BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 01:22 AM

Like I say, it's impossible to carry on a reasonable discussion at Mudcat, of anything that has religious implications.

Jack, the point of the matter is that it makes no difference whether the torture/murderers were Christian, Muslim, or Purple People Eaters. The group they belong to, did not commit the crimes. Christians as a whole have no reason to take responsibility for what these criminals did.

Now, if these people belong to a sect of Christianity that promotes torture of "witches," then that particular sect has responsibility. But I have no more connection to these people than anyone else here has. Why should I be required to acknowledge these criminals as "my own"?? Persecuting witches is certainly not part of my faith.

Interestingly, you can get away with blaming a religious group for what these people have done. If you were blame their ethnic or racial group, all hell would break loose. The lesson: don't blame the group for the crimes of a few members of that group.

The Guardian has a pretty good opinion piece about this incident. This crime was child abuse. Child abuse happens in all sectors of society, and the abusers hide behind their religion or need for discipline or any number of factors. But it's the abusers who are to blame, not the excuses they hide behind.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 02:17 AM

Well said Joe.
Thanks Eliza.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 02:52 AM

·····Christianity as set out in the New Testament (not as twisted out of all recognition by strange cults, fundamentalists etc) is founded on the teachings of Jesus, and if one reads all the Gospels, one will not find any mention therein of torture, cruelty or savagery recommended as a remedy for 'possession'.....
,.,.,
Whatever Jesus may have recommended, Eliza, as the 'treatment', he did believe that madness was caused by demonic "possession" ~~

Gadarene Swine?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 03:27 AM

...and with that statement, Michael, you are playing the same game as the fundamentalist Christians - an obsessive quest to possess the "truth," whatever that is.

Maybe it's having a loving and generous heart that's important, not being able to prove oneself right and others wrong.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Penny S.
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 03:32 AM

When I was teaching, the populations of children from abroad in our classes changed over the years, in particular, black children were more likely to come from Africa than the Caribbean.

I was made aware of the differences in belief on one occasion when, after reading a story I felt quite innocent in which there was a character who was a witch, a mother asked me, very strongly, not to do so again, as "we believe these people exist". I can't remember if it was a folk story, or one of Diana Wynne Jones novels, but obviously the child had been disturbed and gone home to share their feelings.

I was taken aback. I don't believe that the family concerned would have been involved in any thing like these dreadful events, which I was not aware of at the time. I put it in my mental list of family attitudes which are a nuisance, as in the case of the Mormons who did not want me to mention evolution, the JWs who did not want any celebrations of anything, the Exclusive Brethren who did not want their children to be in IT lessons, or the current one, the mother who does not want me to ask her daughter to use more than one float in the swimming pool. (At least some of them did not want to dictate what was made available to the whole class.) I think I might have felt differently in the light of these recent cases.

It looks as though the word "witch" and its derivatives is being used as a translation of something quite different from either European or modern usage, and has more in common with European beliefs about changelings. Expecially when you look at the ways people tried to deal with such children. These are not adults who have entered into an activity by choice, but children who are victims of something external.

My feeling, to say irritably, "O grow up" has to be inappropriate, because a whole tranche of cultural and religious beliefs have to be dealt with gently.

Perhaps we need to say something like the legal conclusion that once he had breathed English air, a slave was free. When you come to Britain, you do not do this. It is not our culture, and here, you adopt ours in this matter. Like FGM. It doesn't happen.

I find myself drifting towards the right. Oh dear. Next thing I will be moaning about political correctness gone mad.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 03:44 AM

I think it is important to consider the role that *collective* religious belief (in this instance fundamentalist Christian) may have in such cases.

While I would doubt that any but a psychopath or a Sadist would take their religious beliefs so far as to torture children to death on the basis of them, what such faith and religious dogma does DO do is legitimise and enable nutters and Sadists to do so.

Much similar could be said of Hopkins and his ilk during the European witchcraze, who *utilsed* religiously instilled fear of the supernatural in the common folk and religious doctrine ("thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" etc.) to freely perpetrate crimes of torture and murder of great numbers of innocent people.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Penny S.
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 04:21 AM

When I learn of these events, I truly hope that there is an afterlife. If atheism is correct, that the victims of this sort of thing (and in Homs, etc) have so appalling an end to their existence doesn't bear thinking of.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 05:23 AM

This crime was child abuse. Child abuse happens in all sectors of society, and the abusers hide behind their religion or need for discipline or any number of factors. But it's the abusers who are to blame, not the excuses they hide behind.

