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The rape of women who were accused of being witches was a usual practice of torturers and their assistants during preliminary “stripping.” Some records hint that executioners could indulge their lusts as long as they were circumspect. Torturers liked to attack women’s breasts and genitals with pincers, pliers, and red-hot irons. Witch hunting was mostly toward females, and little girls were prosecuted and tortured for witchcraft at age nine and a half. It was common practice to silence witches on their way to execution by wooden gags, or by slicing their tongues out to prevent communication with the crowd.

-- Walker, Barbara G., The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1983. Page 445.