Attachment Therapy: Where Are the Testimonials From the Children?

It’s been a long time since I posted anything about Attachment Therapy on this blog. For those of you who don’t remember or never knew, Attachment Therapy, also known as Holding Therapy, is a physically-intrusive mental health intervention presented as a treatment for disorders of attachment. It has most often been proposed as a treatment for adopted children whose moods and behavior are difficult for the adoptive parents to accept. Although many conventional treatments can be described as “attachment-based” therapies, and most mental health interventions for children focus to some extent on relationships, Attachment Therapy/Holding Therapy (AT/HT for short, or just AT) is a term that refers to an unconventional, non-evidence-based treatment, one that belongs to the complementary-and-alternative-medicine (CAM) category.

Two colleagues and I described AT/HT in detail in our book Attachment Therapy on Trial (Mercer, Sarner, & Rosa; Praeger, 2003).  We discussed the poorly designed research that has claimed to support the effectiveness of AT/HT, as well as a number of child deaths associated with the method. We pointed out that AT/HT would probably not kill any healthy child, but that attitudes and beliefs connected with the method have led parents and therapists to push the treatment in ways that have proved fatal. Michael Shermer has referred to this very accurately as “death by theory”.

When I get into arguments on this blog--  as I did some months ago with supporters of Nancy Verrier’s supposititious “primal wound” concept—I’m usually the one arguing in favor of systematic research that can provide a reliable evidence basis, and the opponents are claiming that individual experiences are the measure of whether a concept is true or a treatment is effective. I don’t think the latter argument is true, but today I’m going to come and play on that side of the field. I want to ask people to tell me if they as children experienced AT/HT and believe that it had a positive effect on their mental health. Even if your experience was not with the bad old, intrusive, painful AT/HT, but with the “kinder and gentler” version claimed by ATTACh following the death of Candace Newmaker in 2000, I’d still like very much to hear about it if you can give a positive testimonial.

Here’s the thing: I’ve come across a number of people who have reported bad experiences with AT/HT. Some are reluctant to speak out, possibly because in the course of their long treatment they received little education and are self-conscious about telling their stories. Others simply want to forget it all and get on with their lives. One young woman spent several years contacting survivors of the treatment and posting their story on her web site; she has now dropped out of sight, but conversation with her revealed the terrible mark of her memories of her experience. Another young woman, who had managed to go on for some years without thinking about AT/HT, began to have disturbing memories after a relationship ruptured, and was eventually treated for an anxiety disorder at a University of Pennsylvania clinic. The “Invisible England” blog reports the experiences and outcome for a young British man who was subjected to AT/HT for years.

But where are the positive testimonials? On a number of web sites, including jl10ll.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/children-of-rage/, I find references to Beth Thomas, adopted daughter of Nancy Thomas, a strong proponent of AT/HT thinking, a “therapeutic foster parent”, and a parent educator who runs camps based on the AT/HT philosophy. Beth is described as having been a terrifying child, sexually vicious, cruel, and unpredictable. Now, having gone through the AT/HT program, she is a registered nurse and goes on the lecture circuit with her adoptive mother--  no longer a “child of rage”, but an “adult of admiration”. The site I just mentioned, by the way, also refers to Mary Bell, a British woman who as a young girl killed and mutilated a little boy. Maltreated by her mother from birth, Mary Bell was mistreated in the juvenile facility she was sent to and later was raped while incarcerated. She served a further sentence as an adult, during which time she read and thought deeply and expressed great remorse at her actions. Mary Bell never received AT/HT, but for some reason the site classes her together with Beth Thomas as a former “child of rage”.  

All right, suppose that all that has been written about Beth Thomas is true, and she feels she owes it all to AT/HT methods. Where, then, are the others who feel they have benefited from the AT intervention? I mean, where are the people, now adults, who as children were treated with AT/HT, and who now come forward to say it was a marvelous idea?

