The Devil's Children

From Spirit Possession to Witchcraft: New Allegations that Affect Children

Jean La Fontaine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317035916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

A number of cases of serious child abuse have resulted from beliefs that children may be possessed by evil spirits and may then be given the power to bewitch others. Misfortune, failure, illness and even death may be blamed on them. The 'cure', nowadays called deliverance rather than exorcism, is to expel the spirits, sometimes by violent means. This book draws together contributions on aspects of possession and witchcraft from leading academics and expert practitioners in the field. It has been put together following conferences held by Inform, a charity that provides accurate information on new religions as a public service. There is no comparable information publicly available; this book is the first of its kind. Eileen Barker, founder of Inform, introduces the subject and Inform's Deputy Director goes on to detail the requests the charity has answered in recent years on the subject of children, possession and witchcraft. This book offers an invaluable resource for readers, whether academic or practitioner - particularly those in the fields of the safeguarding of children, and their education, health and general welfare.

Chapter 1
An Introduction to The Devil’s Children

Eileen Barker

Amongst the more distressing incidents to have hit the British headlines in the twenty-first century have been a number of revelations concerning the treatment of children who, having been accused of being possessed by demonic powers, have been ‘appropriately treated’ in such a way that they have ended up either severely injured or dead. This book is an attempt to address some of the issues surrounding such tragedies and to place these in a wider context than that available in the more sensationalist media.

The image of a demon or evil entity possessing a human being is both titillating and terrifying; films such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist have been runaway box office successes, exciting and scaring young and old alike. Audiences have been uncertain as to whether they were merely enjoying a modern form of entertainment or were witnessing an expression of dark forces that have been battling for the souls of human beings since the time of creation. Such images were, of course, commonplace in Biblical times,1 but throughout the contemporary world one can find societies in which talk of such phenomena is a taken-for-granted part of every-day life. Nor, as is sometimes thought, are beliefs in possession confined to what are termed the more primitive societies. The Roman Catholic baptismal rite contains prayers for the exorcism of the candidate, and similar prayers have been restored to Anglicanism through the Alternative Service Book of 1980 (Cuneo 2001: 163). In his book, American Exorcism, Michael Cuneo tells us how, since the mid-1970s, countless Americans have become convinced that they themselves, or perhaps a loved one, are suffering from demonic affliction and are, thus, in need of exorcism. He describes how, on scores of occasions, he has witnessed Catholic priests, a variety of Protestant ministers, medical doctors and certified psychiatrists performing exorcisms for thousands of middle-class American citizens. Many of those whom Cuneo interviewed claim to have come out much the better as a result, but there have been several accounts of exorcisms in North America and Europe leading to deaths and severe trauma.2

In Britain, among the cases to come most prominently to public attention were those of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié, who was murdered in February 2000, and eight-year-old ‘Child B’ who suffered serious abuse in 2005; both had been accused of being a witch (see Chapters 10 and 14). In October 2004 there was the case of three-month-old Samira Ullah, murdered by her father who was convinced that she was possessed by a jinn (see Chapter 6).3 It was cases such as these that led Inform4 to organise the two seminars at which most of the chapters in this book were first presented.5 The first seminar, held in December 2005, was restricted to about 30 participants who had been invited to attend a closed workshop because of their professional interest in the subject of children being accused of possession by demons/evil spirits and/or of using witchcraft. Clergy, teachers, police, social welfare workers, anthropologists, sociologists and psychiatrists were represented in this group. The second meeting to be organised was more broadly entitled ‘Spirit Possession and Exorcism’. It was held in May 2006 as one of the two open seminars that Inform holds each year on a given topic when it is the practice to invite speakers from as wide a range of perspectives as possible; these typically include practitioners/believers, critics, academics and others with personal knowledge or professional expertise. The Seminars are attended by about a hundred people, with a broad spectrum of interests.

Based at the London School of Economics and supported by the British government and mainstream Churches, Inform was founded with the aim of helping enquirers by providing information that is as reliable, balanced and up-to-date as possible about minority religions, faith movements and spiritual communities (Barker, 2006). Since the start of 1988, Inform has been collecting, assessing and disseminating information about what now amounts to well over 3,000 different groups and movements. This has involved covering scores of different topics and issues, one of which has been spiritual possession, another the religiously sanctioned abuse of children.

Inform has always believed in the importance of collecting data from every conceivable source. This includes information from the religious believers, their opponents, the media (including the Internet), scholars and other professionals who have some contact or expertise related to the religions and any individuals who have, or believe they have, some relevant knowledge. These data are filed both in a variety of electronic forms and in hard copy such as books, articles, cuttings, videos, cassettes, and DVDs. Obviously some sources are more reliable than others. Inform relies on the methodology of the social sciences to assess the accuracy and objectivity of the data it gathers in its attempt to offer information that is more dependable than that from other sources such as sections of the media, some cult-watching groups and the movements themselves, all of which may have an agenda that tends to make them somewhat selective in their accounts (Barker, 2002).

