How to
In 2006 we warned the government of a world-wide epidemic of Child Cruelty via Christian-Induced exorcism of adopted children
and they did nothing (see below right).
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Pastor’s corporal punishment advice scrutinized after child deaths
By Zachary Roth | The Lookout – Mon, Nov 7, 2011
In recent years, several children have died after enduring extreme forms of corporal punishment from parents who had absorbed
the controversial child-rearing advice of Tennessee pastor Michael Pearl. Now, the New York Times reports,
Pearl himself is under fire.
In their self-published book, To Train Up a Child, Pearl, 66, and his wife Debi, 60, recommend the systematic use of "the rod"
to teach young children to submit to authority. They offer instructions on how to use a switch for hitting children as young as
six months, and describe how to use other implements, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line. Older children, the Pearls say,
should be hit with a belt, wooden spoon or willow switch, hard enough to sting. Michael Pearl has said the methods are based on
"the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules."
There are 670,000 copies of the book in circulation, and it's especially popular among Christian home-schoolers such as Larry and Carri
Williams of Sedro-Woolley, Wash. In September, local prosecutors charged them with homicide by abuse after their adopted daughter Hanna, 11,
was found naked and emaciated in the backyard, having died of hypothermia and malnutrition.
She had been deprived of food for days at a time, and made to sleep in an unheated barn.
Hanna, originally from Ethiopia, also had been beaten with a plastic tube, as recommended by Michael Pearl.
Carri Williams had praised the book--which advises that "a little fasting is good training"--and had given a copy to a
friend, local authorities say.
That may also have happened in the case of Lydia Schatz, who was adopted from Liberia at the age of 4 by Kevin and
Elizabeth Schatz of Paradise, Calif. She died last year, aged 7, after her parents had whipped her for hours, with pauses
for prayer. [Ed: This was a form of Exorcism] The Schatzes are both serving long prison terms, after Kevin Schatz
pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and
torture, and Elizabeth Schatz pleaded to voluntary manslaughter and unlawful corporal punishment.
Like the Williamses, the Schatzes owned a copy of To Train Up a Child, and the local district attorney
criticized it as a dangerous influence.
There was also Sean Paddock, of Johnson County, N.C., who died from suffocation in 2006, age 4, after he'd been bound
tightly in a blanket. His mother Lynn Paddock, who said she had come across the Pearls' website, was charged with first-degree
murder. Sean's siblings testified that they were beaten each day with a plumbing tube that the Pearls recommend.
The Pearls, along with many conservative Christians, say the Bible calls for corporal punishment. "To give up the use of the
rod is to give up our views of human nature, God, eternity," they write in the book.
Source:
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Proverbs 13:24 "He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly."
Proverbs 19:18 "Chasten your son while there is hope, And do not set your heart on his destruction."
Proverbs 22:15 "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of correction will drive it far from him."
Proverbs 23:13 "Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die."
Proverbs 23:14 "You shall beat him with a rod, And deliver his soul from hell."
Proverbs 29:15 "The rod and rebuke give wisdom, But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother."
Matthew 17:18 And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.
Ecclesiasticus 30:8 An horse not broken becometh headstrong: and a child left to himself will be wilful.
Proverbs 19:18 Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.
A man was jailed for eight years at Coventry Crown Court today for torturing his 10-year-old daughter An evangelist church leader who tortured his 10-year-old daughter and kept her prisoner for four days with no food because he was convinced she was a witch was jailed for eight-and-a-half years today. The twisted 39-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, dripped boiling hot plastic over his terrified daughter's feet and beat her senseless after she became 'possessed by evil spirits'. The girl was held prisoner and force-fed olive oil and milk for four days after the man became convinced she had powers to make people fall asleep, Coventry Crown Court heard. The Congolese-born man admitted child cruelty and was jailed for eight-and-a-half years. Source:
A DEVOUT parent who preached against the devil slit his sons' mouths with a scalpel blade and put safety pins through their tongues and lips as part of a catalogue of abuse, a court heard. The Nigerian, who moved to Bradford with his family, would also put clothes pegs on their lips and tongues, the jury at Bradford Crown Court was told yesterday. The jury was told how the safety pins were left in one of the children for several days and the father is alleged to have pressed the tongue of one of his sons with sharp pliers until it bled and swelled. The court also heard a transcript of a camcorder recording in which the father is heard preaching and making references to the mouth. In the extract read out in court, he said: "Heal them. Heal them. Change them. The layers of their tongue. The layers of their mouth." Later in the recording, he said: "Remove the devil that has been pulling them together. Remove the devil that has made them not to listen." Miss Wigin said the boy had told a member of staff that his father beat him five or six times a week. She said that on that occasion a stick had been used..... The jury was told how the 47-year-old father would tie the brothers up with cable in a dark room before putting a lemon in the boys' mouths where the skin had been cut. One boy was tied to a chair in the living room and a safety pin was put through his tongue and his bottom lip, before he was left for the night with a napkin tied around his eyes. The jury heard the 38-year-old mother offered the younger child "something nice" when he wet the bed, but when he got to her she put a pepper on his eyes. A search of the family home revealed a video, diary and a booklet entitled, Raising a Godly Child, which contained the quote: "He that spareth his rod, hurteth his son." The mother's diary also referred to the Book of James, which claimed "the tongue is a small part of the body that makes great boasts" and that it is "a restless evil".