I don’t want to hear from the adoptive parents who think AT/HT is fine. After all, the criterion is personal experience, yes? There are plenty of adoptive parents who are ready to say the treatment is a big help. Rachel Stryker’s book The Road to Evergreen quoted a number of people who felt that the treatment had been effective even though their children were in residential care; the parents said it had helped them become a family, and they were still a family with their children elsewhere, “loving them at a distance”. The same attitude shows up at http://www.findinghopefoundation.com/blog-2, where a mother describes how she looked forward to having her adopted daughter go into respite care, and how long it’s been since the daughter lived at home--  but it’s okay, because now she Has Hope--  for what, it’s not too clear. And there are plenty more blogs where adoptive parents tell what a big help AT/HT in various forms has been to them.

It’s the positive testimonials of people treated with AT/HT methods as children that I want to see. And to help me and everybody be sure it’s really you and not your parent or therapist pretending to be you, maybe you could explain whether and where you’ve ever spoken up before--  and if you haven’t, why not.

    

Demon Attributions in the United States

In several posts about Helen Ukpabio and children’s deaths following accusations of witchcraft and demon possession, I’ve focused on beliefs that African Pentecostals encourage. Child deaths related to witchcraft and demon accusations have occurred both in Africa and among African immigrants in the United Kingdom. Using Dr. Rosalind Hackett’s work as a source, I also discussed the role that certain postulated spirits play in African Pentecostal life, and the value of such malevolent spirits in contributing to the worldview that emphasizes “spiritual warfare” between good and evil.

However, the fact that some Africans mistreat or kill children because they believe in demon possession does not mean that all non-Africans are free of this dangerous assumption. Children in the United States, too, have died during attempts to expel the demons that were thought to infest them. One recent case, discussed at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2011/12/faith-based-child-abuse.html , involved a recently-adopted 4-year-old, Kairissa Mark, whose adoptive father referred to her as a “demon child”.

Publications about expulsion of demons are easily available through Amazon and other source. For example, “Deliverance for Children and Teens”, by Bill Banks, was published in 1985 and reissued in 2008. “A Manual for Children’s Deliverance”, by Frank and Ida Mae Hammond, originally published in 1996, was reissued in 2010. (The term “deliverance” in these titles refers to the expulsion of demons, which the authors consider to be responsible for many childhood problems both trivial and serious.) Numerous websites profess problems that occur when demons attack children--  which, it is said, they may do through no fault of the child, but because a parent or even grandparent deviated from strict rules about sexual behavior or trafficked with the occult by using a Ouija board or an “8-ball”.

A recent youtube production, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIPkjOF-dCQ&feature=related, was mentioned on the “Little Prince” adoption and Reactive Attachment Disorder website, and was accompanied by enlightening comments about the role demons are thought to play in a child’s development. (Please let me point out, though, that the video and comments are now said to have been taken down by the maker, so there’s no way I can arrange for you to check my accuracy here. My thanks to Linda Rosa for pointing these out; I didn’t move quite fast enough to see the video.) Here are a couple of the comments (verbatim):

@BlessedBlessedinHim said: If that was happening to me I would get spiritual help immediately there may not be nothing wrong with your child. Demons are real, and can enter children who are not baptised, and have not made the decision to repent they are open to demonic harm. I have seen these things myself so no matter what anyone says I will never be convinced they are not real. Maybe this is real to you? This is something a doctor can’t cure your child appears normal otherwise.

@Retro80Lady30 said:  I agree. some things are caused by demons and do believe that a child can be influenced by such things.. Our son has healed immensely but it has taken years of prayers and showing unconditional love. I do not believe the whole cause of Rad is demonic influence ..oe these children are hurt, traumatized, and angry from having no control … they need healing and sometimes healing does not come instantly.. In that case God gives us what we need in order to parent and love these children..

These comments demonstrate that it would be a mistake to think of demon possession beliefs as “what people used to think in the Middle Ages” or “what some people think in Africa, not here”. People living in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and no doubt elsewhere are on this very day attributing children’s behavioral, mood, and physical problems to possession by demons, and are seeking deliverance practices as cures for seizure disorders, ADHD, schizophrenia (a specialty of the Hammonds, who believed the word meant multiple personality), and, as we saw above, Reactive Attachment Disorder. Believing that deliverance can cure these problems, the adults are likely to avoid conventional medical and psychological treatments for these treatable problems.

