March 12, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode, Professor Victoria Canning from Lancaster University discusses the overlooked intersection of criminology and witchcraft persecution. Through the lens of "zemiology"—the study of social harm—Canning examines how witchcraft accusations create profound physical, psychological, and cultural damage.Central to our conversation is her concept of "torturous violence," which expands definitions of torture beyond state actions to include sustained community violence with similar traumatic effects. This framework helps explain how witchcraft accusations function as mechanisms of social control, particularly against women.Canning advocates for an "activist criminology" that uses evidence to drive social change and helps practitioners identify and respond to witchcraft-related persecution.Join us for this informative conversation bridging criminology and witchcraft studies to address these overlooked forms of violence.
Research and Publications by Victoria Canning
International Conference on Albinism at Lancaster University, September 2025
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. On today's episode, we're joined
by Victoria Canning, Professor of Criminology at Lancaster
University, whose groundbreakingwork examined state defined
approaches to torture and what she conceptualizes as torturous
violence. Criminal logical frameworks will
(00:22):
deepen our understanding of witchcraft, accusations and
persecution. Professor Canning brings a
critical perspective to how societies define, recognize, and
respond to severe and repeated abuses.
Her research particularly examines the gendered
implications of violence, addressing how conventional
definitions often fail to encompass the full spectrum of
(00:44):
torturous experiences, includingthose connected to witchcraft
persecutions. Throughout our conversation,
we'll discuss the potential for developing what Victoria calls a
criminology of witchcraft, interrogating the social harms
perpetuated through accusations and persecution, both
historically and in contemporarycontext.
(01:05):
We'll also examine how witchcraft accusations intersect
with migration patterns, border policies, and asylum processes,
areas that have remained largelyunexplored in traditional
criminological research. Join us as we navigate these
complex issues and consider how reconceptualizing violence
(01:27):
through a critical criminological lens might offer
new pathways for addressing witchcraft related persecution
and supporting survivors. Welcome to a witch hunt podcast.
Victoria Canning, We were so privileged to get to hear you
present at the Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in
Lancaster. Please tell our listeners about
your work and expertise. Yes, and it's lovely to see you
(01:50):
both again. And it was, it was great to meet
you in Lancaster and what a great and historically important
place to be starting these discussions as well, so we can
talk a bit more about Lancaster and that role later down the
line. I'm a professor of criminology
in Lancaster University and my key areas of expertise are in
(02:10):
looking at state defined approaches to torture and then
what I've kind of defined and conceptualized as torturous
violence. So some of those things, severe
and often repeated abuses psychologically and physically
as well as sexually against people.
The gender implications of that as well for women and how
(02:31):
sometimes state definitions and approaches don't always take
into consideration what we see in terms of witchcraft
persecution, for example, which is in families or communities or
by partners or even. And one of my key areas of
expertise and interests is orders and migration.
So for example, including with particular social groups and
(02:53):
people who are trafficked and that rule of witchcraft
persecution and making decisionsto move as well.
So a whole plethora of things relating to violence, borders
and criminologies really is my interest.
At Lancaster, you gave a talk titled Toward a Criminology of
Witchcraft. What would you like the audience
to know about the talks that yougave?
(03:16):
I think that witchcraft is something or witchcraft
persecution as well as social control is something that has
been very largely overlooked by criminology.
So criminology being the study of crimes, actually in some ways
I work a bit against criminology.
I work on critical approaches tostate forms of persecution from
(03:37):
what's called a zemiological perspective.
So zemiology is actually the study of social harm.
So you can imagine in in relation to persecution, a
witchcraft persecution. Those harms can be physical,
they can be psychological, they might be cultural impacting on
where people feel CF4 can actually physically be.
We heard some of this from colleagues who were talking
(03:59):
about, for example, albinism andabuses against people with
albinism. And Charlotte Baker, who
organized the conference, has done a really great job with
Miranda Forsyth on talking and some of those.
So effectively what I want, whatI'd love the audience to take
away, and what my interest is aswell is what can criminology
(04:21):
offer the study of witchcraft, persecution and social control.
And the more that I've taken time, so my own interests in
witchcraft persecution go back till I was very young.
Actually, I brought a book with me today that I thought would be
of interest. And this was something I got for
Christmas when I was 10 years old.
(04:41):
So Tales of witchcraft and sorcery, this is back from 1994
by Ken Radford and interestinglythe Lancaster witch trials are
in there too. So my own interests was as
witchcraft, persecution and alsothe mythologies around
witchcraft and folklore as well.Obviously I come from Ireland,
superstitions are not unusual amongst my family or friends and
(05:05):
bringing those together though from a criminological
perspective doesn't seem to be something that has been done in
huge depth. So I've long term interests
there. And then of course, the more I
started to look at witchcraft persecution and speak with
colleagues around witchcraft persecution, the more gaps there
seems to be in thinking about, especially around for me,
(05:26):
migration, why people might migrate and the role of that in
in terms of pushing people out of community.
And also from torturous violenceperspectives whenever we think
about contemporary witchcraft persecution, which is often
undertaken by families and communities.
And that was something that I also saw, although I didn't
(05:47):
really think of it in terms of criminologies of witchcraft,
when I used to work with child survivors of our sexualized
violence in South Africa so manyyears ago, 15 or 18 years ago
now, where some children have been accused of witchcraft and
that was one of the reasons thatthey had been removed from the
hands of their immediate families.
(06:08):
So I mean, I could talk about where I think criminology, both
criminology and zenniology can go from there if that's of
interest. Because effectively the more
that I started reading and some great like for example, Margaret
Malik is is 1 criminologist who is undertaking some research
into witch trials. So histories of witch trials,
(06:28):
but up in Scotland. So some of those kind of more
contemporary campaigns about remembrance and the remembrance
particularly of women who were persecuted based on which
pressed accusations. But I I think there's just so
much to offer in relation to date crime studies.
So thinking about the rules of state in not intervening
(06:52):
historically or contemporarily miscarriages of justice is an
obvious interest to anybody who's in looking at criminology
as well. For me, the role of abuse and
the plethora of really important, particularly feminist
criminology work that goes into challenging cultural abuses that
(07:13):
are called cultural there, I think it's a lot more complex
than that. It's very easy to say cultural
abuse is actually when we look into many cultures, including in
the UK where I'm based now, we can see that abuses spanned well
beyond what's often represented,which is this idea of kind of
persecution in the global science.
(07:34):
I think Owen Davies talked a bitabout that as well, the kind of
that role of colonization and almost neo colonization into
expectations that it's other countries where persecution
takes place. And in my experience of working
on, I was a trustee firm, so that's the director on the board
(07:54):
of Rape Support Service for six years or so.
Ritualistic abuse was not uncommon in the region that I
was working, which is the northwest of England.
So many different things seem todraw together where criminology
is relevant and for me, and thatis in terms of the state crime
element and miscarriages of justice.
(08:15):
But also for me, I think the zemeal logical implications.
So those long term harms on people's lives that can be part
of a continuum and that the psychological impacts of those
which still quite often we don'tmean.
We might mean abuse or we might mean harm or violence, but very
seldom actually mean or use terms which are recognized as
(08:38):
being particularly abusive, suchas torture and torturous
violence. So we can really see that in
terms of people being again, historically and contemporarily
targeted either by states or by people around them and the long
term impacts of those abuses andhires, while we organize support
around those abuses, including for when people are seeking
(09:01):
asylum if they've fled in relation to witchcraft
persecution, very little that's done on this, which is super
interesting. But I think that means that
there's plenty of places to go in addressing these kinds of
harms. What would be the key benefits
of applying criminology to the violence that we're seeing
(09:23):
towards people accused of witchcraft?
I think that's a really good question because criminology is
an interesting sort of discipline or sub discipline.
I think the benefits are mutual.1 is really focusing and I think
critical criminology in particular, so not really
necessarily administrative criminology, but critical
(09:46):
criminology which looks at the role of states in not applying
regulations or addressing norms that could reduce harms or
abuses. I think that that's where this
lie on feminist criminology in particular has been at the fore
of a lot of that around really difficult topic areas,
especially sexualized violence and sexual torture.
(10:08):
So there's loads to learn from that.
But I also think the other way round.
So recently in I run 2 modules at the minute, Harms of crimes
of the power hall and Criminologies of violence and
engaging students in these discussions.
That's also where witchcraft persecution can be useful to
(10:29):
criminology. So rather than just criminology
offering something over a lens, actually learning about, because
some key concepts like social control and social othering, all
of these things that facilitate and exacerbate persecution are
really clear in, in witchcraft persecution.
It's almost one of those sort of, you know, social issues that
(10:54):
cover so many aspects of criminology that actually
criminology could learn from, I think.
And also around thinking about histories of, of the role of
colonization. So we talk about decolonization
in universities, actually thinking about the role of
witchcraft persecution, etcetera.
In in that context as well. I think is is, is really
(11:17):
interesting. So I think there's a lot to
actually be learned from studies, the witchcraft.
And also that I think opens up to looking at mythologies and
folklore history, all of those subject areas that I think are
that can often be overlooked in in in criminology where
(11:38):
sometimes things invent, reinvent the wheel.
And if we take a bit of a look into those other subject areas,
there's a lot to be garnered andlearned from.
And certainly that's how I find in looking through and studying.
