Abstract
Abstract If history repeats itself there are special reasons to pay attention to those phenomena that tend to return in new disguises. The seventeenth-century child witch trials among the Basques and in northern Sweden seem to be such a phenomenon. During the last 15 years the western world has experienced these trials in a new and refined disguise. A number of parents and employees of nursery schools have been tried for abusing children in organized Satanic rituals. A comparison of the historical and modern child witch syndromes shows the following parallels: association with moral panic; breakdown of solidarity; a saturation point; the argument that the crime is of such a secret kind that it cannot be exposed without slackening legal procedures; witch signs and witch tests; absence of physical evidence; brainwashing; moral pressure during interrogation of witnesses; unconscious influencing of the witnesses; contamination of evidence; irregularities in the interrogation procedures; consistency of confess...
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