Bewitched and Bothered

Even hardened criminals in the Kansas state industrial reformatory in Hutchinson might have shivered a bit when they learned the news: a self-proclaimed witch was in the prison. He was not a convict but Robert J. Williams, 45, one of the three staff psychologists. Williams is a member of what he calls the Gardnerian sect, an occult paganistic group that worships a two-headed, male-female godhead and performs some of its ceremonies in the nude (and refers to both male and female mem bers as witches). After the Wichita Eagle and the Beacon ran the story last November, Superintendent Kenneth Oliver was not exactly bewitched by the revelation. He fired Williams, arguing that the psychologist had lost his credibility with the convicts and could not treat them effectively. Moreover, Oliver added, the psychologist had become the laughingstock of the prison.

Williams appealed his dismissal, protesting that he was "a freewheeling eclectic" in psychological method. Far from feeling any incompatibility between the practice of witchcraft and psychology, Williams sees "absolutely none. There is no reason why your religion should conflict with your work." The Kansas civil service commission agreed. It ordered Williams reinstated in his job because prison officials had failed to demonstrate that Williams had lost his professional effectiveness.

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