I actually did my, I did, I undertook a course, a university
course in histories of witchcraft of the occult a few
years ago, which was really interesting on bringing these
(12:01):
things together. So there's just so much to be
said, I think. As you're informing us, I'm
hearing how much learning and synthesizing there is yet to do,
which is exciting. It's not just recognizing these
crimes are happening, but understanding why this is
(12:23):
happening. And one of the things that I
think is a challenge across cultures and communities is
definitions. And also in through bodies of
leadership too, how are we defining different terms?
Can you talk to us a little bit about torture and torturous
violence in how we should be defining that and applying that?
(12:47):
This is a really good point and one that is always that where
people make distinctions betweenthe role of academia and
organizations who are working atthe frontline of addressing
torture and torturous violence or other abuses and human rights
abuses as well. And exactly this around
definitions is something. And so to give an example,
(13:09):
recently a really great organization in the UK, Women
for Refugee Women had developed a report on the experiences of
women who are in asylum housing and use the concept that I
developed on corrosive control. So that kind of the the way in
which the border controls impacts and the gender
(13:30):
implications for women seeking asylum on how that plays into
their experiences in often private realms.
And that's an example where I think torture and torturous
violence. It's something else that is,
it's about making, in short, it's about making academia
useful, putting things into practice and also to let those
(13:52):
heavy lifting kind of discussions that are required
for academic publications and stuff that we have to engage in
to, to make them useful. And I think that that is
important. And another thing that I kind of
work in, and I'm Co editor of a series and Co editor of a book,
an international handbook on what's called activist
(14:13):
criminology. And that's about using
empirically informed evidence tomake or engage in active change
on social issues that we identify.
And witchcraft persecution and that role of the definitions
around torturous violence, whichis in effect broadens out the
(14:33):
narrow escape that is put into the UN Convention against
Torture. So there's loads of conventions
that relate to torture and torture of finance and some that
would be applicable to witchcraft persecution as we
understand it nigh contemporarily.
And we're just seeing the aftermath of I think more than
100 people were were killed recently in Haiti in relation to
(14:57):
to witchcraft, persecution, the kinds of abuses that often go
along. These things are not always
necessarily acknowledged as torture.
And yet we can see they have thesame impacts as torture, even
though they may not be related to extracting information or to
gain knowledge, which is often what torture is understood as.
(15:18):
Again, even though there's loadsof different, there's loads of
different definitions of torturein international law and in
relation to organization, working with survivors, it is
generally that fairly narrow definition.
So in relation to witchcraft persecution, if we open that out
to think more about the role of torturous violence, we can see
(15:38):
from accounts of people who are subjected to abuses related to
witchcraft. These are often sustained.
They often becomes impossible tolive in a person's own community
or the states. Another thing that both in
relation to this and in relationto state harm and crying more
generally is if the state are perpetrators of violence, then
(16:01):
where do you go? So my sort of thoughts on
torturous violence in in this approach is to be able to see
those abuses as sustained, as torturous.
And I think that the term torture and torturous does have
a particular weight to it. When we hear the word torture.
I, I remember having a discussion with with someone on
(16:22):
in the Committee against Torture.
And he had said, whenever we talk about we, we've all, we've
got torture and then we've got cruel and inhumane.
And already just by talking about cruel, inhumane,
degrading, there was that sort of recognition that I without
recognizing it, I can see that we still think of this as
(16:42):
slightly lesson and my argumentsand my key arguments in in the
book torture and torturous violence is that quite often the
impacts through a lifetime, psychologically and physically
are not necessarily lesser than that, that we would define
torture. And certainly I've seen that
with women seeking asylum where they have been subjected to what
(17:03):
it would be termed false imprisonment.
And effectively we would in any other realm call it torture over
periods of years. Speaking with somebody recently,
they were telling me that that also can relate to witchcraft
persecution by putting a threat of accusing witchcraft
persecution so people become afraid to leave.
And again, the gendered implications of that.
(17:25):
I've met with survivors who havebeen subjected to being burned
and scolded by their husband or partner.
Multiple perpetrator rate, all forms of abuses that we would
consider as torturous if they were under any other
circumstances, except for in theHomeward community.
And to me, that really resonateswith the key points around
(17:48):
witchcraft, persecution and whatpeople can be subjected to that
sometimes is seen as maybe lesser than what it actually is.
One of the things that you wrotein Torture and Torturous
Violence was that torture and torturous violence are
everyone's problem. How is that?
(18:10):
That's such a great but multifaceted question.
So the way, the way that I've seen that in some of the aspects
that I was writing with torture and torturous violence, we tend
to put and, and a lot of this narrative came through with
so-called enhanced interrogationtechniques, et cetera, where
these were reframed away from torture as a way to suggest that
(18:32):
torture happens elsewhere. But it doesn't happen.
It's not the US, it's not the UKwho are engaging in torture.
And of course we know that is fundamentally untrue and we can
see that through the various Senate intelligence reports,
etcetera. So we know that's the case.
What we don't come to recognize is the implications of those
(18:54):
tortures that happen either in in countries before migration
and then the long term impacts on people who are say you gain
refugee status or who are seeking asylum who can't access
support. In the book.
As you can see some of the documentations of forms of
torture and torturous violence that people are recording from
(19:17):
people seeking asylum and some of the oral histories that I
undertook with women seeking asylum.
These are such severe forms of violence that that often have
impacts including dissociation, anxiety, trauma, long term
depression, all of these things that if we had a supportive and
rehabilitative system to supportpeople who experience these
(19:40):
abuses, proper funding, etcetera.
Then some of the social issues which then do devout this, it's
almost like a ripple effect thatpeople can be so impacted.
So in one sense that that one example, the other on torturous
violence. And why I think that it's
everybody's issue is if we take a look and this is a little bit
(20:00):
of a story, but I think I talk about it in the book.
But one of the things that's really interesting for me is
whenever you take my show, I'll be in trouble for this.
But my mom loves to read women'smagazines.
Thankfully, she hasn't read my book.
I don't think to even get to know that it's in the text.
But yeah, she reads things like.They're, I think they're quite
(20:22):
specific to the UK, but there's,you know, they're not very
expensive. It's just people writing with
their stories and it's predominantly women writing in
with stories. And I was in our house a few
years ago while I was working onone of the last one, one of the
last projects around torture andtorturous violence.
Umm, I have been working on I've, I've just starting a new
one lie this month actually was it was represented as completely
(20:46):
exceptional to real. And so the rapist up the stairs,
the monster next door, all of these kinds of headings.
And when I took a read through these different magazines, I, I
kind of did a bit of a discourseanalysis of some of them.
These were intensive periods of abuse that would be akin to
(21:06):
torture. Some are against, say, fathers
or stepfathers, against their children or uncles or brothers
or teachers, things that are actually aspects of what we can
see in any sexual abuse inquiries, unfortunately, not
completely unusual or unique experiences.
(21:28):
These are part of what Lev Kellytalks about, a continuum of
sexual violence in society. So for me, I'm reading these
things, I think this is as akin to torture, but not under the
states, not with the States and as a perpetrator or a state
official, as a perpetrator or onbehalf of a state official, not
(21:49):
for extracting information, but to inflict violence and abuse.
And to me reading through these just these tortures.
And so actually we have a, we have an issue with naming abuses
in these ways. And that's why whenever I said
that torturous violence, I thinkthere's multi levels to why
torturous violence is everybody's issue.
One of those is whenever people are tortured and then maybe gain
(22:12):
refugee status or some of the things that people have been
subjected to. When I was rereading the book
for presentation, I was given last year, because after I
finished the book, I had a period of, of quite significant
burnout and the impacts of, I'vebeen working in this area for
almost 20 years. So the impacts were, were quite
(22:32):
significant without me even seeing that coming.
And so the impacts of that, thenI almost, when I, when I reread
some of the narratives, I could hardly even remember writing
them. But yet, of course I have typed
these up. I have listened to these
interviews and is what what people are subjected to is
something that we should be responding to in a humanitarian
(22:56):
way, not in the kind of ways that we are contemporarily
responding to people seeking asylum and and specifically
survivors of torture and torturous violence.
Which in in any other sense, if we could see the kinds of abuses
that people are subjected to andin any other sense we would
recognize that that the way of responding should be in a
(23:17):
humanitarian way, which is supportive on I don't like the
term rehabilitation because I don't know what it means to
rehabilitate to what, but at least a kind of rehabilitative
response over this increase securitized and demonizing
response for particularly peopleseeking asylum I think at
present. Yeah, I was thinking about how
(23:41):
data collection during the conference that came up a lot,
how significant collecting data is collecting new data.
But you know, as I'm listening to you, I'm realizing there's so
much data in these situations that we're maybe not applying to
(24:04):
these witchcraft torture situations.
And I'm also wondering, so that's one comment or question,
can we use the data we have? How much more data do we need?
But then when I'm thinking aboutthis humanitarian response that
we need from communities and we need from leadership, is data
(24:27):
enough to ignite that? Or is what do we do to get the
response if we have the data because we have the UN
resolution speaking asking states to take more action, how
do we get that? I think that this is a really
good, this is a really good question and it's this, this
(24:48):
probably brings in more of the stuff all kind of activist
criminology as well. But I agree, I think this is
across the board of research, a new, a new research project,
rather than working with what wehave and what we know and taking
time to develop and implement changes through these, through
what we have already, the knowledge we've already amassed.