Yesterday, I rescued for the second time an 8 year old girl, Esther Obot Moses who was branded a witch and exiled by her family in Nsit Ubium in Akwa Ibom state in Southern Nigeria. Some weeks ago, I was informed by my local contacts that Esther, who was handed over to the Ministry of Women Affairs of the Akwa Ibom state government for proper care and rehabilitation, had returned to the ‘lunatic’, Okokon, who kidnapped her some time ago. According to Esther, weeks after she was handed over to the Ministry for Women Affairs, officials from the Ministry came and dumped her with her father in her village in Nsit Ubium. But the father later drove her out again. He asked her to go back to where she came from. Esther said she had to return to the house of Okokon. Esther’s case is a clear indication of the enormity of the problem of witchcraft accusations and child rights abuses in Akwa Ibom state, particularly the poor handling by the government... Source:
A self-styled ‘bishop’ who confessed to allegedly killing 110 ‘witch’ children in a Channel 4 documentary last year, is to again face court on murder charges next month. Sunday Okon Williams and four others will face a court on June 8, ThisDay newspaper reported. They are facing torture and murder charges over claims they made in the Channel 4 documentary, Saving Africa’s Witch Children, which was broadcast on November 12, 2008. In the documentary, Williams claimed he had the power to exorcise witchcraft spirits from children. He also claimed he allegedly killed 110 children ... while trying to exorcise witchcraft from them. The other accused persons include Pastor Samuel Excellence, Udeme Okon William, Ezekiel Bassey Oforkudok and Akpe Alfred Akpe. Source:
By Paul Thompson : 29 May 2011
Latisha Lawson, 31, forced her two-year-old son Jezaih to drink a vile mixture of olive oil and vinegar as part of a ritual to drive the devil from his body. As he choked on the liquid she held her hand over his mouth to stop him vomiting and crushed his neck. Jurors heard Lawson had wanted to drive a demon named as "Marzon" from her son's body. She had become convinced that her son was possessed and blamed herself because she did not profess her love for God while she was pregnant. Source:
By Daily Mail Reporter : 5th January 2012
A teenager accused of witchcraft was tortured to death by his sister and her partner in 'a tale of horror' on Christmas Day, the Old Bailey heard. Eric Bikubi, 27, and Magalie Bamu, 28, attacked Kristy Bamu, 15, and his two sisters with pliers, knives and a hammer after accusing them of being 'sorcerers', it is claimed. Kristy was in such pain after days of being attacked with sticks, a metal bar, hammer and chisel that he begged to die, jurors heard. The teenage boy had suffered 101 injuries - his face and head were covered in cuts and some of his teeth were missing when he was found in the blood-soaked flat. Source:
Helen Ukpabio, one of the leading figures in the persecution of alleged "witches" in West Africa, is to preach in the United States in March. Last year in New Humanist, Richard Wilson reported on the fight against African witch-hunts, which are often aimed at children, and he spoke to Igwe about the activities of Ukpabio's Liberty Gospel Church, which have included legal and physical intimidation of those campaigning against witch-hunts. Now, Igwe is urging humanists to take note of Ukpabio's attempt to extend her ministry to the US, where she is scheduled to hold a 12-day "Marathon Deliverance" in Houston, Texas from 14-25 March. Helen Ukpabio is a Christian fundamentalist and a Biblical literalist. She uses her sermons, teachings and prophetic declarations to incite hatred, intolerance and persecution of alleged witches and wizards. Ukpabio organises deliverance sessions where she identifies and exorcises people mainly children of witchcraft. Headquartered in Calabar in Southern Nigeria, the Liberty Gospel Church has grown to be a witch hunting church with branches in Nigeria and overseas. [Ed: Ukpabio is untouchable in Nigeria because many leading Nigerian politicians are members of her church and believe the wicked evil she promulgates]
The activities of Helen Ukpabio, including her publications, films (like the End of the Wicked) and sermons, are among the factors that have fuelled witchcraft accusations against children in the region. This was captured in a documentary, *Saving Africa's Witch Children* which was broadcast in 2008 on Channel 4 in the UK. Thanks to the activities of a UK based charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria, and its local partners, the problem of witchcraft accusations against children and the ignominous roles of Ukpabio and her Liberty Gospel church were brought to the attention of the world. Since the broadcast of the documentary, Ukpabio and her thugs at the Liberty Gospel church have been campaigning to undermine Stepping Stones Nigeria and its efforts to tackle and address the problem of child witch hunting in Nigeria. Source:
Children as young as two are being burned, poisoned and buried alive in Nigeria for being witches, it has been claimed. Hundreds of youngsters are being subjected to horrific violence or chained up for weeks after being accused of witchcraft, according to a report by a children's rights charity. In one case, an 11-year-old boy was killed after acid was poured over him; in another, a girl who had a nail driven into her head was left permanently disabled. Last September a man tried to bury six-year-old twin boys he held responsible for the death of his wife. Lancaster-based charity Stepping Stones Nigeria has compiled reports of more than 250 cases of violence against children accused of witchcraft... Although belief in witchcraft is well established in Nigeria and other African countries, until the late Nineties it was largely women and the elderly who were accused. Source:
Lawrence was murdered in 1993 and the campaign for justice was organised by The Great and the Good in British society who rightly gathered around to fight a prime example of racism. The Scandal of Child Exorcism Killings was first highlighted by the SAFF in the late 1990s and following the awful death of Victoria Climbe; but according to official figures in 2011 'hundreds' of children were being tortured in West African christian communities in the U.K. and 38 cases of horrific torture, some leading to death, had been officially recorded. (source:)
Just as the SAFF was the first to highlight and publicise the hidden abuse of Children by priests
and vicars in the Christian Church which was originally disbelieved but eventually proved terrifyingly correct
(see here), we also maintain that Christian Child Exorcism abuse
is chronically under-reported and that THOUSANDS of black children are being physically abused, maimed and
sometimes killed in the U.K. directly because of the Christian Beliefs of their parents.
