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Deadly exorcisms and sacrifices: Real or rumor?
A confidential report from London's Metropolitan Police leaked to BBC Radio 4's Today program (audio) claims children are being trafficked into Britain as religious sacrifices.

"[P]eople who are desperate will seek out witchcraft experts to cast spells for them," says the report, a product of a ten-month investigation. "For a spell to be powerful it required a sacrifice involving a male child unblemished by circumcision. … Boy children are being trafficked into the UK for this purpose. … Specific details were not forthcoming as the belief was that they would be 'dead meat' if we tell you any more."

The report also alleges that children are being trafficked into the country for sexual purposes, particularly catering to African men who believe that sex with a child will cure them of HIV or AIDS.

The report was particularly critical of immigrants' attitudes toward demonic possession—no surprise since British headlines have recently focused on the torture of an 8-year-old girl her family had called a witch. In 2000, another 8-year-old, Victoria Climbie, died after violent and cruel exorcism rituals.

Preachers have created a "lucrative business" in exorcism, the report says. "A number of pastors maintain that God speaks to them and lets them know when someone is possessed … They would not accept that they played a major role in inciting such violence."

Perdeep Gill, one of the authors of the report, told The Times of London that pastors declare problems "from bedwetting to rebellion" as evidence of possession. "Most said the best solution was prayer and fasting. But they know the implications for the child. The way of dealing with it in Africa is through beating — to death in some cases. We told [the pastors] they couldn't distance themselves from it. More people believed in witchcraft than didn't and there are tons of small churches, with pastors moving from church to church."

But there's a major difference between believing in demonic possession and using torture and beatings to exorcize children. It's unclear from the reporting if Gill and others see that difference.

Katei Kirby, manager of the African Caribbean Evangelical Alliance, told The Guardian that the report is balanced and "does raise issues we need to address. But we do think it is unfortunate that a perception is being created that there is child sacrifice in every African community and that it is accepted."

John Azah, vice-chairman of the Metropolitan police's independent advisory group, wonders just how widespread these sacrifice incidents are. He told The Guardian, "I think it is very important that things are done to engage with the community, but we need to be careful about what is evidence and what is someone saying, 'This is what I have heard,'" What we have here seems to fall into that category. There is nothing to confirm that this has happened."

Goldsmiths College sociologist William Les Henry smells racism. "They always seem to base their models on the fact that Africans are less civilized, less rational, so their whole systems of rationality are irrational," he complained to the BBC.

Indeed, caution is necessary here; if the report is indeed overblown or misconstrued, it could have far more devastating effects than America's relatively harmless "satanic panic" of the 1980s. But neither can we assume that it's not overblown. The deadly campus cults phenomenon in Nigeria and violent and deadly reports of exorcism elsewhere demonstrate that this isn't just "news of the weird."

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June (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49