(25:11):
Sometimes I think we could as much work into making the
changes as we do in collecting more and making things bigger.
We could really Barber and, and gain some shifts, I think
implementing terms that bring people's attention to this.
I've been researching, for example, I've been researching
(25:32):
on asylum for more than 15 yearsin the UK, and yet I haven't
been, I haven't seen much in theway at all.
Even of the organizations I've been to, people in organizations
I've entered, interviewed barristers or lawyers or social
workers or psychologists or psycho traumatologists, very
(25:52):
seldom do I hear about, if at all actually much on witchcraft
persecution. And yet we know that there must
be there must be information about witchcraft persecution in
relation to asylum or people arecoming across stuff, how we name
it. And this is what has been one of
the key things that I've been arguing in, in torture and
torturous violence, how we go about naming it.
(26:13):
So it's part of that discussion and conversation in more than
one realm. So often things are separated.
I like you've got witchcraft persecution here, you've got a
silent here. That's why I think border
criminal are criminologies of witchcraft, persecution and
social control brings these things together to tie up to
bring these variable perspectives into into focus.
(26:37):
And again, one of the things that I think it's important and
can be accessible is what's called and I think Charlotte
Baker has also has worked under this impact grants for impact.
So for developing toolkits alongside colleagues who were at
the four umm, I'm really keen tothe project that I'm working on
now is called Torturing Transit and that's about building
(26:59):
support techniques and toolkits for survivors so that we can
bring those together. So for example, if you're a
psychotraumatologist working with survivors of torture, but
you have no knowledge of witchcraft, persecution in a
particular country of origin, and someone is saying that they
have been subject for cultural reasons or religious reasons or
(27:21):
whatever terms might be used. We don't always flag those
things. And similarly things are named
even for example, sexual violence.
So this is another kind of key point in torture.
Torturous violence is people will describe sexual abuse in
very vague ways or torture in very vague ways.
(27:42):
So it's not always easy to interpret or have a flag that
says I think this person is possibly.
So I'm going to ask this question further to find out if
this has been torture or domestic torturous violence or
sexualized abuse and build that kind of blind wish to open up
those discussions that knit these different things together.
(28:05):
So that's I think one thing that's really key and and really
useful about academia is bringing those perspectives
together to build toolkit kits that can be implemented.
And one of the other things thatjust came to my mind that when
you asked that is, and I think that this is important for all
people who are working in research or is finding out if
(28:31):
you're going along the right lines.
So two really important learningcurves of of my life setting.
I've been, I remember when I wasdoing my PhD, which was 1516
years ago now. And I might, I wanted to find
out about the impacts of conflicts related violence on
women seeking asylum. And that of course, is the core
(28:54):
of the subject area. But what I was finding with
women seeking asylum was where Iwanted to use the works that I
was doing in sexual violence support to support and fill gaps
on with survivors. Actually, so many survivors were
impacted by borders. So not knowing where you were
going to be staying that night, issues of being dispersed at
(29:15):
last minute, not having the money to even go to support
organizations to get the bus to get there, All of these things
that actually get in the way. Learning from that and thinking,
actually, I need to take this ina different direction because
this isn't that. This is my priority, but it's
actually not there. It's not the people that I'm
work with priority. And the other is going back
(29:36):
whenever I finished or before I finished torture and torturous
violence, I was developing concepts of silencing and 10
mechanisms for silencing of sexual violence particularly or
sexual torture, particularly islands, and different
perspectives on torture. And rather than just come up
with the ideas and write a book,I went back over and over again
(30:00):
to different audiences and different groups, to lawyers,
practitioners, and presented my ideas and got hammered for some
of them. And then.
But that was about iteration. Likewise, speaking with people
seeking asylum and building another toolkit that myself and
and colleagues the right to remain had been developing is
speaking to people about what works for you rather than I know
(30:23):
what's best. So I'm just going to crack on
with my ideas. That's an important learning
curve that would see if everybody can a lot of work, I
think. But yeah, I think it's about
hearing that from from the growing up and from survivors of
the organizations themselves. I want to touch on the gendered
aspects of torture and torturousviolence.
(30:44):
We know that there's definitely a gendered aspect to witchcraft
persecutions. It's predominantly been
something used against women andgirls historically.
Is there a similar gendered aspect to torture?
Yeah, I think that's that was the key instigator for the text
(31:07):
actually and for rethinking the definitions that are used to
practice predominantly torture as we would define that in the
UN Convention against Torture. I by or at the behest of state
officials, usually in forms of confinement.
So if we think about confinement, who is
predominantly confined, it is mostly men.
And it's that interesting because when we think of gender
(31:29):
perspectives, we often overlook the men are in the definition of
the UN Convention, predominantlythose who are tortured because
they are predominantly those whoare targeted for being in
political positions or who are in confinement.
And subsequently there's more access to being tortured in
(31:50):
confinement under the definition.
On the other side, what we acknowledge, and I still don't
think I, I'm certainly don't think that torture is anywhere
near acknowledged as as much as it should be or the torture of
men or men seeking asylum. On the side of that is that kind
of long term silencing of domestic and interpersonal
abusers and the extra layers of silencing that particularly
(32:14):
sexualized violence, including sexualized torture against men,
harder layers of these impacts on what we can come to know and
address. So yeah, the gendered
implications of what I was finding with some organizations,
for example, we're working with survivors of torture, is that
most of the people that they were supporting were men.
(32:39):
And that makes sense if we use the Convention against torture.
What doesn't make sense is that if we only use that definition
or if that definition becomes the dominant definition, then
quite often the same forms of abuses, but all undertaken by
violent partners or in relation to witchcraft, persecution, for
(33:00):
example, we can see community members, etcetera.
Even if you look through the recent reports into things like
abuse in the Magdalene laundry and stuff in Ireland, these are
clearly torturous and clearly gendered.
So my kind of key point is to take that long term, how do we
(33:21):
address such silenced issues around sexualized violence and
sexualized torture and sexualized torturous violence,
which is often in wind in relationships for where people,
predominantly women are subjected to repeats or
continued sexualized abuse over periods of time.
(33:43):
And I've meant women seeking a sound awareness of being over
years of time or as part of a continuum where during the
migratory process, different points at which women were
subjected to different forms of violence, again, from all
different kinds of actors, all different kinds of people.
So border guards or police or people in refugee camps or also
(34:06):
with smugglers like I've, you know, you can come across and
you know, if you read around border criminologies, you can
come across that this is a kind of continuum of persecution.
So that a bit like witchcraft persecution that opens up to
thinking about the roles of how to address the abuses that are
(34:28):
in existence and how to challenge the silence that is so
deeply enshrouded around these kinds of particular abuses.
And of course, stigma is one of those one, one of the kind of
key aspects of silencing and howwe all about address.
And that is what I'm hopefully working toward with this
contemporary project with the Danish Institute Against
(34:50):
Fortune. Yeah, stigmatization.
That is such a challenge becauseyou'll have individuals or
individual organizations speaking out.
Maybe in some areas there's victims that are able to do
that. But it reminds me of kind of my
(35:11):
question earlier where I said, well, we have the data.
How do we get that humanitarian response?
How do we how do we get the family in the community and the
support organizations to hear this stigma is keeping us from
taking action? Let's dismantle that.
(35:33):
How do you get there? I think that's, again, there's
so many different ways and, and they always have to be taken
into consideration what is appropriate for the space that
you're in, the place that you'rein.
Often these these one, one key issue, and it really is a key
issue is also funding. So you're often being really
(35:53):
inappropriate areas to talk about, like personal experiences
or sexualized violence. Same whenever it comes to
assessing claims for refugee status.
Who wants to walk into a room with somebody that they don't
know and start talking about sexualized violence?
And that stigma runs really deep.
I had a few years ago, I was teaching some undergraduate
(36:14):
students, and I remember one of my students saying you'd rather
be dead than like survivor it. And I was.
So, I mean, it's hard for me to be taken aback on anything, but
it was this kind of assumption that that survival isn't
something that can ever be. I mean, survival is always a
(36:36):
process support, but supporting people through survival is the
key to that process, key to be enabled soon, never to
necessarily get over subjectionsof abuse, but to live with what
we have. Liz Kelly speaks about this very
well some years ago in in a seminar that I organized where
she said it's like a backpack that you put on.
(36:59):
Sometimes there's bricks in it, sometimes it's heavier,
sometimes you can take those bricks out, but the backpacks
always there. And I really think that if we
start to recognize that survivors are not all defined by
histories of violence. We are multifaceted humans and
subsequently get into that. That I didn't think is the
(37:21):
class, for example, just didn't bat an eyelid spot was I was so
shocked that that this was. And of course, it's because
quite often this is the first forum that even at that age of
20, 21 or whatever age my students were, I usually teach
second or third year. So yeah, 2021 are really talking
about sexualized abuse, violence, torture in any sort of
(37:43):
depth and hearing it as something that is both part of
society and something that can be challenged through through
really focusing on perpetration apart from anything else and the
perceptions that lead to perpetration.