Despite powerful documentaries exposing the plight of hundreds of thousands of children (Click on the photograph alongside to see Dan Harris's sickening documentary In The Name of Jesus for ABC's Nightline which makes the subject horrifically clear; and I challenge you not to weep buckets whilst watching this video) U.K. child protection acted as though Child Exorcism Abuse was an aberration and would somehow disappear but under the sheer weight of cases the government was at last forced into investigating further. The result, the Stobart Report, was terminally flawed because its author Eleanor Stobart listened to Black Christians and orthodox religious lobbies whose main priority was to exonerate their own churches and blame it on 'the witches'.
When we read it we were astonished to find that Stobart had completely sidestepped the REAL problem at the root of this scandal and instead ran with the garbage that the Christian lobby had indoctrinated her with. It wasn't Christian teaching on exorcism which was causing the problem, oh no, it was the hi-jacking and corruption of Christian beliefs by West-African con-men who pretended to be Christians as part of a money making scam; - coupled with the superstitious ignorance of uneducated African rustics whose unsophisticated minds were controlled by the scammers. How convenient! How dreadfully wrong!
All that was necessary concluded Stobart, was that police forces and social services departments were alerted to the possibility and trained to identify it. The police canvassed independent Christian churches in London and other centres with a high West African population, reminding pastors and organisers that British law saw any such exorcisms as a form of child abuse.
To ensure that they escape punishment they need not actually exorcise the children themselves, they need only diagnose possession with a nod and a wink and leave the torture to the child's parents or guardians.
The SAFF heavily criticised the Stobart Report immediately it was published
(see below for the original critique)
We maintained that the prime cause of Christians Torturing their offspring was not a belief in 'Witchcraft' but a
belief in Christianity. They had been taught, by missionaries and by independent churches in Africa, that the devil
existed and could possess their children and work evil through them. That evil, they said, was called Kindoki in
Congolese. This is what they told Stobart in order to deflect the blame onto 'witchcraft' but it is a monstrous lie. If it
was Kindoki that was causing the problem why is there a similar child-witch problem in Nigeria where Kindoki doesn't exist?
The common denominator is CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST PASTORS not witchcraft. Kindoki (endoki, ndoki) is the indigenous tribal belief of the Congolese.
"As monotheists, the Congolese believe in one God, Nazambi who is the creator god of all things in the universe and the ultimate Protector of the living and the Judge of our conduct after death and the Decider of our fate thereafter. At the same time. they believe in supernatural forces beyond our human comprehension and capabilities and in a metaphysical explanation of life and the world around them, all of which they summarized in the word kindoki.."Thus the Christian pastors were targetting their main competitor for the souls of the Congolese. We pointed out that the idea of 'Witch-Children' was not seen in Africa in traditional tribal religions before missionaries from outside Africa injected the idea into the minds of locals. The black Christians who digustingly tortured these children in the most painful and terrible ways did so not because they believed in witchcraft, but because they believed in the fundamentalist form of Christianity which causes so much evil in the world.
Source: D.R. Congo: The Darkness of the Heart: Loso Kiteti Boya: Xlibris Corporation, 2010 - History - Chapter 3: Religion:
And it was not only the SAFF which pointed this out. One of the major references for the Stobart Report was the Save The Children Fund's raporteur on the subject, Javier Aguilar Molina. His work was read and supposedly taken into account by Eleanor Stobart yet he is as clear as the SAFF about who is to blame, and it is not a belief in witchcraft which is the root cause, it is Christian fundamentalists. As early as 2003 (three years before Stobart published) Molina was clearly trying to tell everyone the truth...
FIERY PREACHERS
For desperate families, children are easy scapegoats, especially given the rise of fundamentalist Christian churches and their fiery preachers who blame witches and Satan for misfortune, observers say.
"The main reasons for this is the proliferation of (revivalist) pastors and the vulnerability of children not living with their nuclear family," said Javier Aguilar Molina, a social protection coordinator for Save the Children in Kinshasa. Source
But the Stobart report, and subsequent commentators from the child-scare industry confused the original animistic Kindoki tradition in the Congo with the European image of Witchcraft as projected by the Church. Stobart's report used the words interchangeably in ways which allowed Christians off the hook and enabled them to infer that 'witchcraft' was the cause.
The truth is that African missionaries have been fighting a battle for
supremacy with the Kindoki tradition for centuries and the present upsurge in Christian exorcism is a new attack to besmirch
and suppress Kindoki and gain control of the minds of the populace for Christianity, just as their forbears whipped up
a witch-hunt in 15c Europe and burned millions of innocent women and children for being 'possessed by the devil'.