The "excuses" make different kinds of criminality possible. What happened to that kid required (a) a psychopath (b) an ideology that he could use to validate what he was doing and (c) an anomic urban environment that put no check on his actions.

The ideology alone leads to consequences like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ronaldsay_child_abuse_scandal

In that case the ideology was the "satanic ritual abuse" scare, an American Christian middle-class professional version of the Kindoki panic. Nobody involved in that was prone to murderous violence, and the world of social work is big enough that nobody could have got away with physical torture. But the effects were bad enough.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Penny S.
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 05:46 AM

I have information at a few removes on that. A young member of our Friends Meeting in Kent was at university with a sibling of one of the secondary families, which was Quaker, concerned. The sibling was not at home when the raid took place. The sibling was not allowed to contact the rest of the children from that family, nor was allowed to give evidence or be interviewed by the social workers. Since the assumption should have been that, if true, that sibling would have been either a victim or involved in the abuse, that was odd.

Other stupidities were the local police believing that Quakers meeting in a circle was indicative of witchcraft, and the banning of the sending of Easter cards or messages, not only by family, but also by others in the Friends, as these could contain trigger images to control the children. (As I vaguely recall the discussion in Meeting, this may have even applied if no message was written. I think we sent something, and I think it was intercepted.)

It occurs to me that the areas of Africa where these activities have become apparent are also those where American evangelism has been active in stirring up violent opposition to homosexuals. It was American evangelism that influenced the social workers to identify not only Quakers as dangerous, but also the Church of Scotland.

Didn't someone once say something about divided houses?

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 07:27 AM

Jesus did indeed 'cast out devils' (probably dealing with the mentally ill) but never by means of physical violence, torture or abuse. He merely commanded the 'demon' to depart. The Gadarene swine ran over the cliff of their own accord, I don't remember Jesus telling them to do so.
It's quite true that peoples with a primitive mindset, (NOT a racist comment!) and living in abject poverty, are very easily exploited and manipulated for gain. They seek (in my limited experiences in Africa) to explain the myriad misfortunes which beset them in supernatural terms. Thus any wicked person looking for a means to make money can pretend to 'know' the source of the 'sorcery' and this is implicitly believed. My husband's poor mother, a devout Muslim, took her dying son Suleyman to a 'marabou' (a kind of witchcraft/sorcery exponent) and paid him her last few coins, He affirmed that someone had put a spell on the boy, and maintained he could remove it. Later the boy's conditon worsened and his father took him too the local (paying) hospital. No-one is admitted there without payment, but they had nothing, so joined the folk on their knees in front of the passing doctors, literally begging and clutching at their white coats for their help. No doctor responded, and the boy died there on the floor after THREE DAYS of agony. (It sounded like palcifarum malaria, he was delirious and screaming with the pain in his head. He was fifteen years old.) I tell this true story to illustrate the dire conditions in some places, and the desperate beliefs and practices resorted to. Faced with this need, the 'witchdoctors' and 'exorcists' have the people in the palms of their hands. If they promise to 'remove the evil' some folk will accept any bizarre or extreme 'remedy' and pay handsomely for it. So poverty and ignorance (those two fearsome children in 'A Christmas Carol')are to blame, and not religion per se.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 08:42 AM

Informative and persuasive Eliza. You are absolutely right. I would just add that ignorance (not meant pejoratively) breeds magic, superstition and religion, usually in that order.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,Ian Mather sans cookie
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 10:44 AM

Joe is right. Discussing religion can bring out the worst in people, myself included.

However, it could be that what you have to say might not be palatable to some whilst common sense to others?

The problem is; if a nice person says and does nice things and claims their Christianity makes them a nice person, and a twisted criminal says their crimes were a Christian act, I suppose the nice person will disown them and their take on Christinity.

But to an onlooker, which is the Christian?

Joe mentions another thread where a couple of people are arguing for the literal interpretation of the bible, the flood happened etc. One of them said you had to believe or you are not a Christian.

How can I automatically dismiss that and agree with those who say it is a metaphor? One has to be wrong, but just because one comes over as more rational, doesn't make them the automatic winner?

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Paul Burke
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 12:34 PM

you are playing the same game as the fundamentalist Christians - an obsessive quest to possess the "truth," whatever that is.