And that goes for witchcraft persecution also, but also in
this dismantling of stigma. And it's interesting because
(38:05):
we're in, we're not sure if you've been following the
Giselle Perico case in France and that stigma, shame must
change sides. And I just think this is such a
powerful phrase in relation to stigma of the recognition that
the shame, the problems of the social problems, that the stigma
(38:26):
lies in the perpetration of sexual violence, not in the
being subjected to or surviving.And I wonder if the role of
issues our paragraphs approach will shift that narrative.
There's always a danger that I would also say though, because
(38:46):
then it becomes as if we should,as if all survivors can always
be strong or always be able to face stigma and actually
survival. The most important thing is that
survival is a process. It should never be an
expectation that you're just going to be able to get up today
or it's also OK to have days where that's not OK.
But in in all being able to bring these in and it's
(39:08):
difficult to do working with working with students, working
with the public or anything. I've even found with working
sometimes with practitioners whowill talk about all kinds of of
violence or abuse. But once it comes to sexualized
violence, then this becomes something that people can
(39:28):
struggle with or as as one practitioner said to me, once
you're really open in a can of worms, if you want to talk about
that. And of course we are, but it's
but the can is there whether we open it or not.
And to get to challenge and stigma.
And again, I'm talking about this from my research on on
sexualized violence and torture.But I think this also goes with
(39:50):
with some of the strengths of addressing witchcraft
persecution as being the problemof perpetration and that kind of
platform for survivors to safelybe supported into their their
narratives, challenging that stigma around those narratives.
Yeah, and there's definitely stigma involved with the
(40:12):
witchcraft persecutions as well against the survivors.
There's always the risk that they'll be re accused or you
know, someone will perpetrate something against them again
because they've got this reputation that they did nothing
to bring upon themselves. But that stigma is still there.
(40:34):
And how do we help provide them with an environment where they
can even come out and feel safe acknowledging that this happened
to them? And I think that's a very real
fear for survivors to have. That's another thing.
It's easy enough to be distant to the subject or not be the
(40:55):
person who's who is at risk of imminent persecution.
This is similar for other forms of of safe crime and violence,
of domestic and interpersonal abuses or familial abuses.
The risk is real and the risk isthere.
And again, I think for a long time how we move towards
shifting toward perpetration andchallenging myths.
(41:18):
Again, just drawing in CharlotteBaker's work on challenging
albinism, those kinds of even just general facts.
We, we had it whenever I was when I was working with it
wasn't so much, it wasn't aroundwitchcraft, persecution, but it
was a form of, of mythologies ofmagic where some of the children
(41:38):
that we were supporting were raped as part of a belief that
having sex with virgins would transfer HIV so that you would
be free of HIV and that this would be that this was kind of
a, a personal cure. So, you know, developing
(41:58):
responses that are, and again, Icome from a critical
criminological perspective here that address the harm without
increasing what, without increasing the kind of punitive.
So as if, as if punitive approaches are the only way.
So there was always quite difficult and it's it's always
(42:18):
quite difficult working on on forms of abuse when if the
approach is only punitive and sometimes that's out of your
hands whenever it comes to say criminal justice approaches,
etcetera. But certainly working with
challenging mythologies, challenging drawing together
facts, focusing on on knowledge and information.
(42:39):
Otherwise, I work in higher education.
What's the point in higher education if we can't use
education to challenge miss and to focus And rather than I think
it's just that balance is meant between what the criminal
justice approach takes and what working through myth busting and
challenging sometimes really quite problematic beliefs,
(43:00):
whether they're and they can also be religious beliefs.
We, we talk about this as, as ifit's contemporarily only happens
in sort of certain areas of the world.
But again, the same kinds of abuse as we can see in inquiries
into child steps abuse in, in the UK in I've already mentioned
the Magdalene Laundries, the kinds of torture and torturous
violence that have been embeddedin these institutions.
(43:22):
So using not sort of the the strength of education to reframe
and drawing in things that as wesend you mentioned earlier,
Sarah, but looking at definitions and how definitions
can sometimes be limiting and what if they are?
And then if they're not helping,what can we do to shift that
(43:42):
forward? And then and certainly loads of
people will disagree with me on my work on torturous violence.
That's fine. But where concepts are useful,
then let's get them out there and apply.
That's another thing that's again difficult.
I was mentioning earlier about that funding.
We are in such increasing disparity of wealth in in this
(44:06):
kind of contemporary form of capitalism to see that you can
go take a trip around on a spaceto be able to afford these
things whilst people can't afford to to travel to migraine
from conflict or from torture. And then the way in which
organizations like just the disparity in where finances go,
it is I, I've, I think this is almost my very words, but it
(44:29):
does, as you can tell, really get to me.
But it is such a disgrace of ourtimes that organizations which
are working with survivors of violence are often so pre
funded, whilst other corporate benefits, etcetera in, in
existence that cost so more and more.
And so, so for me, that a full rejigging of the landscape of
(44:49):
how we go about challenging violence in the 1st place,
challenging stigma that comes from violence and facilitating
like holistic support all aroundsupport for people in the
aftermath of violence. I think it's particularly
important. And I, I kind of say that
because, you know, that is funded, it has enough funding to
(45:10):
support survivors. It just shouldn't be the case in
contemporary society. And so that I think that that is
one of the things that really impacts on being able to develop
educational programs or myth busting programs and also
rehabilitate our support. So many of the people, not just
(45:31):
in the book torture and torturous violence.
Some of the other texts that I've written gendered harm and
structural violence and the British asylum system being one.
I mean, what people who are working at the fore are expected
to do in an everyday scenario ofbasically not you may you may be
going into a job to be doing onekind of job like working in
(45:52):
psychology with survivors. Actually what you end up doing
is a million other things. And that is again down to often
people having to show kdis or get funding bids in because that
landscape is just so cur. And in this contemporary era of
continuously demonizing people seeking asylum, it just seems to
(46:15):
get lesser and lesser. And these are things that also
requirements bus night. That's why I think higher
education is it's a fell offensewhere it is.
If we can get that and things like what you guys are doing
with accessible podcasts and allof the other means that we can
do stuff. This is to me that the most
important aspects of how we go about challenging statement in
(46:36):
these ways. I could waffle on about that
forever because it really fits fine.
Yeah. I just want to ask you if
there's anything else you wantedto say.
I think the only thing to say isit will be really interesting to
see where criminology of witchcraft, persecution and
social control can go on, what these sorts of history can learn
(47:01):
from each other like the the variable disciplines and highly
the this kind of knowledge move into practice.
And yeah. And, and of course, it was great
to meet you both in Lancaster and I really appreciate the
invitation. And so today's show, it's been
fab. So hear your questions and get
me thinking about where where something could be useful or
(47:24):
where they can go. So I really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you so much. And now Sarah.
Has end witch hunts news. Today for End Witch Hunts News,
I'm going to talk about Podcast On, a global movement for
change. Podcast On is the world's
largest podcast charity initiative.
Launched in 2023. What began with 300 French
(47:46):
speaking podcasters has expandedto over 400 participants in 2024
and is now going global. The movement's vision is clear
to build up podcasting for good from a mere catch phrase into a
worldwide effort that unites thousands of podcasters across
the dozens of languages annually.
Co Founders. Jeremy Money and Eve still not
(48:09):
created podcasts on as an innovative alternative to
traditional fundraising methods like charity galas and
marathons, which often face limitations in budget
accessibility and sustained engagement.
Thank you Jeremy, and Eves and Witch Hunts is excited to join
this movement. We're proud to announce that we
(48:31):
are going to participate by releasing a special series
titled Ending Witch Hunts, featuring daily episodes from
March 15th through March 21st. These special episodes will in
part highlight our podcast GoFundMe campaign, which aims to
fund our travel to the Magic in Witchcraft conference in June
2025. This important conference,
(48:52):
themed What is a Witch? Provides crucial expert content
for educational efforts. Our attendance at last year's
conference allowed us to bring fresh perspectives and expert
guests to our podcast. Your support will help cover
travel costs, ensuring we can continue to deliver high
quality, authoritative content on this important topic.
(49:12):
Join us in supporting this innovative approach to
charitable giving and education through the power of
collaborative podcasting. What will you learn from our
podcast on 2025 Special Release series?
For one week, we'll take listeners across multiple
continents as we explore witchcraft accusations, a
worldwide human rights issue. Each day will release a special
(49:33):
episode. March 15th, we'll consider Boris
Gershman's research on witchcraft belief and discuss
our nonprofit's journey. March 16th we'll talk about
Africa's battle against witch hunts, highlighting advocates
from South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi and more.
On March 17th, you'll hear aboutsorcery accusation related
violence in Papua New Guinea. March 18th we'll spotlight
(49:57):
Asia's anti witchcraft accusation movement.
On March 19th, you'll hear from guest Holly Bamford on historic
witch trials in England and we'll share highlights from the
global conference that we met Holly at, the Magic and
Witchcraft Conference 2024. March 20th is the European
initiatives and modern day accusations and we'll finish it
off on the 21st with US Witch trials, exonerations and
(50:20):
contemporary challenges. Join us for this powerful theme
that spans continents but sharesone goal, ending witch hunts
worldwide. Throughout the series, we'll
amplify the vital work and messages of allied organizations
fighting on the front lines of this human rights issue.
