arresting the men at the zoo. The marshals also are accused of failing to investigate crimes ranging from vandalism to child sex abuse, of lying to investigators about what names they have used over the years and whether they served on a church security force.
The marshals facing discipline are Chief Jeremiah “Jerry” H. Darger and deputies Samuel E. Johnson, Hyrum S. Roundy, Daniel R. Barlow, Jacob L. Barlow Jr. and Daniel N. Musser.
A seventh marshal, Curtis L. Cooke, resigned in 2016 rather than face discipline from the Arizona regulators. Cooke’s replacement is the only marshal not under suspicion.
The Hildale and Colorado City marshals are certified in Utah and Arizona. Utah’s police regulators in 2016 closed an investigation into the marshals with no action.
Laws in the two states are different. Arizona’s police board can take action against “malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance,” according to its regulations.
Utah once had similar language. Then, in 2010, the Utah Legislature changed the law to limit police discipline cases to a few specific offenses, including criminal conduct, sex on duty, and drug and alcohol problems.
Members from the Facebook group Guelph Stands Against Scientology protested outside church offices on Baker Street Saturday
Troy Bridgeman GuelphToday October 29, 2017
A small but enthusiastic group of protestors replete with a healthy supply of Guy Fawkes masks and signs gathered outside the new Canadian headquarters of the Church of Scientology Saturday afternoon.
“The purpose of the protest is that we don’t believe it is a religion,” said organizer Frank Malott. “We don’t believe it is a cult. We believe it is a business. We don’t like the way children are being treated. We don’t like the way the Sea Orgs are being treated. We just believe that it is not a religion.”
Malott helped establish the Guelph Stands Against Scientology Facebook group and was one of nearly 30 people that braved the cold and rain Saturday to voice their opposition to the church setting up in Guelph.
“There are 760 in our group right now on the Facebook page,” said Malott. “It was three of us that started the group. One day we realized that Guelph was bringing in the Scientology office and a bunch of us thought, let’s start a group and see what happens.”
Malott and most of the other protestors wore masks or other disguises and carried signs.
“I am just protecting myself from Scientology,” said Malott.
Repeated efforts to talk with people inside the building at 40 Baker St were unanswered and no one from the church’s nearest office in Cambridge has responded to a request for an interview.
In an earlier GuelphToday story, Church of Scientology’s Canadian president Yvette Shank said the building will be used as an administrative building for the Church of Scientology.
“This is the Continental Liaison Office, responsible for the coordination of Church activities across Canada,” said Shank.
Malott said his group has tried to contact Shank to arrange a meeting and get more information about their plans for the Guelph office.
“We don’t know how to contact them,” he said. “They won’t answer our emails. We’ve had people write and send emails.”
One man who was there with his granddaughter said he was a member of Scientology in the 1970s but became disillusioned with the organization and left. He said he had no problems with the church after he left but declined to speak on the record about his experience.
All but one of the protestors refused to speak on the record.
Barbara Mathews said she was there to protest all cult activity in the city.
“I am concerned about their power and control over the vulnerable,” said Mathews. “That is basically my premise and we don’t need a group like this in Guelph."
Malott said that they plan to continue protesting the church’s activities in Guelph.
“We are here to educate the city of Guelph,” he said. “This won’t be the last protest."
"We haven’t really started on the second protest yet, but once this one is over and done with we will move forward to the next protest.”
“It’s a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number,” David Meade told The Washington Post then. A series of catastrophic events would follow the omen, he claimed, culminating in the appearance of a mysterious planet called Nibiru and the end of “the world as we know it.”
Meade’s claim sold a lot of tabloids and YouTube ads. When Sept. 23 passed with no omens or calamities, Meade revised his very numerologically significant date to Oct. 15, which also came and went uneventfully.
You might think two consecutive misfires would quash the Nibiru theory. Instead, it’s simply transcended its erroneous author.
Meade isn’t even mentioned in the latest batch of tabloid stories, which quote yet another doomsday theorist to warn that the end of all things not on Sept. 23 or Oct. 15 — but now Nov. 19, when Nibiru is supposed to set off cataclysmic earthquakes.
“November 19th will see earthquake Armageddon across huge swaths of the planet,” the Daily Express wrote in representative tones. The paper cited as evidence unnamed “astronomers and seismologists” — and an illegible picture of the Earth, covered like pincushion in quake markers.
