A man reportedly bashed his 14-month-old daughter to death in order to "save his district's spirituality". The horrific incident occurred in the early hours of Sunday, 9 August, in the Bua Province on Vanua Levu, an island of Fiji, in the South Pacific.
The child, Sadikuini Yalewavukivuki (pictured), was allegedly murdered in front of her mother, Valetina Dimae, a schoolteacher, in their home. Her father Ratu Beni Salagi (32) became convinced that their community was cursed. He'd been to the village pastor earlier, on the instructions of "the Holy Spirit".
He returned to their home in the Lekutu District School compound in early evening, and locked his wife and daughter in the bedroom.
He was heard to quote verses from the Bible, and declaring the house to be infested by an evil spirit. He would "exorcise" that spirit, he said. He told his wife that he was about to do what Abraham did: sacrifice his child to the Lord.
His method of "sacrifice" entailed repeatedly punching the child in the head.
A villager said they "heard the pleas for mercy from the house but thought it was a domestic dispute."
So that would have been okay then, would it? Did nobody think it sounded like a pretty one-sided domestic "dispute"?
When Ratu Beni Salagi was finished he instructed his wife to dress the child while he went to fetch a van. He intended that they all go to his parents' home, just over a mile away.
He later turned himself in to the police. A post-mortem is to carried out today.
While it would be easy to say that this was an isolated incident, it would be less than the truth. Unfortunately such things happen frequently, and not just in the developing world. In a book I published recently, More Bloody Women, I recount the case of a woman in Cork City, Ireland, who stabbed her daughter to death in July 2006. It seems that the Virgin Mary had told her that her daughter was "bad with the Devil" and must be released through death.
The killer, Mary Prendergast, was diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. One wonders how many such mentally ill people have "exorcised" demons in such a brutal way, and how many will continue to do so.
I can't say it often enough: Beware the Devil, but beware the Pseudo-Devil even more.
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