Join us in supporting this innovative approach to
charitable giving and education through the power of
(50:41):
collaborative podcasting. Please consider backing our
GoFundMe campaign to help fund our vital work and explore ways
to support the frontline organizations we'll spotlight
throughout our series. Together, we can amplify these
voices and make a meaningful difference in ending which hunts
globally. Thank you, Sarah.
You're welcome. And thank you for joining us on
(51:03):
Witch Hunt. You should check out our robust
catalog of expert discussions. Have a great today and a
beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcast. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
I'm Sarah Jack. On today's episode, we're joined
by Victoria Canning, Professor of Criminology at Lancaster
University, whose groundbreakingwork examined state defined
approaches to torture and what she conceptualizes as torturous
violence. Criminal logical frameworks will
(00:22):
deepen our understanding of witchcraft, accusations and
persecution. Professor Canning brings a
critical perspective to how societies define, recognize, and
respond to severe and repeated abuses.
Her research particularly examines the gendered
implications of violence, addressing how conventional
definitions often fail to encompass the full spectrum of
(00:44):
torturous experiences, includingthose connected to witchcraft
persecutions. Throughout our conversation,
we'll discuss the potential for developing what Victoria calls a
criminology of witchcraft, interrogating the social harms
perpetuated through accusations and persecution, both
historically and in contemporarycontext.
(01:05):
We'll also examine how witchcraft accusations intersect
with migration patterns, border policies, and asylum processes,
areas that have remained largelyunexplored in traditional
criminological research. Join us as we navigate these
complex issues and consider how reconceptualizing violence
(01:27):
through a critical criminological lens might offer
new pathways for addressing witchcraft related persecution
and supporting survivors. Welcome to a witch hunt podcast.
Victoria Canning, We were so privileged to get to hear you
present at the Witchcraft and Human Rights Conference in
Lancaster. Please tell our listeners about
your work and expertise. Yes, and it's lovely to see you
(01:50):
both again. And it was, it was great to meet
you in Lancaster and what a great and historically important
place to be starting these discussions as well, so we can
talk a bit more about Lancaster and that role later down the
line. I'm a professor of criminology
in Lancaster University and my key areas of expertise are in
(02:10):
looking at state defined approaches to torture and then
what I've kind of defined and conceptualized as torturous
violence. So some of those things, severe
and often repeated abuses psychologically and physically
as well as sexually against people.
The gender implications of that as well for women and how
(02:31):
sometimes state definitions and approaches don't always take
into consideration what we see in terms of witchcraft
persecution, for example, which is in families or communities or
by partners or even. And one of my key areas of
expertise and interests is orders and migration.
So for example, including with particular social groups and
(02:53):
people who are trafficked and that rule of witchcraft
persecution and making decisionsto move as well.
So a whole plethora of things relating to violence, borders
and criminologies really is my interest.
At Lancaster, you gave a talk titled Toward a Criminology of
Witchcraft. What would you like the audience
to know about the talks that yougave?
(03:16):
I think that witchcraft is something or witchcraft
persecution as well as social control is something that has
been very largely overlooked by criminology.
So criminology being the study of crimes, actually in some ways
I work a bit against criminology.
I work on critical approaches tostate forms of persecution from
(03:37):
what's called a zemiological perspective.
So zemiology is actually the study of social harm.
So you can imagine in in relation to persecution, a
witchcraft persecution. Those harms can be physical,
they can be psychological, they might be cultural impacting on
where people feel CF4 can actually physically be.
We heard some of this from colleagues who were talking
(03:59):
about, for example, albinism andabuses against people with
albinism. And Charlotte Baker, who
organized the conference, has done a really great job with
Miranda Forsyth on talking and some of those.
So effectively what I want, whatI'd love the audience to take
away, and what my interest is aswell is what can criminology
(04:21):
offer the study of witchcraft, persecution and social control.
And the more that I've taken time, so my own interests in
witchcraft persecution go back till I was very young.
Actually, I brought a book with me today that I thought would be
of interest. And this was something I got for
Christmas when I was 10 years old.
(04:41):
So Tales of witchcraft and sorcery, this is back from 1994
by Ken Radford and interestinglythe Lancaster witch trials are
in there too. So my own interests was as
witchcraft, persecution and alsothe mythologies around
witchcraft and folklore as well.Obviously I come from Ireland,
superstitions are not unusual amongst my family or friends and
(05:05):
bringing those together though from a criminological
perspective doesn't seem to be something that has been done in
huge depth. So I've long term interests
there. And then of course, the more I
started to look at witchcraft persecution and speak with
colleagues around witchcraft persecution, the more gaps there
seems to be in thinking about, especially around for me,
(05:26):
migration, why people might migrate and the role of that in
in terms of pushing people out of community.
And also from torturous violenceperspectives whenever we think
about contemporary witchcraft persecution, which is often
undertaken by families and communities.
And that was something that I also saw, although I didn't
(05:47):
really think of it in terms of criminologies of witchcraft,
when I used to work with child survivors of our sexualized
violence in South Africa so manyyears ago, 15 or 18 years ago
now, where some children have been accused of witchcraft and
that was one of the reasons thatthey had been removed from the
hands of their immediate families.
(06:08):
So I mean, I could talk about where I think criminology, both
criminology and zenniology can go from there if that's of
interest. Because effectively the more
that I started reading and some great like for example, Margaret
Malik is is 1 criminologist who is undertaking some research
into witch trials. So histories of witch trials,
(06:28):
but up in Scotland. So some of those kind of more
contemporary campaigns about remembrance and the remembrance
particularly of women who were persecuted based on which
pressed accusations. But I I think there's just so
much to offer in relation to date crime studies.
So thinking about the rules of state in not intervening
(06:52):
historically or contemporarily miscarriages of justice is an
obvious interest to anybody who's in looking at criminology
as well. For me, the role of abuse and
the plethora of really important, particularly feminist
criminology work that goes into challenging cultural abuses that
(07:13):
are called cultural there, I think it's a lot more complex
than that. It's very easy to say cultural
abuse is actually when we look into many cultures, including in
the UK where I'm based now, we can see that abuses spanned well
beyond what's often represented,which is this idea of kind of
persecution in the global science.
(07:34):
I think Owen Davies talked a bitabout that as well, the kind of
that role of colonization and almost neo colonization into
expectations that it's other countries where persecution
takes place. And in my experience of working
on, I was a trustee firm, so that's the director on the board
(07:54):
of Rape Support Service for six years or so.
Ritualistic abuse was not uncommon in the region that I
was working, which is the northwest of England.
So many different things seem todraw together where criminology
is relevant and for me, and thatis in terms of the state crime
element and miscarriages of justice.
(08:15):
But also for me, I think the zemeal logical implications.
So those long term harms on people's lives that can be part
of a continuum and that the psychological impacts of those
which still quite often we don'tmean.
We might mean abuse or we might mean harm or violence, but very
seldom actually mean or use terms which are recognized as
(08:38):
being particularly abusive, suchas torture and torturous
violence. So we can really see that in
terms of people being again, historically and contemporarily
targeted either by states or by people around them and the long
term impacts of those abuses andhires, while we organize support
around those abuses, including for when people are seeking
(09:01):
asylum if they've fled in relation to witchcraft
persecution, very little that's done on this, which is super
interesting. But I think that means that
there's plenty of places to go in addressing these kinds of
harms. What would be the key benefits
of applying criminology to the violence that we're seeing
(09:23):
towards people accused of witchcraft?
I think that's a really good question because criminology is
an interesting sort of discipline or sub discipline.
I think the benefits are mutual.1 is really focusing and I think
critical criminology in particular, so not really
necessarily administrative criminology, but critical
(09:46):
criminology which looks at the role of states in not applying
regulations or addressing norms that could reduce harms or
abuses. I think that that's where this
lie on feminist criminology in particular has been at the fore
of a lot of that around really difficult topic areas,
especially sexualized violence and sexual torture.
(10:08):
So there's loads to learn from that.
But I also think the other way round.
So recently in I run 2 modules at the minute, Harms of crimes
of the power hall and Criminologies of violence and
engaging students in these discussions.
That's also where witchcraft persecution can be useful to
(10:29):
criminology. So rather than just criminology
offering something over a lens, actually learning about, because
some key concepts like social control and social othering, all
of these things that facilitate and exacerbate persecution are
really clear in, in witchcraft persecution.
It's almost one of those sort of, you know, social issues that
(10:54):
cover so many aspects of criminology that actually
criminology could learn from, I think.
And also around thinking about histories of, of the role of
colonization. So we talk about decolonization
in universities, actually thinking about the role of
witchcraft persecution, etcetera.
In in that context as well. I think is is, is really
(11:17):
interesting. So I think there's a lot to
actually be learned from studies, the witchcraft.
And also that I think opens up to looking at mythologies and
folklore history, all of those subject areas that I think are
that can often be overlooked in in in criminology where
(11:38):
sometimes things invent, reinvent the wheel.
And if we take a bit of a look into those other subject areas,
there's a lot to be garnered andlearned from.
And certainly that's how I find in looking through and studying.
I actually did my, I did, I undertook a course, a university
course in histories of witchcraft of the occult a few
years ago, which was really interesting on bringing these
(12:01):
things together. So there's just so much to be
said, I think. As you're informing us, I'm
hearing how much learning and synthesizing there is yet to do,
which is exciting. It's not just recognizing these
crimes are happening, but understanding why this is
(12:23):
happening. And one of the things that I
think is a challenge across cultures and communities is
definitions. And also in through bodies of
leadership too, how are we defining different terms?