As Loso K Boya writes in his seminal book about the history of The Congo, The Darkness of the Heart;
Kindoki has sustained more than five hundred years of relentless assaults by Christianity and other imported faiths and is still going strong, Its survival is a testimony to its strength and deep roots in the Congolese psyche and society. This is because Kindoki is a metaphysical explanation and philosophy of life for the Congolese.. two religions could not have survived within the same believers. Either, Christianity and the other imported religions would have wiped out kindoki completely or kindoki would have prevented Christianity and the other imported faiths from taking hold in the Congo. The fact that both the Kindoki and the imported religions are coexisting and more or less doing well in the Congo means that they are addressing different psychological arid spiritual needs in the same people ..... Source: D.R. Congo: The Darkness of the Heart: Loso Kiteti Boya: Xlibris Corporation, 2010 - History - Chapter 3: Religion:Boya has it wrong of course. Christianity never co-exists with any other religion unless it is politically expedient. The reason why Kindoki is coming under fire now is precisely because it HAS 'prevented Christianity and the other imported faiths from taking hold in the Congo'
Now you don't have to take the SAFF's word for all this or even listen to the theoretical arguments because the video link
alongside reveals beyond any shadow of a doubt that the problem of Exorcism Abuse infects churches in Britain's inner cities -
and it has nothing to do with witchcraft or satanism.
This powerful 5 minute film shows how:
We say to decent Christians: Your church leaders have known about this problem for a decade and have done little or nothing to solve it. They have ignored Christian Child Exorcism Abuse in inverse ratio to the amount of time they have spent lambasting, criticising and accusing pagans and satanists about a similar problem they claimed existed there but which didn't. If your leaders cannot sort this problem out on your behalf then it is YOU who need to take action and if you do not then you ARE as responsible for allowing the African Pastors and Christians to abuse children in this way. We are challenging YOU. YOU must challenge your vicars, priests and lay-preachers.
In October 2004 a delegation sponsored by the British christian charity, Jubilee Action, visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of the key members of this delegation included David Alton. Jubilee Action, a Christian outreach charity describes itself thus:
Jubilee is involved in advocacy on human rights and the promotion of dialogue and conflict resolution in many parts of the world. Jubilee Action also supports projects aimed specifically at alleviating the plight of street children, many of whom are often left orphaned, destitute or homeless as a consequence of conflict.If any Christian group was going to know about 'witch-children' in Africa Jubilee would be the one, yet in the lengthy official report of their fact-finding mission about possible harm to children in the Congo there were many, many recommendations but there was, astonishingly, only ONE reference to 'witch-children' and this is it:
5.15 In addition, we took evidence on the phenomenon of 'witch children' cited in the All Party Parliamentary group’s report. Although witchcraft has always been practiced in the Congo, and deep superstitions remain ingrained in their lore, over the past decade a new and disturbing trend has emerged. In a climate of deep poverty families who cannot cope with the up-bringing of their children, or who have a child with behavioural problems or disabilities, declare the children to be witches or involved in sorcery. This is used as a pretext for abandoning their children to the streets.
By glaring omission it completely exonerated Christianity from any blame and misled readers by focussing on poverty and the inability of parents to cope with disabled children as the prime cause of the 'witch-children' of the Congo. In case Jubilee doesn't know, 98% of Africans have historically lived in poverty but they didn't begin outcasting and torturing their offspring until after the Christian Missionaries arrived!
The accusation that black West African people are immoral and inferior parents who are ready to discard
their children during an economic downturn like so much excess baggage is a classic racist slur from white colonialists.
This completely false perspective has now become 'accepted wisdom' within the religious and social work cliques who
occupy The Great and The Good. Witness the Guardian's latest revolting reporting on the Witch-child issue where Jubilee's weasel words
are enshrined as 'common knowledge' when reporter Louise Hunt fails her professional standards and reports that:
...experts believe that its growth is a reaction to personal or family misfortune brought about by the economic downturn.
(See column left below)
No clearer example could be posited of the way in which West African Christian Child Abuse has been swept under
the carpet by Christians themselves. This state of denial is why poor children like
9 year old Nwanaokwo Edet (see photo right) have had to die in agony.
In that one reply, we have the clearest illustration yet of the reason why thousands of innocent children will continue
to be tortured and killed in West Africa. The people in power are Christians who believe in possession. Many of
the politicians in power are evangelical Christians. Most of the policeforce are ardent Christians. Most of the country's
bureaucracy are evangelicals. The kids are caught between a rock and a hard-place.
Even today, in Britain, many influential religious leaders are of the same opinion as church leaders in West Africa. The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has become something of a leader of the activist Christian right. He apparently believes in the need for the exorcism of children (see here) and if media reporting is anything to go by also seems more occupied with conflicts between Christianity and the gay community than from child abusers in Baptist and Pentecostal churches. We challenge John Sentamu to make his position clear on this issue and what the official Anglican response to the brutal exorcism of children is. We challenge him to take the matter seriously and act as an example to the rest.
