Nigerian Children Tortured and Killed as "Witches": Modern Day Salem Witch Trials?

A child reveals to a journalist's camera the stump of her middle finger that has been cut off. Another young girl is found sitting on the side of the road-malnourished--after being cast out by her parents. Other children reveal severe burn marks, welts, cuts, and other hideous injuries-all caused by the members of their own families. These stories sound treacherous-like something from a gruesome horror movie. But in the Niger Delta in Africa, parents and clergymen are abusing children under the assumption that the children are witches. This isn't your average story about typical child abuse. The injuries these kids have sustained were caused as a result of their loved ones attempting to cast out evil.

One boy alleged to be a witch was believed to have caused his mother's death. As a result, he was forced to confess and then was beaten--but not before he was locked up with his mother's corpse each night for three weeks. It is not uncommon to see children in this area sitting alongside the road - cast out of their homes because they are believed to have evil powers. A recent story on CNN.com explores these strange practices.

Witches: From Whence They Came...

But this isn't the first time that tales like this one have popped up in the press. This article from 2002 reveals that belief in child witches (and witchcraft in general) has been going on for quite a while. It is claimed that these beliefs are actually hundreds of years old. But in the last decade or so, more of these cases have involved children. The accusations are reminiscent of the Salem Witch trials in which people were tortured into confessing to having supernatural powers.

In the state of Akwa Ibom in Nigeria, children who display characteristics of a disability can easily be accused of witchcraft. Sometimes the children are stabbed, beaten, burned, thrown in the river-even buried alive-all because the people in their community believe they have the ability to cast spells. Ironically, the spells are usually attached to illness, poverty, or unexpected deaths in the family. Witchcraft is even blamed for depression and other poor mental conditions. Basically, any ill fortune that cannot be rationally explained is subject to accusations of witchcraft. In many cases, the children are simply banished from their homes. Some of them live in abandoned buildings with other children who have been cast out. The children often come from single parent homes, or homes where this is some kind of dysfunction.

What "Witches" Do...

There are so many Nigerian children who have been cast out of their homes that orphanages and other organizations have been established to feed and care for the children. Social workers believe that the community's poverty and ignorance are ultimately responsible for the firm belief in witchcraft. In the eyes of these parents, there is no cure for poverty other than relieving themselves of the source - the children who are believed to be witches.

Witchcraft is so prevalent in many Nigerian communities that manuals have been published explaining how curses work, and how they can be expelled from society. In modern communities across the world, strange behaviors, mood disorders and other anomalies can easily be explained through medicine. But in communities that have more primitive beliefs, scientific studies are not recognized. Furthermore, no one attributes the source of these emotions to the economic poverty of their surroundings. As such, a vicious cycle endures, where people are blamed (via accusations of witchcraft) for the very things that cause communities to suffer.

The "Cure" for Witchcraft

It is perhaps the alleged "cure" for witchcraft that is as controversial as the accusations themselves. Pastors in Nigeria make money off the families (charging anywhere from $300 to $2000) by saying they can "deliver" the child from Satan. If the parents cannot pay the fee for deliverance, some evangelists hold the child captive until the parents are able to pay. But on several occasions the parents take the child back, claiming that he/she is a witch; the pastor then says that the child has "eaten too much flesh" and cannot be delivered. Parallels to the recent horror film The Last Exorcism can be drawn in that the evangelists are no more powerful than the "witches" they claim to cure.

A documentary called "Dispatches: Return to Africa's Witch Children", which aired in November of 2009, revealed that this phenomenon is so prevalent that billboards advertising the pastors' services flank the roads. Several fake pastors have been arrested because of these practices.
The exorcisms take place in the churches and can last for several hours. Anyone watching these rituals might be terribly frightened by what they see: women and other members of the congregation writhing, flailing and falling to the floor in what looks like grand mal seizures. These are the people for whom demons have been cast out. But who is to say that these members of the community are not faking their relief in order to save their families from being accused of witchcraft in the future? In a lot of cases, the notion of witchcraft is actually introduced in the church by the pastors themselves- and not the parents. It could be said that the idea is often "planted" rather than based on some actual evidence.
One evangelist named Helen Ukpabio, of the Liberty Gospel Church has been targeted as a primary instigator for these beliefs. Her 1999 film "End of the Wicked" shows in graphic detail, how children allegedly become possessed by evil. The extreme film depicts children eating human flesh, and doing all sorts of horrible things to the people in their community--with special effects that one might expect to see in a B-horror film from the United States. Purported as fact, it is not too difficult to imagine how the people believe these practices to be the gospel truth.

Fighting Evil...

With thousands of children affected by accusations of witchcraft, several organizations have been set up to protect them. In late 2009, an organization called Stepping Stones helped to establish laws banishing child witchcraft accusations (also called Child Stigmatization.) Another group called Child's Rights & Rehabilitation Network (CRARN) also works to provide aid for banished/abused children. Many of the local hospitals and schools refuse to accept children who have been accused of being witches. Organizations like CRARN and Stepping Stones also assist in integrating the children back into their communities, though doing so can be very difficult. These areas in Nigeria are said to be extremely dangerous to Westerners; research journalists had to have an armed escort simply to enter the area. Finding refuge for these abused children seems to be only part of the ongoing battle. Surprisingly, many parents are open to accepting their children back into the homes as long as they have the means to take care of them. This might suggest that the problem has less to do with supernatural beliefs and more to do with empowering Nigeria's communities with the resources necessary to survive.

SOURCES:

www.cnn.com
www.mediatakeout.com
www.marxist.com
www.moodymanual.demonbuster.com