Try to pin down the “astronomers and seismologists” who supposedly support this theory, and you end up at PlanetXNews.com, a conspiracy website that Meade sometimes writes for.
The quake-pocalypse theory comes to us courtesy of a different author, Terral Croft. He writes that seismic activity has been increasing around the world as the massive “Black Star” (Nibiru has many names) wheels around the edge of the solar system, upsetting the planets within.
Meade predicted Nibiru would approach Earth, maybe even collide with it. But this latest version of the theory claims Earth will simply line up with the sun and the “black star” on Nov. 19, somehow triggering a “backside-alignment quake event.”
Croft’s article doesn’t say what, exactly will happen then. The tabloids have been happy to fill in the blanks, claiming volcanoes will erupt and tectonic plates would smash into one another.
But like every other Nibiru doomsday theory (which go back to 2003, as Kristine Phillips wrote for The Post) it’s based on an analysis of pure fantasy.
Nibiru, as far as science can tell us, simply doesn’t exist.
“It would be bright. It would be easily visible to the naked eye,” a NASA scientist wrote several years ago. “It would already be perturbing the orbits of Mars and Earth.”
Astronomy aside, Croft’s article cites data from the U.S. Geological Society to argue that earthquakes have been increasing across the eastern United States and Canada as Niburu approaches its calamitous alignment with the sun.
With the USGS couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, the agency’s earthquake catalogue tells a different story. So far, 2017 has seen fewer earthquakes worldwide with a weaker average magnitude than the same period in 2016.
In other words, it doesn’t look much like the end times.
Not that anything, at this point, appears able to stop Nibiru’s imaginary advances.
In fact, the Express had a breaking update on Saturday — a new theory blaming a Vatican coverup for all of Nibiru’s apparent failures to end the world on schedule.
How we see Salem’s witches tells us more about the present than the past.
Tara Isabella Burton VOX October 30, 2017
SALEM, Massachusetts — It is nightfall in Salem, the week before Halloween. A woman who looks to be in her 70s sits in the bar of the Hawthorne Hotel sporting a novelty witch hat. Her male companion wears a spiderweb tie. Along the lawn at Washington Square, another tourist tugs at her companion’s sleeve as she considers another destination for their week. “But it’s not spooky like this place, right?” she asks.
At Pastime 32, a vintage-inspired craft shop just off Essex Street, a shopkeeper in velvet gives visitors advice about practicing magic. “Witchcraft is more of a lifestyle now than a religion,” she says. She recommends that they read a BuzzFeed article to that effect. “So if a spell works it works.” In the old days, she tells them, you might have had to resort to the formal magic kept in some arcane spell book. But now, she adds brightly, you can just check out Witch Instagram for ideas.
Along the narrow, red brick street in the pedestrianized heart of town, T-shirt stalls alternate with New Age storefronts selling herbs, tinctures, and Tarot cards.
Two girls fixate on the shirts. “Look! I got stoned in Salem.” One pauses for a second. “Get it? Stoned?” She rolls her eyes, and explains to her friend what it means to stone somebody in order to execute them.
These tourists are just some of the million-odd who come to Salem each year. Destination Salem’s Stacia Cooper says these tourists come to visit sites and museums associated with the Salem Witch Trials, where 20 people, mostly women, were executed on suspicion of witchcraft after an outbreak of mass hysteria in 1692 through 1693. Some visitors come for the “spooky” atmosphere. Others come, often with school groups, to learn more about a particularly brutal time in American history. And others still come because they identify as witches or practitioners of magic to pay tribute to a place that, for some, has become a source of spiritual pilgrimage.
The difference in their approach, and the myriad differing narratives around the trials available across town, reveal how powerful — and how diffuse — the story of the Salem Witch Trials really is. Is it a story about the dangers of superstition? About what happens when people let fear take over their lives? About misogyny and men policing women’s identities? The different ways in which Salem’s residents tell and retell the Salem narrative can tell us as much about 20th and 21st century America as they can about New England in 1693. A range of political and social groups have interpreted Salem differently
For Salem’s 40,000 residents, particularly those who make their living through witch-related tourism, it can be a challenge to balance the historic narrative of the Salem Witch Trials with the powerful mythology that has surrounded it.
Between 1692 and 1693, 19 people were hanged, and one crushed to death, ostensibly for the civil crime of practicing malevolent witchcraft, after an outbreak of mass hysteria. Chances are, none of those 20 people were witches — they all maintained their innocence, with the exception of Tituba, a local enslaved woman, whose confession may have been tortured out of her.