The people who rule in West Africa have no incentive to adjust their world-view from that given to them by Christian missionaries for hundreds of years past. The Churches set up the hospitals and the schools. To get on and succeed you MUST be a Christian. Those doing well in the cities are all Christians. Indeed it is clear that the ONLY escape from a life of starvation and living on the streets is for kids who have been outcast by Christianity and ostracised by their families to join up with Islamic factions and become Child Soldiers ready for another generation of war and killing. So does the evil continually manifest whilst pious Christian politicians and leaders in the West, wring their hands and cry crocodile tears over small children being taught hate by some members of a religion which is supposed to love them.
Gary Foxcroft of British-based charity Stepping Stones- Nigeria said children living homeless on the streets in many countries had been driven out by families or communities because they were suspected of being witches. But increasingly children suspected of witchcraft -- usually on the basis of vague accusations -- were being killed because their parents feared they would have to take them back if the authorities identified them. U.N. officials tracking the problem said deaths ran into at least tens of thousands, and beatings, deprivation of property and banishment and isolation from community life meant victims of "witch frenzy" ran into millions.
Source:
As usual our expertise and warnings on this issue were ignored and, subsequently more children died in terrible circumstances. SAFF files are full of instances, worldwide, of Christian fanatics torturing and killing their offspring because they believe in the mediaeval Christian concept that their kids have become possessed by the Devil. Since January 2002 the SAFF has vehemently campaigned against the repopularisation of Exorcism which historically and inevitably accompanies an increase in Christian fundamentalist missionary activity. (see here).
We pointed out that the crescendo of end-time fears whipped up by fundamentalist agitators world-wide at the approach of year 2000 was responsible for the invention of the Satanic Ritual Child Abuse Myth of the 1990s and its associated sub-texts. A modification of the SRA myth was imported into West Africa by fundamentalist activists in the various Christian churches. Exorcism is not confined to Christian groups (it has its counterpart in moslem society) but that by far the worst effects occur in Christian churches worldwide where it is used as a universal panacea.
Of Course this has massive implications for Christianity and other sects which rely on exorcism to keep their converts in line. It is a challenge to the fundamentals of their faith. So much so that they will not even broach a discussion about this 'Elephant in the Room'. Indeed when the Stobart report was published in 2006 The Evangelical Alliance which is probably more responsible than any other faction for perpetuating the idea of possession in modern times gave this duplicitous response.
The Evangelical Alliance, Churches Together in England and the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Services...promptly issued a joint response, which condemned the abuse or encouraging the abuse of children, in particular, any church that brands children as witches or demon-possessed. source:Note well that the Evangelical Alliance only condemns the branding of CHILDREN as being demon-possessed. Their member churches believe wholeheartedly in the phenomenon of possession and regularly exorcise adults in their churches. Experience shows that it is not possible to teach adults that the devil can infest other adults and not have that leach over into the idea that wayward and misbehaving children are also possessed by the devil.
As we have pointed out above, it is the fundamental claim by ALL evangelical Christians that the devil exists and can possess the body and mind of children and adults. This was an absolute lynch-pin of the ecclesiastical courts which often accepted mitigation from children giving evidence in witch-trials about them having been possessed by the devil and undergoing supernatural experiences. In many instances the children were tortured and also burned to death. What we have here is history repeating itself.
DICKENS: " Well what I'm seeking to do is to put a new clause in the Criminal Justice Act, or Bill as it is at the moment, to stop children participating, being present, or joining any ceremonies concerning Satanism, Devil Worship, or Witchcraft." Source: FREE FOR ALL Documentary 'WITCH HUNT' CHANNEL 4 20th February 1991: 9.45 PMOf course there was absolutely NO evidence of any child having been abused or harmed during Pagan ceremonies, just lies from the Christians who were campaigning against it. In contrast there is absolutely incontrovertible evidence that West African Christians are torturing and killing children. In turn we now demand that laws are brought in to protect children in the same way, vice-versa, save that unlike Dickens we are not vindictive sectarians. We do not want to ban children from ALL Christian ceremonies because their parents have a right to teach them about their own beliefs. We just want children kept out of the harmful ones; those involving exorcism.
What was the powerful evidence that the NSPCC held which made them think that children were being tortured and killed in Satanic ceremonies? Not much. It was all based on a flimsy questionnaire sent to their local NSPCC branches! They started this world-wide panic based on suspicions of 20 (twenty) cases. That's all they had - and every one of those suspected casese turned out to be false in the course of time. In contradistinction there has been literally HUNDREDS of officially recognised cases of Christian Child Exorcism Abuse in the U.K where children have been tortured and killed in the name of Jesus. There have been dozens of inescapable prosecutions for Child Exorcism Abuse in the past decade, yet this hypocritical organisation which spends millions of pounds worth of donors money on wasteful advertising portraying themselves as the first port of call for saving EVERY child from harm (Not One More Child! - remember that slogan), has refused to even properly recognise the endemic abuse of children in Christian Exorcism Ceremonies. Double Standards or what? See more here
However the Christian church has a stranglehold over the government, institutions and charitable groups in the U.K. just as it has in the Congo and so this will of course never happen and sadly other children will probably end up tortured to death because of it.