There's a subtle difference between trying to find a better approximation to the "truth" from the evidence, and insisting that what you already have is the "truth" irrespective of any evidence.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 01:26 PM

Thanks to Eliza for the first hand account of your experiences within Africa and with African culture. I think you've made some exceedingly valuable contributions to this thread. However I would personally think it a serious omission not to consider BOTH the contributions of extremist Christian religious dogma AND West African immigrant cultural belief and practice in these cases of child abuse. To say "all child abuse is the same" is false. All child abuse is obviously deplorable, whatever culture/class/ethnicity such abuse occurs in (including of course atheist white middle-class homes), yet to dismiss out of hand as somehow irrelevant, the cultural, ethnic and religious contexts which give rise to distinct groups of cases, is to diminish our understanding of such cases which inevitably results in a diminished ability to intervene effectively in order to prevent future examples of the same.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 01:29 PM

"Joe is right. Discussing religion can bring out the worst in people, myself included"
The problem is that we hardly ever "discuss religion" on this forum, rather the effect that religion on our lives and society - terrorist religious extremism, clerical child abuse and now, it would appear, witchcraft.
If only the various churches confined their role to the spititual.....
Refreshing to see the early effort to turn this subject into a 'racefast' appears to heve been nipped in the bud.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 02:38 PM

As with cases of exorcism, FGM, 'honour' killing, forced marriages, wife-beating etc etc, some immigrants commit the most ghastly crimes and abuses when in the West. But I feel that in order to stamp this out and prevent the suffering of the vulnerable, it is wise to try and understand ( but not subscribe to) the beliefs, religions and cultures behind the acts. And Education is the key. (There speaks a lifelong teacher!) In one generation it should be possible to change views and remove superstitions, if the youngsters are influenced by more modern standards. Even in Africe this is happening, thank goodness. Twenty years ago, (in Ivory Coast) my six sisters-in-law were seized by their uncle and several aunts, and pinned to the floor while a neighbour removed everything external in an infibulation operation, using a rusty razorblade and no anaesthesia. My husband remembers their screams. (I often wonder how the sixth felt, having waited until it was her turn.) They have all had children of their own, and none of their daughters have undergone FGM. They have also all chosen their own husbands, rather than have marriage forced on them. This excellent change is due to education, Government programmes and a more modern view of Islam. One wonders how a loving parent could inflict such agony on a child, but millions have and do, because they believe it is necessary. A combination of stringent law-enforcement and education should win through (IMO)

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Mar 12 - 11:39 PM

"Joe is right" says everyone, re his remark that discussing religion can bring out the worst in everyone: "myself included," he adds frankly. Which I suppose might explain why I can make nor heads nor tails of his response to my last post on this thread, where I simply pointed out a certain fact in re the dicta & personal beliefs of Jesus ~~ whereupon he leapt upon me in tear·limb·from·limb mode with incomprehensible accusation of fundamentalism which I can in no wise fathom.

~M~

refs: 3 Mar, 0252, 0357 AM

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 03:02 AM

Michael, I'm questioning your statement that Jesus "did believe that madness was caused by demonic "possession" "

In other words, Jesus and the people of his time personified what we consider in more abstract terms.

So, yeah, Jesus was not well-versed in the scientific terminology of our current enlightened age. So you've proved him wrong, just as the fundamentalists prove others wrong by demanding that all talk and think only in their terms.

There are gentler ways to carry on a discussion - by seeking to understand the perspectives of others, instead of constantly seeking to refute them.

But in general, Mike, I think you're a good guy, one of those with the "generous and loving heart" that I spoke of above.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 03:24 AM

Thanks Joe. My purpose was in no way intended ideologically, but was simply to put the belief into its historical context as something universally believed for a long time. My point was really no more than that Jesus would have believed that because everybody believed it at the time ~~ and indeed continued to do so up to comparatively modern times [early C19, say] ~ whence the tradition of the whip & dark room treatment for the mad, so familiar from 16-17C drama in plays like Middleton's The Changeling and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which was intended to make their bodies so uncomfortable that the demon would not wish to remain in it.

