Amanda Knox

At her trial an allegation of flying was dropped after the judge ruled that flying was perfectly legal but the central charge of conversing with the Devil in the form of a cat was upheld. Three hundred years ago, Wenham was the last person to be condemned to death for witchcraft in England. But the case was a turning point. The judge, sceptical about the whole business, set aside her conviction. After public debate raged for the next two decades the Witchcraft Act of 1604 was replaced by a 1735 Act that dispensed with the idea of real witchcraft and replaced it with the crime of pretended witchcraft. We might celebrate the anniversary, except for two points. The cruel horror of witch-finding is still going on in some corners of this country. And recent changes to the legal system mean British subjects could find themselves hauled before a court for a witchtrial in all but name. Social workers are about to receive new guidance on witchcraft and witch-finding after a court heard this month that 15-year-old Kristy Bamu confessed under torture to being a sorcerer and was murdered by his sister in East London. No doubt “lessons will be learned” as they always say.

in the past decade the Metropolitan Police has investigated 83 cases of child torture arising from a belief in witchcraft and is concerned that many more go unreported

When two women who tortured an eight-year-old girl from Angola for being a witch were jailed for 10 years in 2005, an “independent review” was announced. In 2000 Victoria Climbié, an eight-year-old girl from the Ivory Coast, was killed by family members who believed that she was possessed. HEALTH Secretary of the day Alan Milburn said it was “vital that lessons are learned”. But in the past decade the Metropolitan Police has investigated 83 cases of child torture arising from a belief in witchcraft and is concerned that many more go unreported. The toxic superstition that the murderers embraced was a perverse mixture of some Central African beliefs about witchcraft and modern evangelical Christianity. Witchfinding isn’t just a private aberration among a few families. There are almost 4,000 Pentecostal churches in the UK including some that practise exorcism and sell cures for witchcraft, charging handsomely for the “service”.

Plainly even very mixed-up spiritual beliefs do not always lead to terrible crimes but they can be a powerful catalyst for some wicked people and a business for others. Where are the atheist activists when real evil is being done in the name of religion? Too busy campaigning against Christian prayers before council meetings. And where are the social workers finally ready to “put the child first”? One voluntary worker trained by Tower Hamlets Council believes that “families where accusations of witchcraft are putting children at risk must be handled sensitively. Trying to convince carers that their beliefs are wrong or misguided will almost certainly fail and risks insulting their culture”.

But sometimes you just need to risk insulting a culture. I only hope that when the new national guidance comes out it delivers something as effective as Francis Hutchinson’s pamphlet of 1718 that for the first time exposed the evidential tricks used by witch-finders. No doubt it offended many pious and witch-conscious people at the time but it made the necessary case that witchcraft isn’t real. About 2,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Britain between 1450 and the 18th century and three-quarters of them were women. No wonder witch trials have a special place in feminist thought. When the trial of alleged witch Isobel Grierson was reenacted at Scone Palace in Perthshire as part of an educational fun day, the organisers were forced to apologise for “glorifying the persecution of innocent women”.

For all the good PR that witchcraft has had thanks to Harry Potter’s Hermione, we still ignobly fling suspicions of witchcraft or at least witchiness at unpopular women. When Cherie Blair’s biographer claimed in 2005 that she did mildly occult things with toenail clippings and liked to cast a circle to create “sacred space”, many of us wanted it to be true. But in past times the anti-female nature of witch-finding was lethal. Witchcraft manuals such as Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 made it clear that “all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable”. It advised prosecutors that women who did not cry during trial were certain to be witches. Half a millennium on that sounds oddly familiar. When the American student Amanda Knox faced prosecution for the murder of her British housemate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, the prosecution’s language was redolent of a witch-trial. At an appeal hearing, lawyer Carlo Pacelli described Knox’s “double-faced soul”. One side was “angelic, good, compassionate and in some ways even saintly” but the other side was “demonic, satanic, diabolic”.

SHE was further described as an “enchanting witch”. Her failure to cry or demonstrate expected emotions was used in evidence against her, much in line with Malleus Maleficarum. Anyone who followed the case could see that this language wasn’t a Rumpole-ish flourish. It was intended as character evidence. British women may feel relieved that such naked misogyny would not be tolerated here. Amanda Knox was an American woman in an Italian court so why worry? Step in the European Arrest Warrant. If a court in Perugia wishes to try a woman for a crime, it merely needs to send a couple of British police officers to her door who can put her on a plane immediately.