To see how much of a hold Christianity has over our society one only need look at the recent ignorant remarks made by the Prime Minister David Cameron when he visited Oxford in December 2011. Cameron said:
Britain is .. a 'Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so'Are we to assume that Cameron actually believes this drivel? Even C stream sixth formers know these things are lies so why did Cameron think he could get away with saying it? The Christian vote perhaps?
... what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today.
....a return to Christian values could counter the country's "moral collapse" Source
Historians cannot and do not deny that Britain was run successfully by people of the Celtic pagan religion for thousands of years before Christian Missionaries came to our shores and usurped the old religion with their own. This is a matter of historical fact.
Celtic civilisations gave Britain (and the known world) a fabulous and valuable heritage which underpins almost everything we do today. Our major festivals now considered Christian were all originally pagan, our laws, our manufacturies, boatbuilding, crafts, jewellery and art, our language, why even the names of the days of the week are remnants from our vivid and beautiful pagan ancestry.
To infer, as the ignoramus Cameron has, that the people of the British Isles were uncivilised and immoral before Christianity educated us in their ways and gave us the Ten Commandments, is PRECISELY the same colonial imperialist arrogance which hallmarks the missionising of Africa and the attack on traditional beliefs there, including Kindoki.
That may be the lacklustre standard of scholarship at Eton but elsewhere we can think for ourselves. We remind Cameron that Christianity was also responsible for the Dark Ages where life stagnated for hundreds of years and it was only when someone bothered to learn Arabic that the good Christians realised that the knowledge and combined wisdom of the classical pagan civilisations, which were previously believed to have been totally lost because early illiterate Christian fanatics had destroyed their writings through sectarian jealousy, were rediscovered gathering dust in Islamic libraries throughout the middle-east.
All that we know of the golden eras of Greece and Rome came to us not through Christianity but through Islam. It was Islamic students and philosophers who had for thousands of years previously seen the value of those early pagan civilisations and copied their treatises into Arabic for posterity.
I make much of this because the reason why Cameron was playing to the Christian Vote was the celebration by the Church of England of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible which contains the vicious justifications to beat children.
The psychopathic text of the KJB was so blatently discriminatory and morally repugnant that the churches got together internationally in 1973 to rewrite the bible from scratch using modern idiom. This enabled them to present their beliefs in the New International Version (NIV) in a much less radical light which was acceptable to modern liberal Christians.
Fundamentalists (the type who usually become Pastors ) absolutely HATE the NIV because of its compromises and they ALWAYS work from the King James Bible. We remind readers that James VI ordered the publication of a new bible after an illogical sequence of events. During a storm a suitor of the King was drowned off Berwick, following witch-hunt mania the hue and cry produced the Berwick Witches, innocent women who were tortured into confessing that they were attempting to kill the king using witch-curses. The King became obsessed with devils and demons and set up witchfinder generals to tour Britain to discover them as well as having his scholars produce the King James Bible which was 'flavoured' by the same psychoses. The Bible was first published in 1611 and it's teachings have probably caused millions of deaths in witch-hunts since, including the ones in West Africa.
There are many instances of the KJB insisting on punishing children to purify them. Perhaps the best known are:
Proverbs 23:13 "Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die."
Proverbs 23:14 "You shall beat him with a rod, And deliver his soul from hell."There are some more biblical instructions to ponder on in the leftmost column. I wonder if David Cameron supports this type of biblical moral instruction and thinks Britain is better off with it? Apparently so for he also said:
"First, the King James Bible has bequeathed a body of language that permeates every aspect of our culture and heritage. Second, just as our language and culture is steeped in the Bible, so too is our politics.The point we are making is that despite the fact that biblical teaching on this subject is morally wrong and despite the fact that it is causing children to be tortured and killed the Good and The Great in Britain will not condemn those teachings and instead, like Cameron, act as though the Bible is an exclusive vehicle for good. Therefore it hardly matters what the local policeman says, a Christian pastor will always defer to the higher divine authority and exorcise wayward children in order to beat the devil out of them.
Watch This Space.
John Freedom, Mortlake, Lammas 2012.
STOBART REPORT
The fanfare over Eleanor Stobart's government report on 'Child abuse linked to accusations of "Possession" and "Witchcraft" might lead an uninformed observer to think that the government has actually done something to protect children at risk but in fact they have simply muddied the waters.
The problem is not 'child abuse linked to accusations of possession and witchcraft'. It has nothing to do with witchcraft and it is wrong of The Minister and Eleanor Stobart to use that misleading phrase.
The problem is that some self-appointed Christian Pastors in doomsday sects which are prospering in Britain are regularly abusing and torturing children AS PART OF THEIR CHRISTIAN BELIEFS.
Cataloguing the entry into the U.K. of lone children, which this report espouses, is a good idea but it will do nothing to save the children of parents who adhere to these beliefs, black or white, most of whom have themselves been born in the U.K. and given birth to their children here.
The suggestion that it is some cult like belief in Possession and Witchcraft which is causing the problem is disingenuine. The people who are abusing children in this way are following tenets from the Christian Bible and have nothing to do with Witchcraft. Their belief in possession is REAL. These Christians may have irrational beliefs that their children are infected with Witchcraft but it is they who are torturing and killing these kids under the auspices of Christianity. Unless the government have the courage to name it, they will never solve it. The only thing which will stop such abuse is for the government to enact a law which makes the exorcism of children illegal and anyone who is involved in it an accessory in law. Plain and simple. There are many laws which prohibit the involvement of children but the government appear not to have the gumption to either accuse those who are responsible for this risk against children or take these obvious measures to combat it for fear of losing the Christian vote.
