The perils of "amateur" exorcism #1329

We tend to think of Australians as being hard-headed no-nonsense folk. We'd be wrong. The occult is burgeoning at a great rate Down Under. Mostly harmless stuff, propagated by the like of rock diva and staunch pagan Wendy Rule (right) who regularly makes the cover of one of Australia's witchcraft magazines.

But there's a serious side to all this. Exorcisms are being performed by lay people, often with disastrous consequences. Just recently an Australian policeman was suspended following an allegation that he attempted to exorcise a teenage boy.

Apparently the Lutheran Church were running a youth camp near Adelaide and Senior Constable Roger Sketchley, 28, a church member, was helping out. He was off duty at the time.

The boy, who hasn't been named, had complained of stomach pains. Not, one would think, a symptom of demonic possession, yet three adults believed otherwise. Having tied him up, Sketchley and the others subjected the teenager to a twelve-hour ordeal involving "exorcism".

Sketchley, an Englishman, had been recruited to the South Australian police force some months before. He's been charged with false imprisonment and aggravated assault, and been suspended from the force pending the outcome of the charges.

The Lutheran Church condemned the incident and stated that it "does not endorse or encourage any actions which are abusive or which results in the limitations or freedoms of any individual."

So much for the amateurs, it would seem that professional exorcists have their hands full in Australia. In February of last year a Queensland journalist, Hannah Davies, reported how "a growing interest in satanism and the occult has led to a rise in exorcisms across the state".

She spoke to a Catholic priest, who preferred to remain anonymous, for fear of "reprisals". He claimed to be carrying out "at least one exorcism a fortnight".

His exorcisms appear to concentrate on the Gold Coast, the prosperous stretch of beach resorts to the south of Brisbane, than anywhere else. The priest explained:

"There has been a recruitment of pagan practices, and it's sheer poison. The Gold Coast is not good at all. I do far more exorcisms there than Brisbane."

The priest, whose parish is in the Australian capital, is the designated exorcist for Queensland, and his duties take him to many parts of the state. He lamented the small number of trained exorcists, "too few to cope with the big occult following that is emerging today".

In conclusion, he cautioned children to take extra care. He'd had to exorcise a woman who'd been "plagued by demonic manifestations since taking part in a playground witch game as a child".