About 200 people gathered yesterday for a solemn service in Cambridge's First parish Church commemorating the victims of the Salem witch trials 300 years ago.

Participants in the service read the stories of each of the 24 men, women and children who were crushed, hanged or left to die in prison during the 1692 witch hunts.

The Rev. Kim C. Harvie, senior minister of the Arlington Street Church, said the service was intended to raise awareness of how marginalized people are treated today in the U.S.

"We felt it was an especially appropriate time when more and more people are marginalized, there are more people poor, disaffected, on the streets," Harvie said.

'Scapegoats'

"Most of the people who died were scapegoats of their time, homeless or harridans, and most of them were women," said the minister in her opening words. "We gather to remember that erasing the line between church and state is deadly."

Twenty four people took turns relating the events leading to the accusation, trial and execution of each victim and explaining the interpretations--frequently irrational by modern standards--which fueled the events.

The stories of women who were too outspoken or did not behave in a conventionally moral manner, even a minister who was killed for being "too strong," were read to the audience. After each story was read, one of 24 candles in the front of the church was extinguished.

"We felt the biggest issues were the patriarchal notion of how women should be and how people should be," Harvie said. "Another was this terrible mixing of church and state so neither gave the sanctuary and protection it was supposed to."

The memorial service, which was the first to recognize all the victims of the trials together, drew the sup-