Can you talk to us a little bit about torture and torturous
violence in how we should be defining that and applying that?
(12:47):
This is a really good point and one that is always that where
people make distinctions betweenthe role of academia and
organizations who are working atthe frontline of addressing
torture and torturous violence or other abuses and human rights
abuses as well. And exactly this around
definitions is something. And so to give an example,
(13:09):
recently a really great organization in the UK, Women
for Refugee Women had developed a report on the experiences of
women who are in asylum housing and use the concept that I
developed on corrosive control. So that kind of the the way in
which the border controls impacts and the gender
(13:30):
implications for women seeking asylum on how that plays into
their experiences in often private realms.
And that's an example where I think torture and torturous
violence. It's something else that is,
it's about making, in short, it's about making academia
useful, putting things into practice and also to let those
(13:52):
heavy lifting kind of discussions that are required
for academic publications and stuff that we have to engage in
to, to make them useful. And I think that that is
important. And another thing that I kind of
work in, and I'm Co editor of a series and Co editor of a book,
an international handbook on what's called activist
(14:13):
criminology. And that's about using
empirically informed evidence tomake or engage in active change
on social issues that we identify.
And witchcraft persecution and that role of the definitions
around torturous violence, whichis in effect broadens out the
(14:33):
narrow escape that is put into the UN Convention against
Torture. So there's loads of conventions
that relate to torture and torture of finance and some that
would be applicable to witchcraft persecution as we
understand it nigh contemporarily.
And we're just seeing the aftermath of I think more than
100 people were were killed recently in Haiti in relation to
(14:57):
to witchcraft, persecution, the kinds of abuses that often go
along. These things are not always
necessarily acknowledged as torture.
And yet we can see they have thesame impacts as torture, even
though they may not be related to extracting information or to
gain knowledge, which is often what torture is understood as.
(15:18):
Again, even though there's loadsof different, there's loads of
different definitions of torturein international law and in
relation to organization, working with survivors, it is
generally that fairly narrow definition.
So in relation to witchcraft persecution, if we open that out
to think more about the role of torturous violence, we can see
(15:38):
from accounts of people who are subjected to abuses related to
witchcraft. These are often sustained.
They often becomes impossible tolive in a person's own community
or the states. Another thing that both in
relation to this and in relationto state harm and crying more
generally is if the state are perpetrators of violence, then
(16:01):
where do you go? So my sort of thoughts on
torturous violence in in this approach is to be able to see
those abuses as sustained, as torturous.
And I think that the term torture and torturous does have
a particular weight to it. When we hear the word torture.
I, I remember having a discussion with with someone on
(16:22):
in the Committee against Torture.
And he had said, whenever we talk about we, we've all, we've
got torture and then we've got cruel and inhumane.
And already just by talking about cruel, inhumane,
degrading, there was that sort of recognition that I without
recognizing it, I can see that we still think of this as
(16:42):
slightly lesson and my argumentsand my key arguments in in the
book torture and torturous violence is that quite often the
impacts through a lifetime, psychologically and physically
are not necessarily lesser than that, that we would define
torture. And certainly I've seen that
with women seeking asylum where they have been subjected to what
(17:03):
it would be termed false imprisonment.
And effectively we would in any other realm call it torture over
periods of years. Speaking with somebody recently,
they were telling me that that also can relate to witchcraft
persecution by putting a threat of accusing witchcraft
persecution so people become afraid to leave.
And again, the gendered implications of that.
(17:25):
I've met with survivors who havebeen subjected to being burned
and scolded by their husband or partner.
Multiple perpetrator rate, all forms of abuses that we would
consider as torturous if they were under any other
circumstances, except for in theHomeward community.
And to me, that really resonateswith the key points around
(17:48):
witchcraft, persecution and whatpeople can be subjected to that
sometimes is seen as maybe lesser than what it actually is.
One of the things that you wrotein Torture and Torturous
Violence was that torture and torturous violence are
everyone's problem. How is that?
(18:10):
That's such a great but multifaceted question.
So the way, the way that I've seen that in some of the aspects
that I was writing with torture and torturous violence, we tend
to put and, and a lot of this narrative came through with
so-called enhanced interrogationtechniques, et cetera, where
these were reframed away from torture as a way to suggest that
(18:32):
torture happens elsewhere. But it doesn't happen.
It's not the US, it's not the UKwho are engaging in torture.
And of course we know that is fundamentally untrue and we can
see that through the various Senate intelligence reports,
etcetera. So we know that's the case.
What we don't come to recognize is the implications of those
(18:54):
tortures that happen either in in countries before migration
and then the long term impacts on people who are say you gain
refugee status or who are seeking asylum who can't access
support. In the book.
As you can see some of the documentations of forms of
torture and torturous violence that people are recording from
(19:17):
people seeking asylum and some of the oral histories that I
undertook with women seeking asylum.
These are such severe forms of violence that that often have
impacts including dissociation, anxiety, trauma, long term
depression, all of these things that if we had a supportive and
rehabilitative system to supportpeople who experience these
(19:40):
abuses, proper funding, etcetera.
Then some of the social issues which then do devout this, it's
almost like a ripple effect thatpeople can be so impacted.
So in one sense that that one example, the other on torturous
violence. And why I think that it's
everybody's issue is if we take a look and this is a little bit
(20:00):
of a story, but I think I talk about it in the book.
But one of the things that's really interesting for me is
whenever you take my show, I'll be in trouble for this.
But my mom loves to read women'smagazines.
Thankfully, she hasn't read my book.
I don't think to even get to know that it's in the text.
But yeah, she reads things like.They're, I think they're quite
(20:22):
specific to the UK, but there's,you know, they're not very
expensive. It's just people writing with
their stories and it's predominantly women writing in
with stories. And I was in our house a few
years ago while I was working onone of the last one, one of the
last projects around torture andtorturous violence.
Umm, I have been working on I've, I've just starting a new
one lie this month actually was it was represented as completely
(20:46):
exceptional to real. And so the rapist up the stairs,
the monster next door, all of these kinds of headings.
And when I took a read through these different magazines, I, I
kind of did a bit of a discourseanalysis of some of them.
These were intensive periods of abuse that would be akin to
(21:06):
torture. Some are against, say, fathers
or stepfathers, against their children or uncles or brothers
or teachers, things that are actually aspects of what we can
see in any sexual abuse inquiries, unfortunately, not
completely unusual or unique experiences.
(21:28):
These are part of what Lev Kellytalks about, a continuum of
sexual violence in society. So for me, I'm reading these
things, I think this is as akin to torture, but not under the
states, not with the States and as a perpetrator or a state
official, as a perpetrator or onbehalf of a state official, not
(21:49):
for extracting information, but to inflict violence and abuse.
And to me reading through these just these tortures.
And so actually we have a, we have an issue with naming abuses
in these ways. And that's why whenever I said
that torturous violence, I thinkthere's multi levels to why
torturous violence is everybody's issue.
One of those is whenever people are tortured and then maybe gain
(22:12):
refugee status or some of the things that people have been
subjected to. When I was rereading the book
for presentation, I was given last year, because after I
finished the book, I had a period of, of quite significant
burnout and the impacts of, I'vebeen working in this area for
almost 20 years. So the impacts were, were quite
(22:32):
significant without me even seeing that coming.
And so the impacts of that, thenI almost, when I, when I reread
some of the narratives, I could hardly even remember writing
them. But yet, of course I have typed
these up. I have listened to these
interviews and is what what people are subjected to is
something that we should be responding to in a humanitarian
(22:56):
way, not in the kind of ways that we are contemporarily
responding to people seeking asylum and and specifically
survivors of torture and torturous violence.
Which in in any other sense, if we could see the kinds of abuses
that people are subjected to andin any other sense we would
recognize that that the way of responding should be in a
(23:17):
humanitarian way, which is supportive on I don't like the
term rehabilitation because I don't know what it means to
rehabilitate to what, but at least a kind of rehabilitative
response over this increase securitized and demonizing
response for particularly peopleseeking asylum I think at
present. Yeah, I was thinking about how
(23:41):
data collection during the conference that came up a lot,
how significant collecting data is collecting new data.
But you know, as I'm listening to you, I'm realizing there's so
much data in these situations that we're maybe not applying to
(24:04):
these witchcraft torture situations.
And I'm also wondering, so that's one comment or question,
can we use the data we have? How much more data do we need?
But then when I'm thinking aboutthis humanitarian response that
we need from communities and we need from leadership, is data
(24:27):
enough to ignite that? Or is what do we do to get the
response if we have the data because we have the UN
resolution speaking asking states to take more action, how
do we get that? I think that this is a really
good, this is a really good question and it's this, this
(24:48):
probably brings in more of the stuff all kind of activist
criminology as well. But I agree, I think this is
across the board of research, a new, a new research project,
rather than working with what wehave and what we know and taking
time to develop and implement changes through these, through
what we have already, the knowledge we've already amassed.
(25:11):
Sometimes I think we could as much work into making the
changes as we do in collecting more and making things bigger.
We could really Barber and, and gain some shifts, I think
implementing terms that bring people's attention to this.