I intended no particular moral or ideological conclusion to be drawn from this, but was simply endeavouring to postulate it as believed, just as disease was long believed to reside in the blood so that blood-letting was regarded as a universal cure-all. We no longer believe either of these things, and know them to be not merely wrong but to have been entirely harmful & mischievous in their effects: and therefore regret that hangovers of such errors might persist in enclaves like certain fundamentalist sects in Africa or elsewhere, with the sort of baleful results as the incident that forms the topic of this thread That was all of my point.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Penny S.
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 04:38 AM

When I read stories of changelings, and what was done to bring back the real child, I saw that there must have been many horrific deaths in the past, due to that belief.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 06:20 AM

"When I read stories of changelings"
Look up the Bridget Cleary incident - a horrific story with political undertones - look out for the books, 'The Burning of Bridget Cleary - for the story, a darker look at superstition, and 'The Cooper's Wife is Missing' for the political repercussions.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 08:41 AM

There is a tendency to place witchcraft in the dim and distant past and/or the work of "black savagees", especially by those who would use it to belabour those of different colours or cultures as being "in error's chain".
The last British witch trial took place in 1944 when Helen Duncan was jailed for 9 months having been found guilty of "conspiracy, fraud and witchcraft"
The charge of witchcraft in Britain was not removed from the statute books until 1951 - glass houses - stones, maybe?
http://www.helenduncan.org.uk/
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 08:51 AM

Accusations of witchcraft have been the subject of legal process in the UK and the USA much more recently than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

The names may have changed a bit and the proceedings more often use the pretext and legal machinery of "child protection" but it's the same (primarily Christian) myth system at work.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 09:31 AM

Thanks for the update Jack - scratch a civilisation......
Despite persistant petitioning an appeal to postumously pardon Helen Duncan was refused in 2008 - not sure of the state of play today.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 11:25 AM

You would have to go back a lot of centuries to find a case anything like this.
Anyone, never mind a child, killed by violent acts of exorcism.

This death results from beliefs current in parts of Africa.
All the people involved are from Africa.
Those beliefs predate the arrival of Christianity to Africa.
They were certainly not brought to Africa by Christian missionaries.

The beliefs have been bolted on to Christianity in the same way some Pagan rituals have become part of Western Christianity (mistletoe, holly, Easter eggs, equinoctial and solstice festivals).

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 11:41 AM

I agree, Keith. It seems to me that these witchcraft and sorcery ideas and beliefs have been practised for maybe thousands of years in Africa, long long before Christianity even emerged. They're so deeply ingrained in the mindset of most Africans, although without much in the way of written history, we cannot know for sure. Many peoples throughout the world have bolted on Christianity to their existing more primitive credos, for example in South America, where sacrifice of chickens and voodoo-type 'trance' practices exist in tandem with Roman Catholicism. It's astonishing that even today, most young people in W. Africa still fear the world of sorcery and spells, while happily using the local 'cyber' computers to go online, and texting their friends on their mobiles! That's why, although education is the remedy, it will take time for modern ideas to filter into their deepest and most firmly-held beliefs.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 04:14 PM

"Anyone, never mind a child, killed by violent acts of exorcism."
Depends on what you mean by "exorcism" and "centuries" is a nonsense.
Violence, often in an extreme form, was the basis of discipline in the Industial Schools of Ireland to at least the middle of the 20th century - not the formalistic ritual of exorcism, it is true, but "beating the devil/evil out" of the pupils was a fairly common phrase, still remembered and quoted by victims.
There is no doubt that deaths occured due to such violence; we'll probably never know how many, the Ryan Report said as much.
The film, 'Raggy Boy' was based on author and poet Patrick Galvin's experiances in Daingean industrial school, Co Offaly, noted for its abuse of young people in its care.
It is to take a somewhat shaky high ground to suggest that Africa is solely to blame for ritual religious abuse.
It is certainly true that ritual killing through exorcism predates the arrival of christianity to Africa, just as it is true that ritual killing was part of the Christian religion long before the discovery of Africa.
As for Christian killing in general 76 people (24 of them British nationals) died during the Waco seige in 1993, including more than 20 children and two pregnant women.
In 1978 at the instructions of Pastor Jim Jones, there was a mass suicide of 913 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip. Over 200 children were murdered at Jonestown, almost all of whom were forcibly made to ingest cyanide by the elite Temple members.
Jonestown was among the largest mass suicides in history.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Paul Burke
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 04:54 PM