The social sciences have to recognise their limitations, however. They have no expertise, technologies or skills that allow them to judge theological or ethical claims. But that does not mean that they cannot use their methods to understand as far as possible the theological and ethical beliefs of those whom it studies, and to understand the variety of beliefs and perspectives that can motivate the actions of individuals and organisations. A related limitation of social (indeed all) science is that it can only describe and explain empirical or natural phenomena. It has to be ‘methodologically agnostic’ as it has no way of testing whether or not a supernatural being is responsible for any particular happening – or, to put it another way, it cannot cite God, the Devil, angels or evil spirits as independent variables. The fact that there are no objective criteria by which we can adjudicate between different claims of supernatural causation – whether, for example, an individual is possessed by some paranormal entity – has often resulted in methodological atheism, where happenings that some claim to be the result of possession are explained away as ‘nothing but’ a cultural expectation, a psychological illness or a somatic malfunctioning. Such reductionist explanations may be true, but science has no more entitlement to assume that they are the only ‘real’ explanation than that it has to assume theories of possession are false.6 For this reason, Inform regularly invites proponents of a wide range of views to speak at its conferences in order to try to help others understand beliefs that are different from their own, rather than to reach a conclusion about whose beliefs are ‘right’ or whose beliefs are ‘wrong’.

Sometimes alternative explanations can be seen as being in direct competition, and, indeed, it is frequently the case that if one particular belief is true, then another belief must, logically, be wrong. Alternative perspectives can, however, be accepted as complementary. For example, in South Africa I spent some time with a Sangoma who was explaining to me how her healing powers depended upon her close association with (and occasional possession by) her ancestral spirits.7 What interested me even more, however, was to discover that she had also been working as a representative of her ‘Union’ in close cooperation with the South African Ministry of Health to draw up a rigorous code of practice for the use of medical personnel, both blacks and whites, using both traditional and Western medicine.

While social science cannot always know what The Truth is, it can be drawn upon to inform people of certain things that are not the case. Where minority religions and alien beliefs and practices are concerned, suspicion, fear, ignorance and misinformation are rife. Frequently mistaken opinions about the beliefs and practices of others have led to inappropriate actions. Too often, people starting from one set of assumptions respond inappropriately to a situation arising from a different set of beliefs – on the one hand those who abuse may be ignored, and on the other hand perfectly innocent, ‘good’ people who would be horrified at the thought of hurting a fly are tarred with the same brush as the abusers.8

In Chapter 2, Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist describes some of the cases that have come to Inform and how they have indicated ways in which concepts of possession, black magic, the evil eye and the like can be used for exploitative purposes, resulting in vulnerable believers losing money and suffering from ill health. Sufferers may be directed away from medical services that might otherwise have helped them. Fear and ignorance on the part of the client; extortion, manipulative abuse (emotional, physical, verbal, sexual) and greed for money and power on the part of ‘experts’ can all contribute to this unhealthy situation. It would, however, be a mistake to believe that beliefs in possession are used only for nefarious ends; benign possession is clearly distinguishable from this cluster of damaging behaviour.

Roland Littlewood, a clinical psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, has analysed the phenomenon of possession both in psychopathological terms as either illness or treatment for the individual, and from an anthropological perspective as manifestations of social tensions and group dynamics. In Chapter 3, he warns of the dual dangers for the clinician faced with possession beliefs: on the one hand, if local cultural explanations or interpretations of illnesses as manifestations of possession are ignored the clinician may misdiagnose the condition as a mental health problem when it is not; on the other hand, if the local culture is overemphasised serious mental conditions may be missed.

Sherrill Mulhern begins Chapter 4 by providing an historical backdrop to the development of ideas of possession and witchcraft within European Christianity, describing how medical explanations overtook purely religious explanations. Such theories included the conclusion reached by Freud’s contemporary, the French psychiatrist Pierre Janet, that patients may be interacting with their sub-personalities. Moreover, Janet warned, when physicians show a fascination with their patients’ secondary personalities then the latter can respond by creating more. Mulhern then recounts how, around the mid-twentieth century, the writings of the German-born Protestant theologian Kurt Koch influenced the growth of North American deliverance rituals, which functioned as ‘cathartic psychotherapies’ to restore psychological and emotional health as well as the participants’ spiritual state. The rituals developed into mass exorcisms in which demons would be summoned from whole congregations, and those who had indulged in the free sex and psychedelic drugs of the hippy culture were encouraged to be delivered from their demons and to accept the Holy Spirit in their stead.

