The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

Mather heard of the accusation [the girls had named Elizabeth Cary and Mary Obinson], he confronted
the father to demand whether the man did not think there was a God in Boston that he should go to the
Devil in Salem for advice.” (Roach, p. 306)
But of course, this new-found influence could only exist as long as the trials (and accusations)
continued. Even if we were to accept the sincerity of the girls' beliefs about seeing the specters of
others tormenting the innocent, it would have taken a person of heroic proportions to have set aside
such power in the middle of the trials. Furthermore, no individual afflicted could afford to do so, even
if they were willing: as the case of Mary Warren makes clear, any attempt to undermine the legitimacy
of the accusations would only open oneself up to being accused in turn. That is, the afflicted were
willing to enforce cooperation and punish defection in their own ranks. This willingness to be brutal in
maintaining group cohesion is also explained by the biggest danger for the afflicted: the danger of
being caught in an act of premeditated murder. Lying was not only a sin against God, it was also a
serious crime under English law, especially in cases of false testimony. (Hansen, p.. 35) To admit error
would have been to admit the possibility that they had intentionally caused the deaths of innocents (and
imperiled the souls of the magistrates) – and maintaining a united front on this point would have been a
necessity. Thus, regardless of how the afflicted became involved in the trials, once they were swept up
in the process, and possessed of the power of life and death over whomsoever they chose, there was no
way for them to extract themselves until the trials had been discredited.
But it was not enough for the afflicted to keep adding to the ranks of the accused: the judges
would have to continue to see these accusations as credible, and the spectral testimony offered by the
afflicted as truthful. In this, the judges were helped by their prior belief that witchcraft was real – and
was a necessary implication of the existence of God and Satan's war against Him. While there were
those who could reconcile a belief in God with a disbelief in witchcraft (Robert Calef numbered among
these), most educated men would have found this position verging too close to a disbelief in the deity,
and the reality of the spiritual world. 60 In fact, much of the judges' (and other influential elites')
opinions on the court's doings were informed by a firm belief that, in such a weighty and important
situation, God would not allow serious and pious men to be misled, and to seriously admit this
60 In fact, Cotton Mather's writings on the trial – full of warnings about the danger of relying on spectral testimony that
might allow Satan to mislead the minds of men – were entitled Wonders of the Invisible World: even knowing the danger,
Mather had a basic assumption that this invisible world was a tangible reality. Calef's sardonic riposte was entitled More
Wonders of the Invisible World: for of course Calef did not believe in the reality of such a thing at all.
63