Sadly, exorcisms have long bedeviled the mentally ill. Attempts to exorcise
disorders deemed demons have often been awful. Whether you’re religious or not, the tortures
that have been enacted on some victims truly expose the horrifying truth about exorcisms.
In the story of the Gerasene demoniac, a horde of demons called Legion possesses a man,
who ends up living alone "among the tombs" where he strikes himself with stones. Christ powerfully
compels the demons to leave, allowing the man to reclaim the relationships he lost.
The tale of the Gerasene demoniac is rich with subtext when taken in a historical context.
The demons' name, Legion, doubles as a reference to the Roman army,
which sacked Jerusalem around the same time the Gospel of Mark was written. Then there's the
exorcism. When Jesus drives out Legion, the demons "drive 2,000 pigs into the sea." Pigs allude
to the presence of non-Jews and ancient Jewish imagery linked the sea with encroaching Romans.
Seen metaphorically, the Legion of demons represents Roman legions, demonic possession
points to the dispossession of Jews, and exorcism symbolizes the desired expulsion of the Romans.
Seen from Daniel Kfoury's perspective, a legion of demons was an actual army of demons with actual
army ranks. In 1985, Kfoury believed "up to 2,000 demons" formed this legion and resided inside his
Virginia roommate, Robert Bloom. To beat them, he reasoned, he needed to beat them out of Bloom.
Unfortunately, Bloom had brain damage from getting hit by a truck. The collision had a lasting
impact, impairing his speech, gait, and cognitive abilities. Bloom's friends and family abandoned
him. Lonely, he joined a church in Virginia where he met Kfoury. Kfoury was obsessed with demons,
and he thought they occupied Bloom. One day in 1985, he tried to beat demons out
of Bloom for seven hours, killing him. Kfoury received a 10-year sentence for manslaughter.
As psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton observed, humanity has long linked mental
illness with insidious spirits. When you consider a condition like schizophrenia,
it's easy to see why. The disorder causes hallucinations,
delusions, chaotic thoughts and speech patterns, and unpredictable agitation.
In the Middle Ages, religion informed remedies for most ailments like this. That tendency tapered off
during the Enlightenment as people reasoned that mental illness was a matter of the mind.
Unfortunately, not everyone has seen the light. In 2005, a Romanian priest tortured a
schizophrenic nun. Maricica Cornici began hearing whispers in her head. A psychiatrist
later revealed that the nun believed Beelzebub called her "a sinful person." Cornici sought
refuge at a psychiatric hospital. After receiving medication for schizophrenia, she visited a
Romanian convent where cleric Daniel Corogeanu pronounced her possessed and had her crucified.
In a moment reminiscent of the Romans offering Christ wine before crucifying him, Corogeanu
implored Cornici to consume holy water. After she refused to drink, the priest and four other nuns
chained her to a cross, stuffed a towel in her mouth, and starved her for three days. Cornici
died of dehydration. Corogeanu was unrepentant. He hailed her death as a "miracle" by God and thus
"entirely justified." A Romanian court disagreed and sentenced him to seven years behind bars.
Originally seen as a sin, same-sex relationships were deemed a psychological pathology by the late
19th century. While therapists departed from theologians in terms of explanation,
their treatment of homosexuals sometimes overlapped. During the 1950s and '60s,
various therapists implemented what was arguably a secular version of gay exorcisms. Doctors showed
pics of nude men to gay patients while giving them electric shocks or drugs to make them vomit.
Psychology has since largely abandoned such homophobic practices. But their underlying
ideas live on in gay conversion therapy, which has been paired with exorcisms.
In some parts of the world, people can be sent to psychiatric facilities for being gay.
For instance, there is the story of a Chechen lesbian whose Muslim family disapproved of her
being homosexual and gave her an ultimatum. She could be killed, locked in a psychiatric hospital
indefinitely, or undergo an exorcism. The young woman went with the exorcism. A mullah held her
head and recited Koranic verses for two hours to straighten her out. After enduring the ritual,
she pretended her lesbian demons had left her until she safely fled Russia.
In 2017 a Nicaraguan woman began having hallucinations, talking to herself,
and weeping hysterically. Her aunt recalled, "She told her sister she would not give birth to a baby
but to a serpent." As the woman unraveled, her tight-knit family decided to help her. Since the
nearest hospital would take nearly a day to reach, they reached out to their Pastor, Juan Rocha.
Rocha believed the woman had Satan inside her, so he and four congregants dragged her to a cabin
where they tied her up, beat her, and denied her nourishment. According to court testimony,
Rocha told the woman’s relatives "not to feel any love for her because that was just the devil."
According to Rocha, God instructed him to enact his violent behavior. The end
result was that his victim was tied to a tree beside a pyre where she burned for five hours.
Rocha was condemned to 30 years in prison.
Some exorcists consult a higher authority before attempting an exorcism. The Vatican
offers exorcism courses that teach priests how to overcome evil and even expel spirits via cell
phone. As one exorcist instructor warned, "A self-taught exorcist certainly meets errors."
"The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!"
In 2015 religious officials in Germany's Catholic diocese of Limburg voiced similar sentiments after
a family of would-be exorcists killed a relative. The tragedy transpired at an InterContinental
Hotel in Frankfurt. A group of South Korean relatives started staying there amid fears
that their rental house was haunted. Things took a turn when one family member,
a 41-year-old woman, began hitting herself and behaving aggressively toward the others.
Convinced that fiendish forces were afoot, five of the victim's relatives, including her teenage son,
held her down and pounded her torso for at least two hours.