I have had a long love affair with the First Amendment, but as time goes on my passion is turning to ambivalence. The problem is the difficulty in discriminating between the right to hold certain beliefs and the right to act on those beliefs in ways that affect other people. We tolerate  a belief in polygamy while simultaneously forbidding polygamous marriages. But it’s much harder to tolerate a belief in demonic possession of children while forbidding neglect of appropriate medical and psychological treatment, because we can’t foresee that neglect or detect it immediately. The tradition of the “family veil” prevents authorities from investigating what families do to children, unless it has become clear that a child has been harmed, and rightly so--  we would all be frightened if investigators (not necessarily knowledgeable ones) could come into our homes at a whim. Public and private schools used to provide a layer of protection for children whose parents’ beliefs were dangerous, but the rise in unsupervised homeschooling has removed that protection for many children.

Where do we go now? Is it possible to protect children from belief-based abuse and neglect, without instituting a force of Childrearing Police? When inappropriate action flows from beliefs, what ideas should we tolerate?  I can’t answer; I can only repeat that children in the United States have died from exorcism practices, and that the belief in demon possession of children is still very much with us.

Another "Child Witch" Tragedy, and Some Explanation of Those Mermaid Spirits

**The child witch issue: If you have the stomach for it, you can see a documentary about accused African child witches at www.veoh.com/watch/v1963403396SNnb35?h1=Saving+Africa's+Witch+Children, or, if this doesn't work, Google Saving Africa's Witch Children documentary. It's tragic, pitiful, and deeply disturbing.**

Not long ago, I commented on the invitation of Liberty Gospel Church in Houston to the Nigerian Pentecostal minister Helen Ukpabio to visit and carry on a “mammoth deliverance”. Ukpabio’s history of accusing children of witchcraft and exorcising them, as well as the deaths of some children accused of being witches, would suggest that her influence is not needed in the United States. A petition at change.org is in agreement with that suggestion and asks the President to deny entry to Ukpabio. Among others, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children has also written to the State Department about this matter. Ukpabio’s visit to Houston has apparently been delayed, in any case.

In London, where exorcism has injured or killed other African children, a Congolese couple has just been convicted of killing the woman’s 15-year-old brother in the course of an exorcism or “deliverance” in December, 2010 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16444602). The boy was tortured and finally drowned as he was accused repeatedly of sorcery. The couple had previously practiced “deliverance” on a friend by making her cut her hair and fasting for three days.  Although many in the United States think of exorcism as being carried out by a clergyman, with appurtenances like holy water and a cross, in fact those Christians who accept the idea of demonic possession also generally accept that any believer can perform an exorcism. (A 1972 report of the Church of England, edited by Dom Robert Petitpierre, even said that a non-believer can do it by using the name of Jesus.) This means that it is a mistake to assume that “deliverance” practices are the work of trained and educated clergypersons who have the good of their “client” at heart; as in the London cases, these practices may be performed by those who have no understanding of physical or mental illness, or whose motives are malicious.

It’s for these reasons that people concerned about children’s welfare have asked that Helen Ukpabio be excluded from the United States.

Another aspect of Ukpabio’s “mammoth deliverance” in Houston has been puzzling to readers, and appeared so even to the Nigerian Sahara TV interviewer who discussed the Ukpabio visit with the pastor of the Houston church. This was the reference on the advertising flyer to the help Ukpabio could offer people under attack by “mermaid spirits”. The Sahara TV interviewer asked whether these were to be found in the Gulf of Mexico, while others simply said “mermaid spirits??”. An article by the religious studies scholar Rosalind Hackett, of the University of Tennessee, clarifies the “mermaid spirits” issue (web.utk.edu/~rhackett/mwucla.pdf). According to Hackett, the people of the Nigerian city of Calabar traditionally were under the protection of aquatic spirits who could give blessings, fertility, and forgiveness. These spirits preferred light colors of skin and clothing, and albino girls were sometimes sacrificed to them (similar to current practices of using albino children, or their body parts, in sorcery). Among, or perhaps ruling over, these water spirits was “Mami Wata”--  not a mermaid in the usual sense, but perhaps imaged as one because of European pictures. As Hackett says, “These stories of spirit-human relations provide insight into the contested images of water, women, and misfortune. Addressing perennial concerns about wealth and sexuality, they find new life in the worldviews of modern pentecostal Christians with their elaborate and vivid spirit [imagery]—that of a dualistic world inhabited by warring spiritual forces.”