Taking a comparative perspective, Mulhern then directs us to the anthropological literature that illustrates the widespread function of possession to control, explore and celebrate the deviant, possession-permitting ritual expressions of normally unthinkable behaviour. Finally she returns to Western psychiatry and its changing understanding of human personality. Although there had been an increasing awareness of the individual as a multi-faceted, malleable structure, psychiatrists tended to continue to treat patients as if they had a unique and unified personal identity until the influx of traumatised veterans of the Vietnam War, and the emergent visibility and recognition of victims of rape and intra-familial sexual abuse. Towards the end of the twentieth century, there was an increasing diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) based on an assumption that trauma created alternative personalities which served to shield the victims from abuse they had experienced as children. Although MPD theorists concede that the alternate personalities are not actually people, the model characterises them as relatively independent with a distinct sense of self and their own motives, desires, skills and talents. Furthermore, Mulhern tells us that when they are not ‘out’, ‘alter personalities’ are said to retire to a ‘Third Reality’ situated behind the multiple’s consciousness threshold, where they continue to interact with other ‘alters’.

Another approach to understanding possession is to focus on the detail of particular places and people, described here both by academics who have done the research and religious leaders who offer an insider’s view. Malcolm Gold (Chapter 5) reminds us of the Biblical authority for Christian beliefs in possession and exorcism in the story of Jesus casting out an evil spirit that had possessed a young boy (Matthew 17:14-23; Mark 9:14-32; Luke 9:37-43). He charts the changes undergone by the City Christian Centre, an Assemblies of God congregation in Yorkshire, when it shifted, under the guidance of a new pastor, from a primary focus of strict adherence to the Bible to one of internalising the Holy Spirit or, alternatively, demonic spirits. His account shows how one minister, by introducing the practice of exorcism into a church, can radically alter its religious practices. He also demonstrates how power and authority reside in the person of the exorcist, who claims to have both doctrinal knowledge and previous experience – the exorcist is God’s minister and has supernatural power to look into the spiritual realm, and it is, therefore, his interpretation of reality that must be accepted. The subject of the possession, on the other hand, is reduced to a contorting, screaming, incapable victim. The control introduced by exorcism may not, however, last indefinitely. Gold reports that those who had been delivered found themselves slipping back into their sinful ways and/or continuing to be sick. The promise of instant and complete cleansing required modification; and, with the departure of the exorcist, the church reverted to its earlier practices.

Simon Dein (Chapter 6) lays out the different ways in which Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh in London’s East End account for various misfortunes. It may be that the sufferer has annoyed a jinn by trespassing on the spirit’s space; it could be that someone has paid a specialist to employ black magic or sorcery to ensure the victim becomes ill or fails examinations; or it might not be possession that it is at work at all as the misfortune might be the result of someone, probably unconsciously, casting the evil eye on the victim. Dein points out that the fact that many of these beliefs are not accepted by orthodox Islamic theologians does not prevent their providing many of the Bangladeshi Muslims whom he studied with a persuasive way both of explaining and of doing something to overcome their everyday misfortunes.

Looking from a sociological perspective at possession as the central ritual of a religion, Bettina Schmidt (Chapter 7) presents us with a strikingly vivid description of a Puerto Rican Vodou ceremony.9 Here we are introduced to a form of possession that aims to tame and control spirits that possess people so that they can be used to provide benefits to the individual and the community at large. Schmidt also elucidates the unintended benefits of the rituals, providing as they do both a focus for the community and a clear identity for Afro-Caribbean migrants.

Christina Harrington, an historian of religion, offers us in Chapter 8 the most personal account of possession when describing her own progress as a practitioner of the neo-Pagan religion known as Wicca (and in earlier stages of its history as Witchcraft) to the stage where she was ready to experience the ‘drawing down the Moon’ as a priestess. This phrase refers to the ritual in which the Goddess enters the body of the priestess. Although she maintains that the experience is ineffable, Dr Harrington conveys very clearly the sensations she experienced in her first possession. She is, furthermore, able to use her professional training to observe and explain some of the apparent contradictions in Pagan beliefs and practices. One of the most significant points that she makes is that when the Goddess enters into her she does not believe she is in any way diminished or ‘not there’ – she is, at the one time, both herself and something far, far beyond herself.

The views of insiders differ, of course, from those of outsiders who seek to understand possession. Mercy Magbagbeola is a psychiatric nurse, practising as a psychiatric social worker, but she is also a prophetess in the Celestial Church of Christ who receives the Holy Spirit when called upon to heal and help other members of the congregation. In Chapter 9, she provides an insider’s account of her Church’s beliefs about involuntary possession, which is attributed to the P...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 An Introduction to The Devil’s Children
• 2 Beliefs in Possession
• PART I The Meaning of Possession
• PART II Possession as Contact with the Divine
• PART III Children Accused
• Further Reading
• Index