In the early months of 1692, several young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, underwent a series of unexplainable outbursts and convulsions. A local doctor diagnosed them as being bewitched by evil after the girls claimed to be under the influence of satanic forces. At the time, colonial Massachusetts was controlled by the Puritans, an extremist Protestant sect that had left England to avoid religious persecution. Once in New England, the Puritans enacted a series of strict religious laws to punish those who did not conform to their beliefs. The result was a society that enforced rigid gender roles and believed that women were weaker than men and therefore inherently more likely to sin. The Puritans had very little tolerance for those who did not behave like everyone else. It was also a community in which many believed in the supernatural and blamed problems and unexplained events on the devil, witches, or other evil spirits.