Mami Wata may possess a person and cause mental illness, or may make women infertile. Other personal water spirits, Hackett says, may “seek out a ‘spouse’ and reward the person with worldly success but deprive them of progeny and happiness in marriage.” According to Hackett, belief in the water spirits has diminished for members of mainline churches. However,they are of great concern for Pentecostals. Hackett quotes “well-connected” Nigerian friends as claiming that “the newer churches are perpetuating, if not reviving, beliefs in aquatic spirits as sources of people’s problems, and that the appropriate spiritual remedies” are advised. Church members are made to change their names if they have a name that is associated with water spirits, and their parents are blamed for having “satanic” connections if they have used one of these names. This concern goes as far as suspicion of any church that baptizes in water that is not clear to the bottom.

Hackett raises two issues about the marine spirit beliefs: “First, the fact that these ‘marine agents’ are now able to penetrate the hallowed and presumed safe territory of the pentecostal church  generates new fears and new quests for protection. As I was told in hushed tones by one deliverance specialist, so sophisticated are some of these newer ‘manifestations’ of Mami Wata as virtuous church virgins, that they can manipulate through their… charms not just the bodies but also the minds of men. He added that this type of spirit is the most dangerous and deceitful, and attacks pastors only. [! J.M.] Second, the maintenance, if not resurgence, of Mami Wata beliefs in these new religious contexts may be linked to millenialist claims that the increase in the number of ‘Jezebels’ inviting the people of God to compromise with the world is ‘part of the operations of Satan and his demons in these last days’.”

Hackett’s description shows us how important evil spirits are to believers, and makes it plain why some “deliverers” may feel moved to go too far when they think a child is a sorcerer or demon-possessed.   My question: is Houston waiting for Helen Ukpabio to bring them news about “mermaid spirits”--  or is that belief already firmly in place?

Who's Abusive? Comparing Step-Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Others

Warning: this is not going to be a juicy post, but dry and statistical. A commenter the other day brought up the question of whether adoptive parents or step-parents actually are more often abusive to children than biological parents, as we have been told by “Cinderella” and other stories. I went rummaging among the statistical reports and found a few answers--  although not all that I was looking for.

The U.S. Children’s Bureau publication Child Maltreatment in 2010 (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#can) reported data from 51 states (including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) about substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect. The data are based on the definition used in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Reauthorization Act of 2010: “Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm”. [Interesting—I never realized before that this definition omits to mention cognitive or educational harm.] Children who are abused and neglected are most often exposed to a variety of difficulties, and it is not necessarily possible to discriminate between actions that most of us would call neglect (like poor diets) and those we’d usually call abuse (like beating with an object). This makes it hard to decide which people are abusers, but we have to recognize that the problem is a reflection of the real world conditions, not of the data collection or analysis. 

According to the Children’s Bureau report, there were 436,321  substantiated reports of child abuse and neglect in 2010. Of these, 78% focused on neglect, 17.6% on physical abuse, and 9.2% on sexual abuse. It was not clear from this report how each of these was associated with a particular group of perpetrators, but it’s important to see that specific physical abuse was relatively infrequent--- these points should be kept in mind when looking at the rest of this post.

The Children’s Bureau report noted that parents (including step-parents and adoptive parents, but not foster parents) were responsible for 81.2% of the cases in the “duplicate count” (adults who were reported more than once for mistreatment of a child). Of these cases involving parents, 0.7%  were perpetrated by adoptive parents, 84.2% by biological parents, 4.0% by step-parents, and 11.2% by parents whose relationship to the child was not recorded.

These numbers suggest that biological parents were by far the most frequent maltreaters, followed by the “unknown” group, with a much smaller frequency of mistreatment by step-parents, and the adoptive parents with a tiny proportion of cases. However, these numbers don’t tell the whole story; we need to know the proportion of each of these kinds of parents in the population, so we can look at rates of maltreatment and see whether each group accounts for more or less abuse than its occurrence in the population would predict. If there are many adoptive parents, we would expect many cases of maltreatment, and if there are very few, we would expect very few cases. (We’ll have to leave out the “unknown” group.)