The majority of the Salem Witch Trials didn’t even happen in Salem Town — what is known as Salem today — but in Salem Village, an inland hamlet that was renamed Danvers in 1752. And on top of all this, none of the accused witches were stoned or burned at the stake in Salem, either.
According to Smithsonian’s Danny Lewis, the witch trials were, historically, a taboo subject within Salem; a reminder of a horrific aberration. But in the 20th century, interest in the Salem Witch trials as a pop culture phenomenon was renewed. Much of this began with Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible. A retelling of the trials, the play was a coded indictment of the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 1950s. Miller heavily implied that the accusers and magistrates of Salem were motivated by a combination of fear and greed, including a desire to seize the lands of the accused. The story of Salem, for Miller, was the story of any mass panic — how self-interested human use fear and panic to stoke “witch hunts” for personal gain.
Then came Bewitched. When the popular, proto-feminist supernatural sitcom filmed a portion of its seventh season here in 1970, the protagonist, Samantha, seemed to uphold this dominant narrative. Samantha, a “real” witch who has magically time-traveled back to 17th-century Salem, uses her powers to prove that the other accused witches were innocent, condemning the prejudices of those who thought otherwise.
But Bewitched also heralded a change in how people saw Salem. It became “Witch City.” Witches were now in fashion, after all — in part because of Bewitched — and Salem’s witch history could be monetized. And Salem could use the money. After centuries as a prosperous shipping port, Salem’s fortunes were in decline. The “Witch Tourism” boom revitalized Salem. (In 2005, in commemoration of that boom, Salem erected a controversial statue of Samantha in the town’s main square, raising more debates about the degree to which “pro-witch” aesthetics had coopted Salem’s legacy).
By the ’70s, after all, feminist and New Age movements alike had reappropriated elements of the Salem narrative as part of a wider interest in women’s spirituality. For many, the so-called witches of Salem were victims of a male conspiracy. The Salem story was the story of earth-centered, “natural” female spirituality dominated by a group of misogynist men who sought to control them. Witchcraft was something to celebrate.
In 1970, witch Laurie Cabot opened Salem’s first New Age shop and several others followed suit. The accused of 1692 may not have been witches, but they were nevertheless celebrated as martyrs: foremothers of a modern movement they themselves would almost certainly have disavowed.
Those two strands of historical narrative — Salem as a site of mass panic, and Salem as witch city — are factually opposed to each other. Kristina Stevick, artistic director of the Cry Innocent project, which lets people experience a mock witch trial, thinks it’s utterly illogical. “A person can’t both be innocent and a martyr. That narrative really puzzles me.”
And both narratives are also at odds with the generic “spookiness” that makes up much of the town’s touristic appeal, particularly in Halloween season. (Of Salem’s 40,000 residents, between 800 and 1,600 identify as witches, with many working in or through the town’s witch shops, or in witch-related tourism industries, such as the city’s myriad magic-themed walking tours.
The economics of Salem witchery is often a sore subject for many. Sources speaking on background spoke of “witch wars” between rival shop proprietors as well as price-fixing of services like Tarot readings, while some sources I contacted for this article would only agree to be interviewed on the condition certain proprietors be excluded from my reporting. (I have not quoted any of them.) In Salem, accused “witches” are both innocents and martyrs
Yet many of Salem’s tourist attractions try to have it both ways.
Nowhere is that difficult balance more evident than at the Salem Witch Museum, which opened in 1972 — soon after Bewitched put the show on the map. Located in a converted church off Salem Common, the Museum tells the story of the trials through a combination of life-size wax statues, eerie sound effects, and a narrator who seems to have taken his delivery from Vincent Price.
He speculates about the devil “howling in the wind” (there’s a menacing-looking statue of Satan himself), reports Puritan superstitions about witches’ bacchanals, and captures each gory execution of the accused with thoroughly macabre sound effects. He walks us through a grisly narrative that combines kitschy “spookiness” with a somewhat reductionist view of the trials, portraying them purely as the result of ignorant superstition, even as he uses the tropes of magic for dramatic effect. While the narrator reminds us that the mass panic was anything but supernatural, he leaves us with a distinctly Gothic ending, asking us to reflect on who the “real demons are” and “on whose side they are still working today.”
