The Massachusetts Senate has just rehabilitated the last "witch of Salem", Elizabeth Johnson, 329 years after her conviction for witchcraft.
She had been sentenced to death, then her name was lost over time and she was therefore never among those pardoned, even late, as reported by
The Guardian
.
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In a few weeks during 1692 in Salem, hundreds of individuals, mostly women, were arrested and sentenced for witchcraft, divination or satanism: fourteen women hanged, six men stoned and the others imprisoned while awaiting execution of their sentence. .
This was the case of Elizabeth Johnson, 22, single and childless, denounced as a witch by locals and sentenced to hang.
She narrowly escapes because the royal governor of the state ends up intervening and suspends all convictions.
However, she was not acquitted.
Rehabilitated thanks to college students
The young woman owes her salvation today to students at North Andover College.
The latter discovered her name while researching the “witches of Salem” and spent a school year advocating her case to Massachusetts lawmakers to have her cleared.
“We can never change what happened to victims like Elizabeth, but we can at least restore the truth,”
said Democratic Senator Diana DiZoglio, in comments relayed by
The Guardian
.
Read alsoScottish government officially apologizes for women killed for witchcraft
In January 2022, the Scottish Parliament, with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, passed a law, proposed by activists from the collective Witches of Scotland, aimed at pardoning the 3,837 "witches" murdered between 1563 and 1736 in Scotland.
At the same time, the Catalan regional parliament passed a law aimed at repairing the memory of the more than 800 women accused of "witchcraft".