A visit to the 2008 U.S. census, at www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/cb08-30.html  shows a total of 73 million children in the United States. Of those, 61% lived with their biological mother and father, 8% with at least one step-parent (I can’t explain what this means, sorry!), and 2 % with at least one adoptive parent. The difference between this total and 100% is because I’ve omitted less frequent situations like living with grandparents or being emancipated.

If child maltreatment was not associated with the parent’s actual relationship to the child, we’d expect 61% of cases to be perpetrated by biological parents, 8% to occur when there was a step-parent in the house, and 2% to be carried out by adoptive parents. In fact, we see many more cases of maltreatment by biological parents than we’d expect, and fewer by step-parents and adoptive parents—in fact, only about half of the expected rate by the last two groups. This result is much different from what is usually reported about step-parent maltreatment, and contradicts the 1985 article that originally stated that step-children are in unusual danger of abusive treatment (Daly,M., & Wilson, M. [1985]. Child abuse and other risks of not living with both parents. Ethology and Sociobiology, Vol. 6, pp. 197-210; courses.washington.edu/evpsych/D&W-child-abuse-ESB1985.pdf).

What if we look at the 2010 report’s information about child fatalities, as opposed to non-fatal neglect and abuse? The table showing relationship of perpetrator to child does not show step-parents or adoptive parents separately, but it does show deaths due to the actions of mothers, of fathers, of mother and father, and of mother plus another or of father plus another. It also shows deaths associated with a partner of the mother or of the father. The proportion of child fatalities perpetrated by mother or father plus another, or by a partner of one of the parents, still amounts to less than 17% of the total--  but without information about the numbers of children living in each of those situations, it’s hard to interpret exactly what this signifies. A proportion of 17% is somewhat more than the 10% accounted for by the census data for step-parents and adoptive parents, but may not be excessive when we consider unmarried partners of parents too.

Have I made mistakes here? Or could it be that step-parents have been maligned or have changed since the 1980s?    

The Hardin and Chritton Cases: Where Did These Abusive Parents Learn Their Methods?

Two recent child abuse cases--  one fatal— raise a question: was it chance that the abusive adults chose the methods they used? Were they simply repeating punishments that were generally accepted in the past? Was their bizarre and harmful behavior symptomatic of mental illness? Or are abusive actions encouraged by quasi-professional “therapists” and “parent educators”?

The fatal case, that of a 9-year-old Alabama girl, Savannah Hardin, is shown at www.dailymail.uk/news/article-2106370/Savannah-Hardin-9-run-death-lying-eating-candy.html as well as posted elsewhere. Savannah told her grandmother she had not eaten a candy bar, when she actually had done so; as punishment, she was made to run for hours, until she collapsed and later died of dehydration. One article notes that, as well as running, she was to gather wood and add it to a pile. Savannah was said to be under medical care and receiving medication for a chronic condition that was not named.

An Alabama attorney quoted in a piece at www.cbs42.com stated that “a lot of parents do this as punishment”, apparently referring to the forced running, but that they would not expect it to end in death. Older people may remember this type of punishment from their own childhoods, and those who have been associated with the military will recall similar punishments involving running or marching with full packs (and the old British expression, “no names, no pack drill).

Punishments of this kind are part of a vernacular or popular belief system about appropriate treatment of children and are more likely to be favored in rural areas or by “old-fashioned” families or individuals. However, they also form part of a popularized system associated with so-called “Attachment Therapy” or “Holding Therapy”, unconventional treatments intended to make children compliant. The system, which some call “Attachment Therapy parenting”, involves an emphasis on unquestioning and uncomplaining obedience, to be brought about through limitations of diet and tedious repetition of heavy or difficult work, or of tasks like holding objects over the head with extended arms before meals may be eaten.  This approach  has been suggested and described by the “parent educator” Nancy Thomas in a 2000 Academic Press book edited by the “attachment therapist” Terry Levy. (I would note that the techniques of holding objects over the head is not included in Thomas’s work, but has shown up in the practices of parents using similar methods.)  

Was Savannah Hardin’s grandmother, Joyce Garrard, familiar with the advice of “attachment therapists”? Was she simply repeating methods she knew from previous experience? Or was some degree of emotional disturbance responsible for her fatally-flawed judgment in this matter? It’s to be hoped that investigators and prosecutors will explore these issues thoroughly. Although Ms. Garrard’s actions are her own responsibility, if “therapists” or “parent educators” in the area are encouraging this behavior, the public needs to be informed of their involvement and its potential outcome.