The museum’s second exhibit likewise tells us as much about 1970s New Age feminism as it does about the Salem Witch trials. Dedicated to the history of the witch from the pre-Christian era to the modern day, the museum (and its docents) tell a very clear-cut, if simplistic, narrative. Women, particularly midwives, were once “in touch with” the earth. They worshipped a pre-Christian Goddess. Once Christianity came to power, evil Christian men — “the Church” — were afraid of female power and tried to stamp it out. More wax figures present different visions of the witch: the angelic, beaming midwife, the green-faced crone we recognize from The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West.
A timeline on one wall elides world history: We move swiftly from “Jesus Christ is crucified” to witch panics in 16th-century Scotland, with an implicit link between the two. A final tableau of two modern Wiccans invites us to learn more about this “ancient religion” and speak to its peace-loving practitioners. While the odd mention is made of the fact that Salem’s witches were innocent, a less-careful viewer could easily come away with the idea that the accused of Salem did practice wholesome, nature-based magical traditions and worship a Goddess in secret, and that this is, in fact, a good thing.
Historicity, in this exhibition, seems less important than symbolism, celebrating the witch as a symbol of maligned womanhood. Wicca, far from being an “ancient religion,” only dates back to the 1950s, which the museum never mentions. And although the “green-skinned witch” as a trope only dates back to 1939’s Wizard of Oz, when dyeing Margaret Hamilton’s skin was a novel special effect to capitalize on the then-new use of Technicolor, my docent presents several other options as equally valid. Were witches green-skinned because of their use of herbs, she asks aloud? A witch who visited the exhibition, she tells us, sees the green as important symbolism: It is the bruises left upon her by intolerant Christian men who beat her for her independent thought.
It’s a powerful exhibit, to be sure, but one with an agenda. And it raises questions about more than just what happened in 1692. Rather, it challenges us to think about whether history can or should be rewritten, or reimagined, if the myths it presents to us can inspire positive change. Does a woman’s personal reaction to a figure of a witch — her intuitive feeling that her face is the color of bruises — belong in a museum alongside, say, actual documents of the trials themselves? For others, Salem is about learning to think historically — and critically — about challenging narratives
Stevick, at least, has her doubts. Her Cry Innocent project is an immersive theatre experience that challenges audience members to participate in a mock witch trial. It is designed to help audiences understand the mentality of the witch trials, ideally without projecting a contemporary narrative upon it. The project plays an exceedingly necessary role in Salem, since, Stevick says, the trials have become a lightning rod for different, often ahistorical, interpretations of what happened in 1693.
She counts off the most popular misconceptions: “That it’s all about land-grabbing, that it’s just about misdirected misogyny [against accused women], that Puritans were just stupid and superstitious, that those who died were the spiritual foremothers of the Wicca movement…”
Stevick says she sympathizes with such interpretations up to a point. But, ultimately, each narrative fails to appreciate the “cocktail of factors” that made Salem a lightning rod for hysteria in the late 17th century. The dangers of foreign invasion, tensions within the community over religious observance, the adversarial relationship between the insular Salem Village and the wealthier Salem Town, tensions over the use of folk magic, and various waves of outbreak of illness all contributed to an incident that was about so much more than mere superstition or mere misogyny or mere anything.
Often, Stevick says, people are reluctant to abandon their preconceived narratives about the trials. She recalls an incident that happened the previous week with a middle school group that had booked a Cry Innocent show.
“They had a reductionist idea of what the witch hunt hysteria was about and thought that this was their opportunity to bring down the magistrate,” Stevick said. Rather than looking through the historical evidence presented during the show, she said, the students derailed the show with unrelated questions and preconceived judgments, making the show “a little bit distressing” for the actors.
She recalls the students’ teacher was taken aback by the complexity with which the Cry Innocent cast wanted to approach the 17th-century Puritan mindset. "She wanted this to be an opportunity for the students to take down the patriarchy, which I could relate to, but it’s not what’s happening here.”
It’s a shame, says Stevick, because ultimately developing a more complex understanding of history is necessary if one is to avoid repeating it. “What I would hope is that a person who has had 45 minutes to flirt with a 17th-century English mindset … would understand why a person might accuse somebody of witchcraft.”
It is that, she says, rather than a preconceived narrative, that has the most power to inspire change.