I've been researching, for example, I've been researching
(25:32):
on asylum for more than 15 yearsin the UK, and yet I haven't
been, I haven't seen much in theway at all.
Even of the organizations I've been to, people in organizations
I've entered, interviewed barristers or lawyers or social
workers or psychologists or psycho traumatologists, very
(25:52):
seldom do I hear about, if at all actually much on witchcraft
persecution. And yet we know that there must
be there must be information about witchcraft persecution in
relation to asylum or people arecoming across stuff, how we name
it. And this is what has been one of
the key things that I've been arguing in, in torture and
torturous violence, how we go about naming it.
(26:13):
So it's part of that discussion and conversation in more than
one realm. So often things are separated.
I like you've got witchcraft persecution here, you've got a
silent here. That's why I think border
criminal are criminologies of witchcraft, persecution and
social control brings these things together to tie up to
bring these variable perspectives into into focus.
(26:37):
And again, one of the things that I think it's important and
can be accessible is what's called and I think Charlotte
Baker has also has worked under this impact grants for impact.
So for developing toolkits alongside colleagues who were at
the four umm, I'm really keen tothe project that I'm working on
now is called Torturing Transit and that's about building
(26:59):
support techniques and toolkits for survivors so that we can
bring those together. So for example, if you're a
psychotraumatologist working with survivors of torture, but
you have no knowledge of witchcraft, persecution in a
particular country of origin, and someone is saying that they
have been subject for cultural reasons or religious reasons or
(27:21):
whatever terms might be used. We don't always flag those
things. And similarly things are named
even for example, sexual violence.
So this is another kind of key point in torture.
Torturous violence is people will describe sexual abuse in
very vague ways or torture in very vague ways.
(27:42):
So it's not always easy to interpret or have a flag that
says I think this person is possibly.
So I'm going to ask this question further to find out if
this has been torture or domestic torturous violence or
sexualized abuse and build that kind of blind wish to open up
those discussions that knit these different things together.
(28:05):
So that's I think one thing that's really key and and really
useful about academia is bringing those perspectives
together to build toolkit kits that can be implemented.
And one of the other things thatjust came to my mind that when
you asked that is, and I think that this is important for all
people who are working in research or is finding out if
(28:31):
you're going along the right lines.
So two really important learningcurves of of my life setting.
I've been, I remember when I wasdoing my PhD, which was 1516
years ago now. And I might, I wanted to find
out about the impacts of conflicts related violence on
women seeking asylum. And that of course, is the core
(28:54):
of the subject area. But what I was finding with
women seeking asylum was where Iwanted to use the works that I
was doing in sexual violence support to support and fill gaps
on with survivors. Actually, so many survivors were
impacted by borders. So not knowing where you were
going to be staying that night, issues of being dispersed at
(29:15):
last minute, not having the money to even go to support
organizations to get the bus to get there, All of these things
that actually get in the way. Learning from that and thinking,
actually, I need to take this ina different direction because
this isn't that. This is my priority, but it's
actually not there. It's not the people that I'm
work with priority. And the other is going back
(29:36):
whenever I finished or before I finished torture and torturous
violence, I was developing concepts of silencing and 10
mechanisms for silencing of sexual violence particularly or
sexual torture, particularly islands, and different
perspectives on torture. And rather than just come up
with the ideas and write a book,I went back over and over again
(30:00):
to different audiences and different groups, to lawyers,
practitioners, and presented my ideas and got hammered for some
of them. And then.
But that was about iteration. Likewise, speaking with people
seeking asylum and building another toolkit that myself and
and colleagues the right to remain had been developing is
speaking to people about what works for you rather than I know
(30:23):
what's best. So I'm just going to crack on
with my ideas. That's an important learning
curve that would see if everybody can a lot of work, I
think. But yeah, I think it's about
hearing that from from the growing up and from survivors of
the organizations themselves. I want to touch on the gendered
aspects of torture and torturousviolence.
(30:44):
We know that there's definitely a gendered aspect to witchcraft
persecutions. It's predominantly been
something used against women andgirls historically.
Is there a similar gendered aspect to torture?
Yeah, I think that's that was the key instigator for the text
(31:07):
actually and for rethinking the definitions that are used to
practice predominantly torture as we would define that in the
UN Convention against Torture. I by or at the behest of state
officials, usually in forms of confinement.
So if we think about confinement, who is
predominantly confined, it is mostly men.
And it's that interesting because when we think of gender
(31:29):
perspectives, we often overlook the men are in the definition of
the UN Convention, predominantlythose who are tortured because
they are predominantly those whoare targeted for being in
political positions or who are in confinement.
And subsequently there's more access to being tortured in
(31:50):
confinement under the definition.
On the other side, what we acknowledge, and I still don't
think I, I'm certainly don't think that torture is anywhere
near acknowledged as as much as it should be or the torture of
men or men seeking asylum. On the side of that is that kind
of long term silencing of domestic and interpersonal
abusers and the extra layers of silencing that particularly
(32:14):
sexualized violence, including sexualized torture against men,
harder layers of these impacts on what we can come to know and
address. So yeah, the gendered
implications of what I was finding with some organizations,
for example, we're working with survivors of torture, is that
most of the people that they were supporting were men.
(32:39):
And that makes sense if we use the Convention against torture.
What doesn't make sense is that if we only use that definition
or if that definition becomes the dominant definition, then
quite often the same forms of abuses, but all undertaken by
violent partners or in relation to witchcraft, persecution, for
(33:00):
example, we can see community members, etcetera.
Even if you look through the recent reports into things like
abuse in the Magdalene laundry and stuff in Ireland, these are
clearly torturous and clearly gendered.
So my kind of key point is to take that long term, how do we
(33:21):
address such silenced issues around sexualized violence and
sexualized torture and sexualized torturous violence,
which is often in wind in relationships for where people,
predominantly women are subjected to repeats or
continued sexualized abuse over periods of time.
(33:43):
And I've meant women seeking a sound awareness of being over
years of time or as part of a continuum where during the
migratory process, different points at which women were
subjected to different forms of violence, again, from all
different kinds of actors, all different kinds of people.
So border guards or police or people in refugee camps or also
(34:06):
with smugglers like I've, you know, you can come across and
you know, if you read around border criminologies, you can
come across that this is a kind of continuum of persecution.
So that a bit like witchcraft persecution that opens up to
thinking about the roles of how to address the abuses that are
(34:28):
in existence and how to challenge the silence that is so
deeply enshrouded around these kinds of particular abuses.
And of course, stigma is one of those one, one of the kind of
key aspects of silencing and howwe all about address.
And that is what I'm hopefully working toward with this
contemporary project with the Danish Institute Against
(34:50):
Fortune. Yeah, stigmatization.
That is such a challenge becauseyou'll have individuals or
individual organizations speaking out.
Maybe in some areas there's victims that are able to do
that. But it reminds me of kind of my
(35:11):
question earlier where I said, well, we have the data.
How do we get that humanitarian response?
How do we how do we get the family in the community and the
support organizations to hear this stigma is keeping us from
taking action? Let's dismantle that.
(35:33):
How do you get there? I think that's, again, there's
so many different ways and, and they always have to be taken
into consideration what is appropriate for the space that
you're in, the place that you'rein.
Often these these one, one key issue, and it really is a key
issue is also funding. So you're often being really
(35:53):
inappropriate areas to talk about, like personal experiences
or sexualized violence. Same whenever it comes to
assessing claims for refugee status.
Who wants to walk into a room with somebody that they don't
know and start talking about sexualized violence?
And that stigma runs really deep.
I had a few years ago, I was teaching some undergraduate
(36:14):
students, and I remember one of my students saying you'd rather
be dead than like survivor it. And I was.
So, I mean, it's hard for me to be taken aback on anything, but
it was this kind of assumption that that survival isn't
something that can ever be. I mean, survival is always a
(36:36):
process support, but supporting people through survival is the
key to that process, key to be enabled soon, never to
necessarily get over subjectionsof abuse, but to live with what
we have. Liz Kelly speaks about this very
well some years ago in in a seminar that I organized where
she said it's like a backpack that you put on.
(36:59):
Sometimes there's bricks in it, sometimes it's heavier,
sometimes you can take those bricks out, but the backpacks
always there. And I really think that if we
start to recognize that survivors are not all defined by
histories of violence. We are multifaceted humans and
subsequently get into that. That I didn't think is the
(37:21):
class, for example, just didn't bat an eyelid spot was I was so
shocked that that this was. And of course, it's because
quite often this is the first forum that even at that age of
20, 21 or whatever age my students were, I usually teach
second or third year. So yeah, 2021 are really talking
about sexualized abuse, violence, torture in any sort of
(37:43):
depth and hearing it as something that is both part of
society and something that can be challenged through through
really focusing on perpetration apart from anything else and the
perceptions that lead to perpetration.
And that goes for witchcraft persecution also, but also in
this dismantling of stigma. And it's interesting because
(38:05):
we're in, we're not sure if you've been following the
Giselle Perico case in France and that stigma, shame must
change sides. And I just think this is such a
powerful phrase in relation to stigma of the recognition that
the shame, the problems of the social problems, that the stigma
(38:26):
lies in the perpetration of sexual violence, not in the
being subjected to or surviving.And I wonder if the role of
issues our paragraphs approach will shift that narrative.
