THE WORST CRIME OF ALL. . . It began with the desperate cry of a seven-year-old girl and escalated into the victimization of dozens of innocent citizens in Wenatchee, Washington. For in the eyes of the righteous, a crusading policeman and well-intentioned social services employees became champions of public decency, and family values, while a terrified and confused young girl became the symbol of rampant moral degeneracy within the picturesque community at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. IS NOT CRIME AT ALL! As the media frenzy engulfed Wenatchee, townspeople wondered how a debauched group who committed horrific sex crimes against children lived in their midst for so long without detection. Suddenly, in the name of justice, families were being broken up, individuals were accused of heinous crimes and were prosecuted--despite the protests of many townspeople questioning the methods of the so-called experts and accusers. Now, a lone observer, an independent attorney who spent a year in the explosive atmosphere of Wenatchee, pieces together the whole story of one of the most blatant cases of misuse of power and miscarried justice since the McCarthy witch hunts. As public outrage demanded justice, an overzealous legal system perpetrated crimes just as devastating as child sexual abuse: the persecution and condemnation of innocent people. THE WORST CRIME OF ALL. . . It began with the desperate cry of a seven-year-old girl and escalated into the victimization of dozens of innocent citizens in Wenatchee, Washington. For in the eyes of the righteous, a crusading policeman and well-intentioned social services employees became champions of public decency, and family values, while a terrified and confused young girl became the symbol of rampant moral degeneracy within the picturesque community at the foot of the Cascade Mountains. IS NOT CRIME AT ALL! As the media frenzy engulfed Wenatchee, townspeople wondered how a debauched group who committed horrific sex crimes against children lived in their midst for so long without detection. Suddenly, in the name of justice, families were being broken up, individuals were accused of heinous crimes and were prosecuted--despite the protests of many townspeople questioning the methods of the so-called experts and accusers. Now, a lone observer, an independent attorney who spent a year in the explosive atmosphere of Wenatchee, pieces together the whole story of one of the most blatant cases of misuse of power and miscarried justice since the McCarthy witch hunts. As public outrage demanded justice, an overzealous legal system perpetrated crimes just as devastating as child sexual abuse: the persecution and condemnation of innocent people.

SALEM WITCH TRIALS: The True Story Behind The Infamous Witch Trials of 1692The belief in the supernatural, and its ability to harm an individual, had emerged in Europe in the 14th century. This sparked a series of witch trials across the continent. By the mid 17th century this trend was gradually dying out across much of Europe. However accusations of witchcraft, and the hysteria which accompanies such a case, would sporadically occur in some places such as the American Colonies up until the early 18th century. The most prominent example of this was the Salem Witch Trials, these occurred in Salem, New England between 1692 and 1693. This is the story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and the horrors surrounding this most famous of historical witch trials.

Roy Lawrence, a young African-American physician, is on trial at his hospital for practicing bad medicine. During the trial, Roy's accuser, chief of staff Donald Horsmann, is violently killed after leaving his mistress' apartment. As the only suspect, Roy is immediately arrested and put on trial, where a vicious prosecutor and the judge want nothing more than to see him fry. Barry Goodman, a Boston attorney and Roy's former Harvard roommate, takes up Roy's cause and tries to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, Courtney Williams, the daughter of a patient killed during surgery by Horsmann, has reason to believe her brother, Jamal, was the hired killer. Together Courtney and Barry attempt to discover the identity of the mastermind. Unfortunately the trap they set goes awry and leaves Courtney nearly fatally wounded in the hospiutal ICU. Courtney is the only one who can clear Roy, yet she is unconscious and unguarded in the ICU, at the mercy of the real killer while Roy is trapped in prison.

Young readers of this book will learn about the Salem witch trials, a tragic chapter in U.S. history, and the mysteries that surround it.

This superb documentary collection illuminates the history of witchcraft and witch-hunting in seventeenth-century New England. The cases examined begin in 1638, extend to the Salem outbreak in 1692, and document for the first time the extensive Stamford-Fairfield, Connecticut, witch-hunt of 1692–1693. Here one encounters witch-hunts through the eyes of those who participated in them: the accusers, the victims, the judges. The original texts tell in vivid detail a multi-dimensional story that conveys not only the process of witch-hunting but also the complexity of culture and society in early America. The documents capture deep-rooted attitudes and expectations and reveal the tensions, anger, envy, and misfortune that underlay communal life and family relationships within New England’s small towns and villages. Primary sources include court depositions as well as excerpts from the diaries and letters of contemporaries. They cover trials for witchcraft, reports of diabolical possessions, suits of defamation, and reports of preternatural events. Each section is preceded by headnotes that describe the case and its background and refer the reader to important secondary interpretations. In his incisive introduction, David D. Hall addresses a wide range of important issues: witchcraft lore, antagonistic social relationships, the vulnerability of women, religious ideologies, popular and learned understandings of witchcraft and the devil, and the role of the legal system. This volume is an extraordinarily significant resource for the study of gender, village politics, religion, and popular culture in seventeenth-century New England.