Only once audience members learn to empathize with people from the past whose attitudes and preconceptions might be different from their own, she says, audience members can ask themselves: “How can I use this newfound imagination … to try and look into my current political situation? … Our country is in a fragile dangerous place [right now] and we need to be extremely careful that a great tragedy doesn’t happen.” She corrects herself. "Another great tragedy." For contemporary witches, Salem’s magic is still “mysterious”
Among Salem’s practicing witches, the place’s magic transcends its history. Margaret McGilvray, who runs The Witchery, equal parts magic shop and experimental performance art space, says that — despite the innocence of Salem’s original “witches” — she’s always felt a preternatural connection to the place. Visiting the Salem Witch Museum as a child, McGilvray says, she found herself identifying with the accused.
"I came home to my mom and said 'Ma, I think I’m a witch.’” She recognizes that the witches of Salem denied being witches up through their last breaths, but nevertheless finds in Salem a kind of spiritual home; a place where she can connect with and collaborate with like-minded practitioners. Part of it, she acknowledges, is “commercialism” — if you’re a witch, Salem is a great place to make a living — but part of it is more profound.
“There is something just mysterious about Salem as a gut level,” McGilvray says.
And Salem’s draw, for other witches, has transcended its witchy history, becoming as much about the present as the past.
As the “witch aesthetic” becomes more popularas a cultural signifier — blending ’70s-era New Age spirituality with left-wing activism and, at times, performative rebellion — Salem has become something of a hipster haven. In 2015, Salem’s more eclectic, cluttered-looking witch shops were joined by the sleek, minimalist HausWitch (which itself started as an Instagram), where activist hours are on the schedule alongside Tarot salons and meditation classes. (Destination Salem’s Cooper describes them as the “millennial” witch store).
These witches are attracted to what HausWitch worker Cheryl Rafuse calls the “good vibes” of Salem — a town whose witch traditions have given rise, in turn, to a thriving counterculture, and the creative community that comes with it — as to its history. So often Rafuse says, people visit out of interest in the “Witch City” only to fall in love with the place and joke about moving. “And then they end up moving here a year later.”
Sure, she admits, she gets frustrated by the gimmicky aesthetic of some of the town’s tourist traps. She points to the Stoned in Salem T-shirts as a particularly egregious example.
“There’s a scene [in Salem] that’s a little uncomfortable considering” the grotesque nature of the trials, Rafuse says.
“A lot uncomfortable,” Erica Feldmann, the shop’s owner, cuts in.
Rafuse continues, “the people we draw tend to be pretty woke, good-vibe-y people, or at least looking for something here [that’s] at least not gimmicky. We have that ‘Witch City' vibe that people love … but [when] people try to make light of history” — mocking or joking about those that died — Rafuse and other shop workers actively work to discourage them.
Feldmann adds, “The world needed a place to celebrate the witch, and that ended up being Salem, and that has nothing to do with the witch trials." Ultimately, Salem’s history might be less important than its symbolism
The “true history" of Salem, in other words, might be almost irrelevant. A combination of economics and mythology have made Salem a location of pilgrimage for those who identify with the accused of 1693, whether they are witches themselves, feminists drawn to the narrative of wrongly accused women, or just ordinary people drawn to the story of those penalized for being a little bit different. Even Stevick acknowledges that even the more ahistorical elements of Salem’s mythology — that it was all about misogyny, say — might be powerful narratives of support for people who need them most.
She recalls an episode years ago, when she was portraying the character of Bridget Bishop — the woman on trial for witchcraft. A student group had come in, and a shy girl in the audience got up to ask a question in defense of Bishop. Stevick can’t remember precisely what the question was, but "I could tell that she was really nervous to speak in public, she was shaking … I remember it being an intense moment — the air was thick.”
A few years later, when the teacher brought in another group, she and Stevick discussed that day. The teacher told Stevick the girl was famously shy, without many friends.
“It turned out that she was pregnant,” Stevick remembers. “[She was] facing this extra level of slut-shaming and all this stuff at school … [the Cry Innocent experience] had given her the extrovertive oomph to get up and say something. And that moment had been a catharsis for her. And that touched me so deeply and made me think: That’s why I love doing this type of theater. That kind of catharsis is okay. Even while it might not be quite the right narrative, I’m okay with people saying, ‘Yeah Bridget! Go Bridget!’ too.”
There is, in all this, a degree of irony. A town once derided for the damaging aftereffects of religion and superstition has now remade itself in the image of its own new myths.
At Salem’s Witch Museum, the narrator tells us — with more than a little derision — that the Puritans were a superstitious people. They made up stories to explain the world around them, narratives that would make the chaos of their existence make sense. But if Salem can teach us anything, not a lot has changed.
