by Rael Jean Isaac

About the author: Rael Jean Isaac writes on public policy issues for National Review.

On January 14, 1997, two hundred people gathered in Salem, Massachusetts, to commemorate the three-hundredth anniversary of the Day of Contrition, a day of fasting and remorse proclaimed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony for the public hysteria and judicial misconduct that had led to “great hardship brought upon innocent persons” in what have come to be known as the Salem witch trials. Among those present were many of the chief participants in the struggle against their modern variant, the child-sex abuse persecutions of the 1980s and 1990s, most of which have included charges of Satanic ritual.

Ridiculous Charges

In addition to the pioneering researchers on the suggestibility of children and a handful of journalists who...