It seems to me that these witchcraft and sorcery ideas and beliefs have been practised for maybe thousands of years in Europe, long long before Christianity even emerged. They're so deeply ingrained in the mindset of most Europeans,

My deliberate changes, to illustrate that most Europeans believed those things for two hundred years after the Reformation. Read history- to forget it is to risk repeating it.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 05:13 PM

Depends on what you mean by "exorcism" and "centuries" is a nonsense.
By "exorcism" I mean the driving out of evil spirits from someone.
What else does it mean?
If you can give any examples of someone dying in UK from an act or acts of exorcism in recent centuries I would like to see it.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 05:34 PM

Not very difficult to google for that, is it?

http://whatstheharm.net/exorcisms.html (lots of links from there)

http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/everyman1.htm

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Paul Burke
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 05:38 PM

Why limit it to the UK? Apart from the obvious suggestion that abroad is beastly (To which I fully subscribe - but with the rider that here is beastly too)- it's all too common, search for youself or make them into links-

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/37963-priest-jailed-over-nuns-exorcism-death
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/crimes/13-01-2011/116511-exorcism-0/

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Mar 12 - 06:18 PM

Now we are really seeing the reason for this thread being started, aren't we?

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 02:04 AM

Yes Richard.
An opportunity to attack both Christians and Britain.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 03:34 AM

"Now we are really seeing the reason for this thread being started, aren't we? "
Aren't we just Richard?
Well done Keith - in the space of two postings you have managed to turn the subject of this thread from a discussion of the evil effect of primitive religious practices (by all religions and present in all cultures) to a racist attack on "Africans" - and your defence, once again - "anti Britishism".
If you are claiming that exorcism is the domain of only the immigrant population in Britain - try these, or flick though the rising number of television channels which are regularly presenting "filmed evidence" of ghosties and goulies and things that go bump in the night

www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Popes-exorcist-squads-wage-war-Satan.html
www.exorcisms.co.uk/
http://www.newsmonster.co.uk/paranormal-unexplained/thought-exorcism-was-dead-think-again.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2001/may/02/socialcare.mentalhealth1
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7042/is_2_125/ai_n28757387/

This has nothing whatever to do with race - it is a religious phenonmenon and is taking place throughout Britain and America.
I have no intention of turning this thread into one of our dialogues and driving everybody else away - address your twisted ideas to everybody here, not me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:47 AM

I don't think Keith originated the underlying thought.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 05:39 AM

Well done Keith - in the space of two postings you have managed to turn the subject of this thread from a discussion of the evil effect of primitive religious practices (by all religions and present in all cultures) to a racist attack on "Africans"

No I have not.
The incident in the title and the OP happens to be about some people from Africa.
That is all.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 06:07 AM

"No I have not."
"All the people involved are from Africa.
Those beliefs predate the arrival of Christianity to Africa.
They were certainly not brought to Africa by Christian missionaries."
"I don't think Keith originated the underlying thought."
No - I don't either, but the earlier perps slunk back into their caves - he made it an "African" issue
Keith doesn't have an orginal thought that he hasn't cut-n-pasted
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 06:12 AM

Which quotes of mine are a. wrong, and/or b. racist?
Please be specific, because I am certain they are not.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 09:30 AM

"Tests found Kristy, who was singled out after wetting his pants, had suffered 130 injuries and that he had drowned in the bath during a final ritual of deliverance."

A 15-year-old who wet his pants? Who didn't have enough guile to admit to witchcraft and go along with his 'purification'? There was something wrong with the boy, and they wanted to get rid of him.

Ya'll are being gulled by the media's 'frosting on the cake,' - the witchcraft element and the fact they were Africans.

Actually, this is an old, old story. Woman gets boyfriend. Boyfriend resents woman's child (in this case, brother) by another man. Man kills child. It happens somewhere every week. The witchcraft story is merely hypocrisy or deception.

The lesson here applies to all of us. If you have a child or grandchild whose father is gone, and the mother takes a new boyfriend, watch that child like a hawk.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 10:48 AM

With respect, I think Leenia that you are incorrect, as both the first hand accounts of Eliza in this thread and the briefest of internet searches reveals:

"Because of the increasing hardship many children end up living with members of their extended family, and a phenomenon which experts say is unique to Congo is developing. Children are being accused of sorcery and chucked onto the streets.

The unlucky ones are murdered by their own family members before they escape. Which is why Ikomba and Luwuabisa are in such danger. For now, their parents are not completely certain of their diagnosis.