There's always a danger that I would also say though, because
(38:46):
then it becomes as if we should,as if all survivors can always
be strong or always be able to face stigma and actually
survival. The most important thing is that
survival is a process. It should never be an
expectation that you're just going to be able to get up today
or it's also OK to have days where that's not OK.
But in in all being able to bring these in and it's
(39:08):
difficult to do working with working with students, working
with the public or anything. I've even found with working
sometimes with practitioners whowill talk about all kinds of of
violence or abuse. But once it comes to sexualized
violence, then this becomes something that people can
(39:28):
struggle with or as as one practitioner said to me, once
you're really open in a can of worms, if you want to talk about
that. And of course we are, but it's
but the can is there whether we open it or not.
And to get to challenge and stigma.
And again, I'm talking about this from my research on on
sexualized violence and torture.But I think this also goes with
(39:50):
with some of the strengths of addressing witchcraft
persecution as being the problemof perpetration and that kind of
platform for survivors to safelybe supported into their their
narratives, challenging that stigma around those narratives.
Yeah, and there's definitely stigma involved with the
(40:12):
witchcraft persecutions as well against the survivors.
There's always the risk that they'll be re accused or you
know, someone will perpetrate something against them again
because they've got this reputation that they did nothing
to bring upon themselves. But that stigma is still there.
(40:34):
And how do we help provide them with an environment where they
can even come out and feel safe acknowledging that this happened
to them? And I think that's a very real
fear for survivors to have. That's another thing.
It's easy enough to be distant to the subject or not be the
(40:55):
person who's who is at risk of imminent persecution.
This is similar for other forms of of safe crime and violence,
of domestic and interpersonal abuses or familial abuses.
The risk is real and the risk isthere.
And again, I think for a long time how we move towards
shifting toward perpetration andchallenging myths.
(41:18):
Again, just drawing in CharlotteBaker's work on challenging
albinism, those kinds of even just general facts.
We, we had it whenever I was when I was working with it
wasn't so much, it wasn't aroundwitchcraft, persecution, but it
was a form of, of mythologies ofmagic where some of the children
(41:38):
that we were supporting were raped as part of a belief that
having sex with virgins would transfer HIV so that you would
be free of HIV and that this would be that this was kind of
a, a personal cure. So, you know, developing
(41:58):
responses that are, and again, Icome from a critical
criminological perspective here that address the harm without
increasing what, without increasing the kind of punitive.
So as if, as if punitive approaches are the only way.
So there was always quite difficult and it's it's always
(42:18):
quite difficult working on on forms of abuse when if the
approach is only punitive and sometimes that's out of your
hands whenever it comes to say criminal justice approaches,
etcetera. But certainly working with
challenging mythologies, challenging drawing together
facts, focusing on on knowledge and information.
(42:39):
Otherwise, I work in higher education.
What's the point in higher education if we can't use
education to challenge miss and to focus And rather than I think
it's just that balance is meant between what the criminal
justice approach takes and what working through myth busting and
challenging sometimes really quite problematic beliefs,
(43:00):
whether they're and they can also be religious beliefs.
We, we talk about this as, as ifit's contemporarily only happens
in sort of certain areas of the world.
But again, the same kinds of abuse as we can see in inquiries
into child steps abuse in, in the UK in I've already mentioned
the Magdalene Laundries, the kinds of torture and torturous
violence that have been embeddedin these institutions.
(43:22):
So using not sort of the the strength of education to reframe
and drawing in things that as wesend you mentioned earlier,
Sarah, but looking at definitions and how definitions
can sometimes be limiting and what if they are?
And then if they're not helping,what can we do to shift that
(43:42):
forward? And then and certainly loads of
people will disagree with me on my work on torturous violence.
That's fine. But where concepts are useful,
then let's get them out there and apply.
That's another thing that's again difficult.
I was mentioning earlier about that funding.
We are in such increasing disparity of wealth in in this
(44:06):
kind of contemporary form of capitalism to see that you can
go take a trip around on a spaceto be able to afford these
things whilst people can't afford to to travel to migraine
from conflict or from torture. And then the way in which
organizations like just the disparity in where finances go,
it is I, I've, I think this is almost my very words, but it
(44:29):
does, as you can tell, really get to me.
But it is such a disgrace of ourtimes that organizations which
are working with survivors of violence are often so pre
funded, whilst other corporate benefits, etcetera in, in
existence that cost so more and more.
And so, so for me, that a full rejigging of the landscape of
(44:49):
how we go about challenging violence in the 1st place,
challenging stigma that comes from violence and facilitating
like holistic support all aroundsupport for people in the
aftermath of violence. I think it's particularly
important. And I, I kind of say that
because, you know, that is funded, it has enough funding to
(45:10):
support survivors. It just shouldn't be the case in
contemporary society. And so that I think that that is
one of the things that really impacts on being able to develop
educational programs or myth busting programs and also
rehabilitate our support. So many of the people, not just
(45:31):
in the book torture and torturous violence.
Some of the other texts that I've written gendered harm and
structural violence and the British asylum system being one.
I mean, what people who are working at the fore are expected
to do in an everyday scenario ofbasically not you may you may be
going into a job to be doing onekind of job like working in
(45:52):
psychology with survivors. Actually what you end up doing
is a million other things. And that is again down to often
people having to show kdis or get funding bids in because that
landscape is just so cur. And in this contemporary era of
continuously demonizing people seeking asylum, it just seems to
(46:15):
get lesser and lesser. And these are things that also
requirements bus night. That's why I think higher
education is it's a fell offensewhere it is.
If we can get that and things like what you guys are doing
with accessible podcasts and allof the other means that we can
do stuff. This is to me that the most
important aspects of how we go about challenging statement in
(46:36):
these ways. I could waffle on about that
forever because it really fits fine.
Yeah. I just want to ask you if
there's anything else you wantedto say.
I think the only thing to say isit will be really interesting to
see where criminology of witchcraft, persecution and
social control can go on, what these sorts of history can learn
(47:01):
from each other like the the variable disciplines and highly
the this kind of knowledge move into practice.
And yeah. And, and of course, it was great
to meet you both in Lancaster and I really appreciate the
invitation. And so today's show, it's been
fab. So hear your questions and get
me thinking about where where something could be useful or
(47:24):
where they can go. So I really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you so much. And now Sarah.
Has end witch hunts news. Today for End Witch Hunts News,
I'm going to talk about Podcast On, a global movement for
change. Podcast On is the world's
largest podcast charity initiative.
Launched in 2023. What began with 300 French
(47:46):
speaking podcasters has expandedto over 400 participants in 2024
and is now going global. The movement's vision is clear
to build up podcasting for good from a mere catch phrase into a
worldwide effort that unites thousands of podcasters across
the dozens of languages annually.
Co Founders. Jeremy Money and Eve still not
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created podcasts on as an innovative alternative to
traditional fundraising methods like charity galas and
marathons, which often face limitations in budget
accessibility and sustained engagement.
Thank you Jeremy, and Eves and Witch Hunts is excited to join
this movement. We're proud to announce that we
(48:31):
are going to participate by releasing a special series
titled Ending Witch Hunts, featuring daily episodes from
March 15th through March 21st. These special episodes will in
part highlight our podcast GoFundMe campaign, which aims to
fund our travel to the Magic in Witchcraft conference in June
2025. This important conference,
(48:52):
themed What is a Witch? Provides crucial expert content
for educational efforts. Our attendance at last year's
conference allowed us to bring fresh perspectives and expert
guests to our podcast. Your support will help cover
travel costs, ensuring we can continue to deliver high
quality, authoritative content on this important topic.
(49:12):
Join us in supporting this innovative approach to
charitable giving and education through the power of
collaborative podcasting. What will you learn from our
podcast on 2025 Special Release series?
For one week, we'll take listeners across multiple
continents as we explore witchcraft accusations, a
worldwide human rights issue. Each day will release a special
(49:33):
episode. March 15th, we'll consider Boris
Gershman's research on witchcraft belief and discuss
our nonprofit's journey. March 16th we'll talk about
Africa's battle against witch hunts, highlighting advocates
from South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi and more.
On March 17th, you'll hear aboutsorcery accusation related
violence in Papua New Guinea. March 18th we'll spotlight
(49:57):
Asia's anti witchcraft accusation movement.
On March 19th, you'll hear from guest Holly Bamford on historic
witch trials in England and we'll share highlights from the
global conference that we met Holly at, the Magic and
Witchcraft Conference 2024. March 20th is the European
initiatives and modern day accusations and we'll finish it
off on the 21st with US Witch trials, exonerations and
(50:20):
contemporary challenges. Join us for this powerful theme
that spans continents but sharesone goal, ending witch hunts
worldwide. Throughout the series, we'll
amplify the vital work and messages of allied organizations
fighting on the front lines of this human rights issue.
Join us in supporting this innovative approach to
charitable giving and education through the power of
(50:41):
collaborative podcasting. Please consider backing our
GoFundMe campaign to help fund our vital work and explore ways
to support the frontline organizations we'll spotlight
throughout our series. Together, we can amplify these
voices and make a meaningful difference in ending which hunts
globally. Thank you, Sarah.
You're welcome. And thank you for joining us on
(51:03):
Witch Hunt. You should check out our robust
catalog of expert discussions. Have a great today and a
beautiful tomorrow.
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