This diary will be difficult going and will challenge your fundamental American and liberal sensibilities. The inevitable conclusion of what I am to describe will be the regulation and if necessary the suppression of churches in Africa and the banning of evangelical christian “missionaries” or ministers from travelling either to or from Africa to the US and Europe.
The unfortunate fact is that evangelical chrisitanity has been overlaid on traditional African belief systems and has produced a number of splinter churches which sanction the abuse and killing of children. Today in Britain three people were convicted of severe abuse of a girl who was lucky to survive, another died a five years ago. Both were beaten in the belief they were witches, based on the teachings of these churches.
This BBC report about the reactions of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) gives a very brief idea of the abuse suffered by the child in today’s case.
The child, who is now 10, described how she was put into a zip-up laundry bag and told she would be “thrown away” into a river.
The abuse she suffered began in 2003 when a boy told his mother that the girl had been using witchcraft.
The cruelty she was subjected to included being cut with a knife and being beaten with a belt and shoe.
The orphan, who was brought to Britain in 2002 by her 38-year-old aunt from Angola after her parents died, also had chilli peppers rubbed in her eyes to “beat the devil out of her” at a flat in Hackney, east London.
Child protection workers in the area of London this happened in know of at least four other cases locally where such abuses are suspected.
The situation is on two levels. One is the dellusional beliefs of the carers and the other are the splinter churches which prey on the minds and pocket books of those vulnerable to their preaching. What these pastors seem to promise is material attainment for the poorest and miracle cures for the sick and “possessed”. Other cases that have come to light in the UK are barren women being taken to Africa to “give birth” to miracle children who share no DNA markers with the supposed parents. In other congregations, members hand over large sums of money in the hope that they will receive the same riches the pastor has.
If these seem familiar to Americans with any knowledge of the Bakers of other televangelists, they share the same roots. I am willing to freely assert these have nothing to do with any religion, let alone that of the carpenter from Nazareth, but everything to do with power, control and greed. While it is probably impossible to protect adults against their own gullibility, the question become how far it is necessary to restrict their religious liberties in order to protect the children. There do seem to be cultural peculiarities that means most of those involved are black Africans. Any legal restrictions are bound to affect that group more heavily than others.
If this seems a racist proposal, tough. I take my lead from the motto of one institution the girl would have been at and the inscription over another. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) is world famous and she would have been in their area. JM Barrie bequeathed the rights to Peter Pan to the hospital so every time you buy that Disney video, a small amount goes to them. Their motto is “The Child, First and Always”. Over the doors of the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) where the trial took place is written “Protect the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer”. In these cases. those are the principles I work by.