The head of a charity is calling on the UK government to criminalise the branding of kids as witches. It happens; oh, yes, it happens. And it’s all down to religion. Not just vicarage-tea-party religion, but full-on lunatic-fringe religion of the worst kind.
Voice quotes Debbie Ariyo, of AFRUCA (Africans Unite Against Child Abuse) as saying that a screening last week (mentioned in the first link above) of a Channel 4 Dispatches programme called Britain’s Witch Children was a wake-up call.
“I think most people know that we do have some terrible practices going on in some churches,” says Ariyo, whose organisation dealt with 10 cases of child branding in the past year. “ . . . It is a wake-up call for us to do something and do it very quickly.”
Of course, any assault against the person should be dealt with as a criminal act, but perhaps we should deal more harshly with those who do it having first conned a person into believing that he or she is a witch or possessed by a demon. And they do the conning through the power of others’ misguided belief in their sky fairy.
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