The second case, non-fatal but highly injurious to the child, can be seen at http://www.channel3000.com/news/30475617/detail.html. A Madison, WI family is accused of years of maltreatment of a 15-year-old girl who was found weighing 70 pounds. Her condition requires very careful care and may end in her death. Her father, Chad Chritton, and stepmother, Melinda Drabek-Chritton, are said to have kept her in the basement of their house most of the time for the last 6 years, to have limited her diet to oatmeal and peanut butter sandwiches (as recommended by the “parent educator” Nancy Thomas), supplemented by garbage and, sometimes, her own feces, to have made her do housework in the nude, and to have failed to provide adequate sanitary facilities. Their reasons for mistreating the child are not yet clear, but they are said to have told her that she is autistic and to have claimed that she has Reactive Attachment Disorder (a claim that is, of course, a specialty of  “Attachment Therapists”). It has been suggested that this post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HopeForADKids/message/3118 may have been written by Melinda Drabek-Chritton, and it appears that the description of the surveillance cameras is accurate. (Readers may notice that the URL above uses the term “AD” rather than “RAD”. This refers to the “Attachment Disorder” posited by “Attachment Therapists” --  sometimes used interchangeably with “Reactive Attachment Disorder” by them, but also said to have different symptoms and claimed to culminate in serial killing.)

Did the girl’s father and stepmother pick up these techniques from their own past experiences? The serious harm done to the child makes it seem unlikely that this was the case, or at least that they had ever seen such severe treatment go on for long. Is their behavior symptomatic of mental illness? This remains to be seen, of course. Have they learned to use these methods as advised by “therapists” or “parent educators”? This is a very real possibility, as a document available from the organization Adoption Resources of Wisconsin repeats misconceptions claimed as true by “Attachment Therapists”. This document does not in itself suggest maltreatment, but cites as sources and recommends materials by Nancy Thomas and by Connell Watkins, one of the therapists convicted in the 2000 suffocation death of Candace Newmaker. Such dangerous misinformation has been circulated in Wisconsin by a number of groups.

Again, it is to be hoped that investigators and prosecutors will thoroughly explore all these possibilities. If, in fact, state or local organizations are encouraging the practices and belief systems that seem to have been at work in the Wisconsin case, it is essential that families be made aware of the dangers of following this kind of advice--  advice that is protected under the First Amendment, so that punishment of the advisers is not as likely as punishment of those who followed their counsel.  

More on Child Witches and Deliverance

I’ve been getting some interesting information on the activities of Helen Ukpabio, the “child witch” exorcist I mentioned recently, from Leo Igwe, until recently the International Humanist and Ethical Union representative for Western and Southern Africa. Leo is about to begin a three-year project to study beliefs and practices related to the idea that children can be possessed by demons and harmful to people and property . Not surprisingly, he is aware of events related to the “child witch” belief. He passed on a relevant Youtube piece, which you can see at www.barthsnotes.com/2012/02/16/houston-liberty-gospel-pastor-gives-interview/ as well as on Youtube.

The Youtube material is telephone interview conducted by Sahara TV interviewer Chika Oduah with Godwin Umotong,  pastor of the Houston church that plans to run a “mammoth deliverance” (group exorcism)  under the care of Helen Ukpabio. I found the interview somewhat difficult to understand (it has those video pauses where the sound vanishes too), but it did provide the information that the deliverance event, originally scheduled for March 14-25, has been postponed until May. Ms. Oduah asked some pointed questions about the whereabouts of the “mermaid spirits” that are named as a concern in the flyer for the planned deliverance meeting. She also pointed out that the crying in the night, feverishness, and deteriorating health --- symptoms that Helen Ukpabio says can indicate demon possession in toddlers--  could  well be symptoms of malaria. Umotong maintained that children can be initiated as witches, but denied that they could be witches from birth.

