Tory Shepherd: ‘Witch hunt’ claims a way to silence and smear

CLAIMING you’re a victim of a “witch hunt” is just an attempt to smear, silence, and intimidate, writes Tory Shepherd.

ALL over the world, accused sexual predators are crying “witch”. Green thumb (with allegedly wandering fingers) Don Burke is just the latest.

After a cascade of women told stories about his lecherous ways, he went on the telly to call it a “witch-hunt”.

“I’m guessing it’s the social media, the Twittersphere thing. I guess they’ve stirred this up, the Harvey Weinstein thing and we’ve got a witch-hunt,” he told A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw in response to accusations he was a “psychotic bully,” a “misogynist” and a “high-grade, twisted abuser”.

Burke’s invocation of the occult is not original. Woody Allen — an actor accused of child sex abuse — was one of the first to use it after Harvey Weinstein was outed as a serial sex pest. “You also don’t want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself,” he said.

To paraphrase the legendary words of swordsman Inigo Montoya, they keep using those words and I do not think it means what they think it means. The modern definition of a witch-hunt is when a group of people are persecuted for their unorthodox views. The hunt is usually based on scant to no evidence — it’s a ruse by the authorities to shut down subversives. Unless you take issue with the way he pollinates philodendrons, Burke is no subversive. Right now, he’s just a guy hoping the women he’s worked with over the years would just shut up.

As it happens, the real witch-hunts were also often about men trying to shut women up.

Back in ye olden days — from the 14th century to the 17th — all over Europe they were hunting witches. At least three quarters of the tens of thousands killed were women. Victims were often unmarried or widowed women, troublemakers, and people with mental-health disorders or disabilities.

Former TV presenter Don Burke tells A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw he is the victim of a “witch hunt”. (Picture: Nine Network)

With the backing of the Catholic Church, they were picked up and subjected to farcical trials. One well-known test of witchery was to tie the alleged sorcerer up and chuck them in water. If they sank (and drowned), they were innocent; if they floated, they were guilty. Lose/lose.

Sometimes suspects were weighed — usually on rigged scales — and found guilty if they weighed very little. (In The Netherlands, you can still visit a “weigh house”, get on the giant scales, and get a certificate declaring you non-witchy if you clock up a decent weight.)

The guilty were hanged, burned, strangled, or decapitated. Later, the Salem witch trials conducted by god-fearing British colonists in the US saw accusations of Satan-worship and bedevilment, leading to 20 executions. Mass hysteria about the supernatural combined with local feuds, personal vendettas, and the complicity of the authorities to kill men and women. But mostly women.

Historians and anthropologists have a range of theories about why women were targeted but the fact remains that they were. They had no social power, and in those times men held all the positions of authority.

This is where the term “witch hunt” came from.

The men who are being named in this global outpouring against sexual harassment are not the “witches” here. When they use the term “witch hunt”, they are flipping the concept around. They think the witches are hunting them.

Just as centuries ago, men thought crones were out to get them; today’s accused men imagine women lining up on their broomsticks to point crooked fingers. By saying “witch hunt”, they are not just proclaiming their innocence.

Is this the sort of image these men are trying to put in people’s minds when they think of their accusers? (Pic: iStock)

They are saying women — vindictive, lying, witchy women — are making this stuff up just to hurt them.

It’s magical thinking that does not reflect how the real world operates.

In the real world, women do not (or very rarely) concoct stories of rape and sexual harassment.

Why would you?

Women who have been abused are often not believed, or told to harden up, or to shut up. Corporations turn a collective blind eye to abuse, pay off victims, or smear them if they go public. You face the possibility of the death of your career, public humiliation, a tortuous legal process. And in all likelihood no justice in the end anyway.

If it’s so overwhelmingly difficult for victims, why on Earth would women put themselves through it if it wasn’t true? They’d have to be possessed by Satan, wouldn’t they? Scary crones cackling through the night as they cause mayhem for men. They’d have to be witches.

But they’re not, and witches never really existed. The idea was just a ruse to get rid of pesky women and men who didn’t fit the norm.

Using the term “witch hunt” is not just perverting the history of the term. It’s far worse than that.

It feeds the myth that women routinely invent sexual abuse. And that myth is why many women never speak out. It is an attempt to smear, silence, and intimidate women. To make them melt away.