A mother in southern China has been handed a legal punishment after she accidentally killed her daughter while performing an “exorcism” ritual on her.
According to a recent report by Shenzhen Municipal People’s Procuratorate, a court in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, gave the mother, surnamed Li, a three-year jail term suspended for four years in July.
Li and her two daughters had been obsessed with superstitious practices that involved telepathy and medication.
They had been constantly having the ideas that they were being attacked and possessed by demons and that their “souls were sold”.
In December last year, Li’s younger daughter, surnamed Xie, suddenly claimed that she was possessed by a demon and demanded that Li and her elder daughter, also surnamed Xie, perform an exorcism ritual on her.
The ritual included actions such as pressing hard on her chest and pouring water down her throat to induce vomiting.
Li and Xie senior performed the ritual without hesitation. In the middle of it, Xie junior also said that it was effective and asked her mother and sister to continue.
The next morning, other family members discovered that Xie junior’s mouth was bleeding and called the police.
Medical workers arrived and declared her dead at the scene.
The court made the judgment based on the crime of negligent homicide, taking into account the fact that Li and her daughter had intended to help Xie junior.
Xie senior was given the same sentence as her mother.
“This is such a horrible and silly case,” said one online observer.
“What kind of cult is this? Are we living in the year 2025?” another expressed his shock.
“Cult believers are usually quite stubborn. They imagine they can blame her death on ‘the demon being so strong’,” said a third.
“We really need to reinforce education on popular science,” said another.
A similar tragedy happened in Taiwan in 2023 when a 56-year-old man and his wife performed an exorcism ritual on their 28-year-old son at home because he did not eat for days.
The man’s father and younger brother held him down and the mother stuck her fist into his throat in a bid to make him vomit to dispel the demon, but ended up killing him.
In another case, a Chinese woman transferred a total of 80,000 yuan (US$11,000) to her boyfriend whom she believed was possessed by an evil spirit.
She transferred money to him 400 times over a two-year period before realising that he was scamming her. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