Pentecostal beliefs (as described in the work of Frank and Ida Mae Hammond and of Bill Banks) do include the idea that an individual may be demon-possessed not only from birth, but from conception. In the views of the Hammonds and of Banks, events such as conception in a spirit of lust, or the consideration of abortion by the mother or father, attract demonic entities who then “indwell” the developing child and can be expelled only through deliverance rituals. (Adopted children are especially likely to have these problems.)  Demon-possessed children may be ill-behaved and rebellious or rejecting to their parents, as well as showing learning disabilities or even physical disorders; these difficulties occur because of the demonic influences and cannot be cured except through deliverance.

The belief in demonic possession of infants and children has real dangers from the perspective of non-Pentecostals. Those committed to this world-view may avoid educational, psychological, even medical treatments that exclude demonic possession as an explanation of children’s problems. In addition, as I pointed out recently, there have been child deaths caused by deliverance rituals. The Hammonds and Banks, as well as other Pentecostal authors, assume that expulsion of demons is often accompanied by crying, screaming, and vomiting. These are all possible indications of harm being done, and if ignored may lead to greater harm or death.

 Nevertheless, the “child witch” accusations of Helen Ukpabio seem to be of a different order of magnitude than “ordinary” demon possession and deliverance beliefs. Although “witch children” may seem to overlap with the usual demon-possessed child in characteristics like stubbornness or lack of interest in school, “witch children” are also perceived as harmful to others, and even as plotting with other children and with malignant spirits to hurt people and property. The kind of harm they are thought to do may be as vague as “draining” health and happiness from adults, or  as specific as causing appliances and electronics to fail. In either case, these posited effects are common events with multiple causes, and are likely to occur from time to time in anyone’s life. If they have been blamed on a “child witch” and that child has been exorcized, it will be easy for adults to assume that further bad luck is due to the need for repeated and intensified ill-treatment of the child.

When I used to teach a course on history and systems of psychology, one theme of my course was that every religion contains within it a psychology, in the form of beliefs about the capabilities and obligations of human beings. For many people, their religious instruction or exposure is the only systematic study of psychology they will ever do--  although they may pick up various bits of information, from myths to factoids, in the course of their lives. Christian fundamentalists, including Pentecostals, use a psychology in which human beings are thought of as non-material entities temporarily inhabiting material bodies, and influenced by other non-material, supernatural entities of either a benevolent or a malevolent disposition. Although Christians reject the idea of reincarnation, they believe in the existence of individual entitities both before and after the life of the material body. These beliefs suggest that psychological events (learning, emotion, thought, affection) and related behavior are based on non-material causes and can be explained and manipulated by non-material methods. Those who share these perspectives would thus accept that demonic entities could affect both mental and physical health, and that treatment of such effects would involve getting rid of the demons. As demons or other supernatural entities are unconstrained by time or space, their effects or treatments need not resemble events in the natural world.

 Conventional psychology, on the other hand, like other modern science, assumes that psychological events emerge from events in the material body. Psychological functioning follows the laws of the natural world, so that, for example, events in the environment occurring before the development of the individual brain would not be remembered or responded to.  Neither could posited non-material events affect psychological functioning, whose basis is material phenomena that are part of the natural world.

Although Christian fundamentalists (Pentecostal or otherwise) do not necessarily accept the idea of “child witches”, their non-material psychology does offer potential support for this belief, and for the idea that tormenting such children could drive away harmful demonic entities.  Conventional psychology, which is generally accepted by atheists, agnostics, and adherents of the liberal churches, could not support these beliefs.

The contrast between these two positions is so great as to suggest a culture war, and indeed the Sahara TV interview between Chika Oduah and Godwin Umotong exemplified that contrast. It’s not a matter of Africa versus North America and Europe, but of two mutually-exclusive world-views. The rapid growth of the perspective represented by Umotong means that the clash between the two will need to be recognized in the near future. Leo Igwe’s researches in Ghana will help us understand whether the conflict can be resolved, or whether one belief system is going to prevail.

Child Witches in America, and Related Matters

A House of Commons report in 2003, the Victoria Climbie Inquiry Report (www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmhealth/570/570.pdf), told the extremely disturbing story of the long period of abuse ending in the death of Victoria Climbie, an 8-year-old Ivorian child living in London with a relative. The attacks on Victoria were related to the belief in “child witches”, children possessed by demons, and British social workers appear to have been afraid that they would be culturally insensitive if they interfered with her treatment. Victoria was not alone in suffering from accusations of demonic possession and from the treatment others deemed appropriate for her (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7003534.stm).

