"The Witch," the Salem Witch Trials, and why some children are just fucking evil.

This is probably a bit of an out-there topic, but my husband and I went to see "The Witch" yesterday (stunning movie btw) and it really got under my skin. Without going into detail, the main character has two younger siblings, twins, and they are some of the most obnoxious little trolls I've ever seen on screen. As things are really starting to get bad for the family, the twins accuse their older sister of being a witch and causing all their misfortune, and at that point the wheels completely fly off.

Having been raised in an evangelical Christian environment in the south, which has a lot of similarities to the Puritan environment of the 1600s, as an agnostic adult I've been fascinated with that era in American history. The witch-hunts, the mob mentalities, the superstitions...

Which leads me to the Salem Witch Trials and why I think some children are truly fucking evil. Not all of them obviously, but some.

To give a very brief summary of the Trials, in the 1690s a handful of young girls became "afflicted" with extreme behavioral symptoms affiliated with the local beliefs of witchcraft, and they accused several women (including members of rival families, how convenient) of being witches. Due to an already volatile environment in Salem, at this point the match was lit and the situation exploded. Over the following months over 200 people in surrounding communities were accused of witchcraft, many of them imprisoned and subjected to court interrogations which were a complete and utter mockery of justice, and when the dust settled over 20 innocent people had been executed. One of the accused, a 4-year-old girl, died in prison.

A lot of focus regarding the Trials is given to the mob mentality and religious beliefs of the time, but what sticks out to me are the original accusers. Those fucking little girls who directly caused the deaths of so many people, who saw the effects their actions were having yet continued their charade. While medical and psychological theories have been thrown out about the cause of their "afflictions," the general consensus among modern historians is that the girls acted out of jealousy and a desire for attention. In Puritan culture, young girls were virtually invisible and pretending to be victims of witchcraft garnered these girls an insane amount of attention and power. They could say a name and have that person thrown in jail. Years after the trials, one of the accusers, Ann Putnam, Jr., basically said "my bad" and apologized for falsely accusing innocent people and causing their deaths. She, of course, faced no repercussions. None of the girls did.

I suppose the point to my rambling is that I don't buy into the bullshit belief that children are innocent little angels. I think, from a very early age, children are capable of acting out of malice and causing real harm, deliberately. We talk on this forum about young children intentionally hurting animals, or falsely accusing their parents of abusive behavior to get attention, or lying, or stealing. A lot of kids are just fucking sociopaths; they either lack the ability to feel empathy for other people, or they can, but they just don't care. It's not always a by-product of shitty parenting; sometimes it's just who the child is. And in a culture where children are deified and practically worshipped as these faultless beings, that really freaks me out sometimes. I think children are just like adults in that some are good, but some are little shits from the get-go.