As it turned out, the family regularly used beatings to combat demons. They held Christian
views infused with shamanistic beliefs. A court convicted the five murderers of deadly bodily
harm. One received a six-year sentence. The rest received suspended sentences.
Regardless of the origins of exorcists, the notion of noxious spirits has existed
across cultures forever. Before 19th-century Christian missionaries came to New Zealand,
Polynesian New Zealanders, known as Maori, already believed in a form of demonic possession.
Their version was caused by a catastrophic curse called makutu. Sadly, devotion to that
notion had catastrophic consequences in 2009. It all started when Janet Moses' sister stole
a stone lion from outside a building. Soon thereafter, Moses began acting strangely. A
Maori elder advised her family that she would only recover once the statue was recovered by
its rightful owner. Moses' relatives returned the lion, but she didn't return to normal.
A relative later told the press that Moses was cursed for her sister's crime because
she was "the weakest person in the family." Moses' family rallied to rescue her from demons
they believed possessed her. On a fateful October day, 40 relatives filled a room and surrounded
her. Some chanted incantations, restrained Moses, and gouged her eyes. To wash away the wickedness,
they poured water into her eyes and down her throat until she drowned. A teenage relative
who also seemed unwell also suffered eye gouges but survived. A court convicted
five relatives of manslaughter but sentenced them to community service and counseling.
Reverend Thomas Euteneuer was made out of righteous indignation. The reverend
once chastised Fox News host Sean Hannity for considering birth control better than abortion.
He regularly ranted about Harry Potter, Twilight, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch for their sinful
subjects. He even supported performing exorcism on abortion clinics, which he lambasted as "temples
of a demonic religion." However, like most villains of this type, he was eventually exposed.
Court documents revealed that Euteneuer exploited a Virginian woman during an extended exorcism.
The victim, identified as Jane Doe, reached out to the reverend in 2008.
As part of their arrangement, she allegedly signed a pledge of complete cooperation.
Reportedly, Euteneuer caressed and kissed Jane Doe without consent and preyed on her for a long time.
After two years of this, his victim alerted church officials. Euteneuer resigned from
Human Life International, a nonprofit pro-life group he had directed for a decade.
In an official statement, he confessed to violating the boundaries of chastity with
a woman under his spiritual care. He settled the matter out of court.
Family physician and avid Christian Thomas O'Brien worked at a community health center.
In 2012 a woman, referred to as "Patient A," approached O'Brien for medical help. A colostomy
surgery had left her in agony and considering suicide. The physician fished for information,
discovered Patient A was not religious and manipulated her into joining his faith.
O'Brien promised a pain-free existence. But to have that life, she had to give up antidepressants
and blood pressure drugs and give herself to God. The doctor made house calls, quoted the Bible,
warned her about the devil, and programmed Patient A's TV to play a Gospel Channel.
While spreading the word of God, O'Brien told her not to say a word to her psychiatrist. He further
warned that if she contacted authorities that she would be cursed. The most egregious abuse of
O'Brien's proselytizing was a four-hour testimony at a Pentecostal church that included an exorcism.
Patient A eventually spoke up, and in 2015 O'Brien was fired.
According to neuroscientist Beau Lotto, human brains developed in a very interesting way.
"Because our brain evolved to take what is meaningless and make it meaningful."
He argues that that tendency protects people from unseen risks in an uncertain world.
The evidence certainly suggests this. As the American Psychological Association asserted:
"Because people are quick to believe that someone or something is behind even the most
benign experiences, they may perceive the sound of the wind rustling leaves as a potential predator."
Similarly, blaming disturbing events on spiritual threats might serve as a defense against
uncertainty. Sometimes extreme uncertainty drives people to place faith in indefensible ideas.
This might explain the plight of accused child witches in countries like Nigeria.
UNICEF spokesman Martin Dawes remarked that it plays into traditional beliefs that someone
must actually cause negative change, and that children are defenseless to it. One of those
defenseless children was a 9-year-old boy who died after his father tried to force-feed him
acid during an exorcism. In the decade leading up to 2009, roughly 1,000 Nigerian
children suffered similarly horrifying fates. Nigeria's not alone. In 2008 UNICEF estimated that
20,000 accused child witches in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's capital, Kinshasa, were
living on the streets. Self-ordained exorcists starved, slapped, and burned suspected witches
with hot wax. Such children are a testament to the tragic error of following unchecked beliefs.
In a 2018 interview, Mexican priest and exorcist extraordinaire Cesar Truqui
claimed to have performed more than 100,000 exorcisms. Perhaps part of his alleged success
lies in his willingness to acknowledge that mentally ill people seeking his services might
be better served by psychiatric help. It’s a shame then that Jesús Hernández Sahagún didn't in 2012.
Hernández Sahagún was the official exorcist of the city of Valladolid, Spain, and purportedly
performed over 200 exorcisms. In 2012 the priest waged a crusade to save a teenage girl with
anorexia. She was already getting medical care, but her parents believed demons tormented her. The
priest criticized the amount of medicine the girl was taking and conducted 13 different exorcisms.
The priest tied up the teen and hung crosses over her head.
These rites had the wrong effect. The girl was so traumatized she later attempted suicide.
Hernández Sahagún denied wrongdoing, placing the onus on the devil for possessing the girl. In 2015
authorities jailed him for gender violence, causing injury, and mistreating the teen.
If you or someone you know is dealing with spiritual abuse,
you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
You can also find more information, resources, and support on their website.