So they take them to a sect to find the real truth. It is there that the story starts to get really frightening.
Prophet Onokoko has drawn more than 200 children to his sect
The sect - run by a free-thinking Congolese Bible teacher called Prophet Onokoko - has 230 children on its books. All are accused of witchcraft.
Many have been thrown out of their family homes. All will have to undergo some kind of ritual exorcism to expunge the evil spirits."

That story from the Congo by the BBC is over a decade old. At the time of writing, it states that according to experts this particular phenomenon "is unique to the Congo". Now these beliefs about 'witch children' (or 'changelings' if you will) and 'exorcism' practices are becoming more common in the UK among African immigrant communities.

These children (as Eliza explained) are being used as scapegoats for social ills such as sickness or disease in poor African communities. While in the UK (as one story highlighted) such children so branded, might become the focus of an African immigrants paranoia about not being allowed to remain in the UK.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 10:59 AM

Congo witch-hunt's child victims

Apologies, link to quoted BBC article of Dec. 1999, above.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 11:16 AM

Wherever there are particular problems emerging within an immigrant community in the UK I like to look for what that community are doing to combat such problems within their community themselves, because they usually are and this instance is no different.

I thought this a constructive response to this phenomenon from AFRUACA (Africans unite against Child Abuse) and perhaps others following this thread might find it of interest:
AFRUCA calls for the Criminalisation of the Branding of Children as Witches

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 01:07 PM

Something has been bothering me in this thread, and I've realised what it is.

It is the amount of people contributing who wish to divorce the case(es) in question from thjeir complex and interconnected contexts. Initially a rebuff occurred from those angered by the association to (beliefs involving) 'witchcraft'. Then came others denying the role of Christian religion. Then others angered by the references to African culture and belief.
Have I missed anyone?

I tell what, I'm pissed off.
There are too many people primarily interested in arguing for their preferred political agenda on this this thread and too few genuinely interested in learning more about how to end this particular phenomena of child abuse in the UK can be countered. Thank heaven orgs. like AFRUCA exist!

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 01:45 PM

I think, Crow Sister, you did not hear the dogwhistle.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 02:28 PM

Richard, I've no idea what that means! But I'm fairly sure than anyone attempting to summon me with a dog-whistle would subsequently find said whistle firmly embedded somewhere far harder to blow, than it was previously.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:05 PM

CS
With respect – please treat us gently; some of us are walking wounded of the stomach-heaving 'Muslim Prejudice' thread where a member of this forum (still gracing us with his with his presence on this thread) virtually single-handedly turned the fate of sexually abused young women into a glorious 'Paki-bashing' fest by accusing 'every male British Pakistan' of being a potential paedophile by way of their "cultural implant".
There are signs that he is prepared to repeat his performance here; this time using the horrific death of a 15 year old child to attack "Africans" (he hasn't specified which particular "Africans" – Algerians, Botswanans, Congolese, Dahomians, Ethiopians.... (I'm sure you get the idea), so we can only assume he means to make the entire African continent his target.
Speaking for myself – I believe this tragic affair to be a religious rather than racial incident, so, unless you are prepared to show me the error of my ways in believing that exorcism as a form of abuse and other forms of religious extremism, is an international phenomenon, I suggest you leave me to my "political agenda".
I'll let you into a secret – I'm pissed off too – of being bombarded with racist garbage by a seasoned bigot.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 04:20 PM

Jim, I think basically we/none of us are truly able to discuss this topic here on the Mudcat. It's a really sad thing.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 05:05 PM

"Jim, I think basically we/none of us are truly able to discuss this topic here on the Mudcat."
I think it's a sadder thing that we are unable to discuss topics like this because of the predatory nature of some of the people involved.
When I said my piece about the Travellers eviction last year I found that one of the perticipants (I know which one - not a million miles from this thread) had given me a fake Facebook entry
Funny old world!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 05:06 PM

Crow Sister, I suggest you ask a mutual friend to give you my email and when I hear from you I will enlighten you.

Subject: RE: BS: UK Boy Tortured/Murdered
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 05 Mar 12 - 06:45 PM

Leeneia, Kristy wet himself because he was denied access to the usual facilities. In your book I suppose that means he was mad as a hatter. What a pity you weren't on hand to advise the court on that important, and hitherto overlooked, factor.