'Child-witches' of Nigeria seek refuge

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Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:14 am

http://tinyurl.com/59gkvz

Quote:

The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or "deliverance", evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year's income.

Even the religious leaders are scammers.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:37 pm

I don't know for sure if that Helen Ukpabio is sincerely deluded or a cynical scammer...

Quote:

Helen Ukpabio, a self-styled prophetess of the 150-branch Liberty Gospel Church, made a film, widely distributed, called End of the Wicked. It tells, in graphic detail, how children become possessed and shows them being inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families and communities.
Mrs Ukpabio, a mother of three, also wrote a popular book which tells parents how to identify a witch. For children under two years old, she says, the key signs of a servant of Satan are crying and screaming in the night, high fever and worsening health - symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care.
The preacher says that her work is true to the Bible and is a means of spreading God's word. "Witchcraft is a problem all over Nigeria and someone with a gift like me can never hurt anybody," she says. "Every Nigerian wants to watch my movies." She denies that her teachings and films could encourage child abuse.

... but reading that, I'd say the latter; truly evil.

Trophy Videos · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:28 pm

Reading this article made me sick. The callousness and cruelty is shocking.

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 12:48 am

Amazing. A church that is infinitely more wicked than TWAT... Sad

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 3:35 am

Just seen an ad on Channel 4 their documentary series Dispatches is doing an episode on exactly that. The ad showed a guy claiming to have killed 110 witches.

www.channel4.com/dispatches

Broadcast: Wednesday 12 November 2008 09:00 PM

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 7:37 am

That is such an incredibly sad and maddening story. What an incredibly evil thing to do a child for money. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 8:15 am

That's pretty vicious, but it's not like we've never seen this kind of thing before.

After all, it was antics like these that brought about the Reformation and the century of instability that followed right along it.

Even our little mugus use this type of tactic, you know, the whole "send me money or Jesus'll hate you" routine.

The reason this keeps on succeeding is that most countries in the world have different laws when dealing with "men of the cloth" - regardless of their religion - and spiritual leaders such as "psychics" who swindle widows out of all of their money by pretending to speak with their dead husbands.

In a way, victims of these fraudulent activities, are just like victims of 419, with the exception that most live the rest of their lives not knowing that they got scammed.

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 1:51 pm

I admit that I am not a religious person at all, but I would stand up for the fact that this has nothing to do with any religion, but merely exhibits pervrsion on the part of the people practicing it.

Most religions have merit. It is only when unscrupulous people use it for their own selfish and/or grotesque purposes that it is brought into disrepute.

It will be interesting to see whether or not this is just another criminal activity that the police ignore, or are unable to do anything about.

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 1:58 pm

GomerPyle wrote:

but merely exhibits pervrsion on the part of the people practicing it.

Therein lies the problem. Compare it to a corrupt policeman, he wears the uniform and carries a badge, so no one does anything about his actions. Either that or his poor actions reflect on all other LEOs. In both cases, many suffer but he still gets away with it.

Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:12 pm

10 minutes of this programme is pretty stomach churning.

It's basically scamming money and killing and maiming kids, and I presume more stuff I don't even want to think about.

One potion a kid was given to a kid consisted, amongst other things, of something that was called mercury and the 'Bishop's' own blood.

It's lunacy. Some things they are showing are appalling.

Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 8:40 am

I watched the programme last night and it was sickening.

The Catholic Priest announce that a child is a witch and he then conducts torture on the child, and the parents pay him to do so. The local people take his word for it and the child is open to abuse from anyone, for life.

The priest is so sincere about his power and so arrogant and pompous it makes you want to shake him warmly by the throat. How the reporter managed to keep his temper under control I don't know.

And they carry out this abuse under the guise of Christianity.

Wannabe Baiter Joined: 21 Oct 2008 Posts: 82

Looks like a trophy image

Sorry, that was poor...

Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 2:39 pm

The look of terror on the face of the 5 year old girl as the mob outside banged on the corrugated iron walls of the shed trying to get at her was horrific.

When they tried to reunite the other girl with her mother and one of the locals was circling around with the machete in his hand, it was appalling to see the mother have to walk away to save her life.

We have our own problems in child welfare, but at least there is a collective sense of revulsion and recognition that it is intolerable, but when the originator of the 'cult' in Nigeria is feted as a celebrity, something is seriously wrong.

At the same time I recognise that there are Nigerians working hard to stamp out this practice. They would benefit greatly from a lot more help from their government.

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