Eleanor Stobart's report (published by the Department of Education and Skills 29th June 2006) focuses on unaccompanied children entering the country as either asylum seekers in their own right or who are travelling alone to be looked after by relatives who are already living in the U.K. There has only ever been two instances of children like that being sadistically abused or killed in a religious framework and both of them were Christian. But unaccompanied child immigrants are a minuscule figure compared with the number of children who are made to attend these Christian House Churches by their obsessive parents or guardians.
The government is fully aware that the real cause of the death of Victoria Climbie and the severe torture which occurred in a case recently (which the British media with their typical disregard for the facts termed the 'Witch Girl' case), was not witchcraft, but a belief within these extreme Christian Churches that a badly behaved or wilful child whose behaviour does not respond to prayer is a clear symptom of possession by Satan and must have the devil beaten or tortured out of them.
For goodness sake, for once let's have the facts. Average folk may prefer to think that it is Satanists or Witches or African Witch-doctors who are torturing, beating and killing these children but in reality it is people who call themselves Christians and who attend non-mainstream churches where they observe the tenets of the Christian Bible LITERALLY.
It is clear to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that this type of abuse can be stopped overnight at little cost simply by having the police and social workers visit all the fundamentalist churches in their locality and make it clear to the pastors that the exorcism of children (with or without their parents or guardians knowledge and agreement) will be considered an assault and they will be prosecuted for it. There is PLENTY of precedence for this action under definitions of child abuse in law, which include mental abuse which would clearly bring exorcism under the definition of abuse now recognised by the courts. To paraphrase the NSPCC's TV jingle. No Exorcism. Full Stop!
Until the government stops massaging the stereotypes and attacks this problem head on more children will undoubtedly suffer. But despite their platitudes the authorities continue to apparently ignore the real causes all the same. Just as they put off addressing the world-wide scandal of thousands of cases of priests and clergy who have abused hundreds of thousands of children over the years.
When the SAFF produced research to prove the extent of Priestly Abuse in 1989 the government turned a blind eye, as did the NSPCC and most other agencies within child protection, for we had uncovered a scandal that dare not speak it's name. Within ten years the Vatican had been forced to pay out billions of dollars in damages to victims of their child-abusing priests and most of the public are now aware that churches in many instances knew what was happening yet conspired to hide the abuse from the public and move the paedophile priests to other areas where some actually abused children again! So even the mainstream churches can lie and cheat about these things, yet in the pie chart of possible threats to children (which include Uncle Johns, Dangerous Strangers etc) put out by the NSPCC you won't find a single mention of priestly abuse. Even though cases are still running at an average of 3 a week! So it is no wonder that you, as just a regular person in the street, are ready to believe that Witches or Satanists did it because Christians couldn't do anything so awful, could they? Let's see if we can open your eyes...
Did you hear about the Catholic Priest who strangled a teenage parishioner whom he had made pregnant and then chopped up her body and dumped it in a cemetery? I wonder why you missed that? Did you hear about the congregation of a House Church who killed a 11 year old child in an exorcism and then kept her body in a roll of carpet, brought it out every Sunday and tried to resurrect her with prayer but had to admit defeat when she decomposed? No? I wonder why? Did you hear about the priest who knifed a nun he was having an affair with 32 times and then arranged candles around her body to make it look like satanists had done it? No? Missed that too? Did you hear about the high-level Welsh Vicar who for years used to secretly cut the penises off the corpses of parishioners consigned to him for burial and kept his collection in a drawer in his living room? Didn't splash that across the headlines did they? Did you hear about the fundamentalist minister who placed his son into a bessemer converter of molten metal as a sacrifice to god in a parody of Abraham's story in the bible? No? Strange that. Did you hear about the mental patient who was exorcised in Wakefield and who promptly went home and clawed his wife to death believing that she was the devil - she choked to death on her own blood? No you probably won't have heard about any of these cases because the British Media and the Government are so full of self-righteous humbug about the supposed danger to society of Witches and Satanists! However, the SAFF have for nearly two decades made a study of these and hundreds of other disgusting cases of Christian Abuse. We published them in 'The Black Museum of Priestly Abuse'. Once we had started collecting them there were so many that we had to add a second volume a few years later 'Black, Museum II'. And since then our files became so voluminous we just gave up publishing them because we have already categorically proved our point beyond conjecture. But wait! Can you just point me out the bit where 'witchcraft' comes into all this? No, thought not. You can check out some of these reports yourself in detail on www.saff.org.uk/sickvics.htm
Be under no illusion, although fundamentalist churches are the main crux of the exorcism problem the mainstream churches are as much to blame. The Church of England has its own exorcists and whilst they have a history of working with doctors and psychiatrists they still insist that possession is possible and exorcism necessary. Only last week The Church of Scotland announced an expansion of its exorcism squad stating that half their clergy believe they have encountered 'Satanic Forces'. They claim to be getting ready to exorcise parishioners 'who are possessed'. I wonder if that includes children and the mentally unstable?
Today we tell the hard truths again. We say that the exorcism of children should be made illegal. Anyone attempting it should be checked for their sanity and deprived of the ability to mislead other pious Christians down the road of persecuting their own children.