Couldn’t happen here? Maybe--  but look who’s coming to dinner in Texas: Helen Ukpabio,head of Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries in Nigeria. Ms. Ukpabio will be performing a marathon deliverance (casting out of demons) at Liberty Gospel Church in Houston (http://libertyfoundationgospelministries.org/images/U.S..jpg). She plans to cast out demons for those who have bad dreams, are possessed by mermaid spirits, have many miscarriages, fail to achieve promotion, and so on. The flyer for this event does not state that she will perform deliverance for possessed children, but she has been quoted as saying “If a child under 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan [i.e., possessed by demons]” (www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22beliefs.html). Ms. Ukpabio has been accused, and apparently not without reason, of encouraging and spreading the belief in child witches that led to injuries and deaths like that of Victoria Climbie.

I haven’t been able to access any of Ms.Ukpabio’s books,  but I see that Malcolm Gaskill, in Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction, quotes her 1999 End of the Wicked as claiming that children’s souls can leave their bodies at night to attend a witches’ meeting. (Whether they follow Robert’s Rules of Order is not mentioned.) David Tonghou Ngong writes in  his recent The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology that Ukpabio states that the children are said to be “taken to a witches’ coven… where they are spiritually inculcated  with recalcitrant and destructive behaviors such as the ability to drain out health, happiness, and money from people; they are also made to be stubborn, to steal, to lack interest in school, to destroy electronic appliances, and so on. Thus it is that in many communities in Nigeria and the DRC, children are blamed as witches when appliances break down, when they are stubborn, or when there is sickness or poverty around them. In Nigeria, Ukpabio runs special seminars on detecting and exorcising witches, like the one she held for seven days in 2008 to a packed auditorium. Her activities foster an imagination that demonizes children [N.B., Ngong is not using this term in the Pentecostal sense of demon-possessed. J.M.] and sometimes even death. However, scholars of African Christianity hardly raise the issue” (pp. 36-37).  

Ukpabio’s views of child witches and the dangers they bring are a bit different from beliefs common in the United States. However, members of  U.S. and Canadian Pentecostal groups have for many years attributed both mental and physical illnesses of children as well as adults to demonic possession, and have suggested that healing results from expulsion of the demons by means of divine powers available to believers. This process is called “deliverance” by Pentecostals (including Ukpabio) but may also be referred to as exorcism.

Unfortunately, deliverance practices can be dangerous in themselves, as well as interfering with the use of conventional treatment for both mental and physical disorders. In one case in 2008, a 13-month-old Texas child died as a result of parental attempts at deliverance (http://www.ktbs.com/news/27447281/detail.html), and there are numerous similar cases in the United States, like that of Kairissa Mark, whom I mentioned in an earlier post.  An important point to understand about deliverance is that such rituals are not limited to “professional” deliverers like Roman Catholic or Church of England exorcists, who may have some awareness of potential harmful outcomes, but may be performed by any believer, including family members. (In fact, some authors discussing deliverance state that the father of a family is the most capable of “delivering” his wife and children.)

Ms. Ukpabio’s presence in the United States  is relevant to ongoing questions about religious exemptions from ordinary requirements for parents. A number of states continue to permit “philosophical” exemptions for parents who reject immunization of their children. Many states continue to have laws protecting Christian Scientist parents whose children die for lack of medical care. Protection of parents whose children die in the course of deliverance seems less likely, because the actions that cause death are in themselves prohibited by law--  but  it is possible that the “good intentions” of parents may minimize the crimes of which they are convicted and the penalties imposed, if prosecutors, judges, and communities sympathize with their beliefs. It’s also an issue whether some U.S. and Canadian social workers, like their British counterparts, either share deliverance beliefs or feel it is politically incorrect to oppose them. If so, how far will they go in sympathy with Ms. Ukpabio’s claims?

As I write this, I begin to ask myself, where is the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues in this situation? Why is Ms. Ukpabio permitted to visit the United States and to speak publicly? Do we have to wait until “it happens here” (as it did in England) before we recognize the dangers to children inherent in these beliefs?  

***NOTE: a petition to deny Ms. Ukpabio entry to the U.S. can be signed at www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-deny-entry-to-the-usa-for-helen-ukpabio.