CHILDREN ‘AT RISK FROM WITCHCRAFT’

Young people are in danger from the effects of witchcraft which is “sweeping the country,” Mr Geoffrey Dickens, the Tory campaigner against child abuse warned in the Commons yesterday.

In a call for a debate on witchcraft, the MP said that it was common knowledge that many people convicted of offences against children had been involved in witchcraft initiation ceremonies.

“People laughed when I spoke nine years ago about child abuse. Most people are listening now,” Mr Dickens said. “I know warn the House – witchcraft is sweeping the country.”

However, his comments were met with laughter, and there were further jeers when Labour MP Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) shouted: “It (witchcraft) is in Downing Street.”

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Mr Dickens said outside the Commons that now he would be pressing – or possibly himself introducing – a Bill to make it illegal to practise witchcraft and empowering courts to impose heavy custodial sentences.

He said: “These are extremely devious, evil people. They get a satanic hold over adults and children in such a way that they have them totally at their command.

“If we are to protect children from their sordid, sexual and diabolical grasp, we much bring in new laws to wipe witches off the face of the earth.”

Mr Dickens said he had evidence of a vicar in the North of England, who claimed there were 50 witches’ covens operating between Blackburn and Manchester alone.

“This vicar is obsessed by fears that the North of England is in the grip of supernatural warfare.”

Mr Dickens, who will be raising the matter in detail in the Commons within the next few days, added: “I have not gone made. This is a serious and growing problem which must be exorcised.”

Glasgow Herald, April 15, 1988

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