The established church and mainstream religions should come out instantly to support a voluntary ban on child exorcisms in their services. Why haven't they done that already? We demand that they do!
The S.A.F.F. publicly challenged the government and the churches about the dangers of exorcism as long ago as January 2002 in response to a BBC Everyman programme which promoted Exorcism as a valid alternative to psychiatry and carried the message that possession was a reality. This programme was quite simply an encouragement to untrained and irrational people to believe in the possession of people by spirits and undertake exorcisms to 'heal' them. Our 2002 report on the dangers of exorcism can be seen on www.saff.org.uk/everyman1.htm and catalogues dozens of horrible cases over the past few years where Christian inspired exorcism lead to the death, killing and harm of innocent people. What a pity Beverley Hughes and Eleanor Stobart didn't read it when compiling theirs. We warned Everyman at the time that they had a duty to rebalance the issue and show the dangers of exorcism to their viewers. They failed to do anything about it and the people who made that programme must carry some of the responsibility for the evils that exorcism has caused since.
As you can see from all this, the Christian Exorcism of Children is not a 'hidden problem in parts of our society' as this report states, it is indulged in completely openly and with a vengeance by thousands of adherents of the evangelical wing of Christianity who have things all their own way and feel divinely justified in inflicting atrocities on children they think are possessed with the devil, 'for their own good'. It is their Christian belief in the mediaeval clap-trap of 'possession' which forms the justification for beating the devil out of their children. How the government can pretend that this is not happening when there is such a long and consistent history of mainstream religious beatings and inappropriate abuse by nuns, Jesuit monks and other clergy it is a common joke. To project the blame for such atrocities onto unpopular beliefs such as African tribal religions instead is not only dishonourable but highly dangerous to children who are locked into an irrational situation.
Beverley Hughes should get control of this problem straightaway because the growth of the House Church movement in Britain is exponential and more abuse is in the offing. This was a fabulous opportunity for the government to end once and for all the growing superstition which is not only flourishing within the Happy-Clappy House Church movements in most major cities throughout the U.K. but which is being promoted as a superior form of healing to orthodox psychiatry and will cause extensive harm to the fabric of our society in future if it is not stopped. Instead of wasting £140 million pounds of taxpayers money to set up a new Demonology for so-called 'ritual abuse' Inquisitors the government should be training social workers to spot religious fanatics in local churches.
In conclusion, after tracking these types of allegations for nearly two decades we see this latest twist as yet another method of re-introducing a watered down version of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth which, despite its constant failures, is still a sacred cow amongst a minority of influential social work activists today.
When the Satan Hunters came to town in 1989 and destroyed the lives of 86 innocent children and their families over spurious claims that Satanists were abusing children we said it was a smokescreen to cover the incidence of Priestly abuse. Over the next few years we proved statistically that a child is a at least a thousand times more likely to be abused by a priest than by a satanist and in the passage of time the cases heralded as proving the Satan Hunters beliefs failed and our conclusions were proven correct in every respect. There has not been one instance where a satanist has been successfully prosecuted for abusing children as part of their religious convictions. It was all a Myth and in 1994 Professor Jean La Fontaine completed her definitive official report which confirmed it. Yet ten years later the Satan Hunters were at it again making the same prejudiced mistakes, this time in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. Another failed case and destroyed lives just to remind the public that the madness had not gone away.
Today the people who are abusing children in Exorcism ceremonies are the same Christian fundamentalists who accused satanists of doing it before. The Theraquacks and social work agitators who have been secretly pushing these ideas at the police and local authorities in the intervening years also believe Satan is everywhere. After encouraging religious mania by pandering to the expectancies of the fundamentalists for so many years is it any wonder that superstitous evangelists think that Satan has possessed their children. It's simply a sub-set of the Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth.
When these manic exorcisms result in harm the mainstream churches don't throw their hands up and say 'we were wrong - some amongst us are irrational obsessive religious zealots who lost sight of the fact that a child needs nurturing and instead they misused Christian tenets to beat to death an innocent child thinking it would do it good' They say instead that beating that child to death would not have been necessary if Witches had not hexed it! They ignore the cause and project it onto non-Christians. Of course the lunatics are unrepresentative of mainstream Christians, so why don't the pious majority come out and say so? Why not admit it instead of trying to blame it on the Witches? Is this the way that Tony Blair engenders his multi-faith, multi-cultural Britain? By accepting official reports allowing religious zealots to get away with dark-age crimes by blaming it onto another section of the community to avoid upsetting nominal Christians?
It's another smokescreen, folks, and the government has fallen for it hook, line and sinker. It isn't 'a belief in Possession and Witchcraft' which is the problem. It's a belief in the fundamentalist tenets of Christianity by a minority of gullible and superstitious adherents. A major cause of the problem is the expediency of the established Churches - they are increasingly willing to indulge in irrational clap-trap in order to put bums on pews . The radical Black African Hallelujah lobby is occluding the traditional Cof E approach and pushing Anglicans towards mediaevalism in the head-long rush for zealotry. Unless the problem of possession and exorcism is tackled head-on by the established churches the long-term dangers for our society are immense.
John Freedom, Mortlake 29 June 2006
Ends.
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