There have been many changes in the 330 years since the Salem Witch Trial. Author and witch scholar Marilynne Roach, Bobbi Van Gilder, Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Suffolk University, and Playwrights Michael Cormier & Myriam Cyr, look at how the justice system failed the accused women in Salem. They discuss how a justice system, created by men, has treated women throughout our history and how gender continues to impact the rights of women in America. Note, This talk followed a dramatic reading of the new play, Saltonstall’s Trial: The Untold Story of the Salem Witch Trials. Photo credit: Pexels.com
Myriam Cyr is a mother, a television and radioannouncer, as well as a programming director.
MMarilynne Roacharilynne K. Roach works as a free-lance writer, illustrator, researcher, and presenter of talks on historical subjects. She has written for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New England Historic Genealogical Register, and the Lizzie Borden Quarterly. She is a member of the Gallows Hill Project that verified the correct site of the 1692 hangings, a discovery listed in Archaeology Magazine’s list of the world’s ten most important discoveries of 2017.
Michael earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Northeastern University, majoring in Political Science and minoring in History. He went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers University and is presently enrolled in graduate coursework in creative writing at Harvard University. A copywriter, ghostwriter and editor by trade, Cormier has written everything from campaign speeches to full-length biographies. He has also published short stories and three novels, Sumner Island (2010), Convention (2013), and The Lord of Malice (2021) and co-written two other books. His play The Abolitionist Refrain, about poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s role as an abolitionist, debuted at The Whittier Birthplace in Haverhill in September 2022.