Chapter 33 — What Adults Called an Exorcism
Genevieve, the experiences described as exorcisms, and the beliefs that may have allowed adults to treat a frightened child as though something evil had to be driven out.
It Becomes Procedure
At the end of the previous chapter I reached the point where an idea can become an action.
If adults decide that a child is wicked, possessed, associated with Satan or carrying some form of evil, then they may also decide that something has to be done about it.
The accusation becomes a procedure.
Prayer.
Testing.
Restraint.
Questioning.
Punishment.
And, in the language attached to some of my childhood experiences, exorcism.
The Word Came Later
I need to be careful with that word.
I was a very small child.
I did not possess a theological definition of exorcism.
I did not know church law.
I did not know whether a particular ritual had been authorised.
I did not know whether the adults involved would themselves have used exactly the same terminology later.
What I had were experiences.
The labels came around them.
That distinction matters.
A child experiences what adults do.
Adults supply the explanation.
Tests Were Not the Same Thing
I have already written about experiences which I remember as tests.
I do not want to collapse everything into a single category.
The tests and the exorcisms may have overlapped.
They may have involved some of the same adults.
They may have arisen from the same beliefs.
But in my memory they are not simply interchangeable words.
Some experiences were described or understood as tests.
Others were associated more directly with the idea of driving something out of me.
That difference is worth preserving even where the chronology remains incomplete.
Genevieve
The name I associate most strongly with the exorcism material is Genevieve.
That name has survived in my memory across many years, although access to it has not always been continuous.
There have been periods when names disappeared.
There have been times when an event remained but the person attached to it did not.
At other times a name returned suddenly and brought fragments with it.
Genevieve is one of those names.
I associate her with the religious attempts to deal with what adults believed was wrong with me.
I do not want to claim more precision than I presently have.
There are parts of the chronology I still cannot place.
There are details which remain fragments.
But Genevieve belongs in this part of the story.
How Many?
I have struggled with the number of occasions.
My recollection has never settled into a neat count.
At different times I have thought in terms of several.
Four.
More than four.
Perhaps substantially more.
Numbers as high as twelve have occurred in my attempts to understand the sequence.
I cannot presently defend an exact number.
What I can say is that the experience does not feel singular.
It belongs to a repeated pattern.
That is the level of certainty I am comfortable preserving.
What I Remember Is Not a Film
Memory does not present these events to me as a continuous recording.
There is no beginning, middle and end which I can simply replay.
There are rooms.
Positions.
Faces.
Hands.
Voices.
Religious words.
Fear.
Attempts to get away.
Moments in which the body seems to know more than the narrative does.
Then gaps.
The gaps are part of the evidence too.
I no longer treat them as an instruction to invent what must have happened between two remembered fragments.
The Adult Explanation
The adults involved appear to have been working from an explanation which was already available to them.
Something was wrong with the child.
Something evil was present.
Something had to be removed.
Once that explanation is accepted, the child's reactions can become dangerously easy to reinterpret.
If the child struggles, the struggle can be understood as resistance.
If the child screams, the screaming can be understood as evidence of the evil being confronted.
If the child becomes exhausted and quiet, the quietness can be understood as success.
If the child later avoids the adults involved, the avoidance can be interpreted as continuing disobedience.
I do not know precisely what every adult present believed.
But that kind of closed interpretation is one of the possibilities I now have to consider.
A System Which Can Confirm Itself
There is a serious problem when a belief system can interpret every possible reaction as confirmation.
Suppose an adult believes a child is possessed.
The child denies it.
The denial can be called deception.
The child becomes angry.
The anger can be called evidence.
The child cries.
The distress can be called spiritual struggle.
The child submits.
Submission can be called victory.
Nothing the child does is capable of disproving the original claim.
That makes the belief extraordinarily dangerous when combined with adult authority.
Who Could Stop It?
A small child has very few ways to challenge adults who believe they are acting with divine authority.
I could not appeal to theology.
I could not quote church law.
I could not ask for an independent second opinion.
I could not demand that the adults produce evidence of possession before acting upon me.
I could not leave town.
I could not appoint a lawyer.
The imbalance of power was almost complete.
That is one reason the word consent seems so inadequate when looking back at these experiences.
Consent, Compliance and Fawning
I did not consent to being treated as though something evil lived inside me.
A child cannot meaningfully consent to a procedure whose purpose and premises the child cannot understand.
Nor does compliance necessarily create consent.
What looks like cooperation may sometimes be an attempt to survive the situation.
A child may stop resisting because resistance has failed.
A child may become still because remaining still feels safer.
A child may repeat the words an adult requires.
A child may agree, apologise, smile, reassure the adult or try to become exactly what the adult appears to want.
That can include what is now often described as fawning: appeasing the person who holds the power in an attempt to reduce danger.
From outside, fawning can look remarkably like cooperation.
It is not therefore evidence of freely given consent.
The important question is not simply whether the child said yes, remained still or complied.
The question is whether the child had a meaningful and safe opportunity to say no.
Religion Changes the Meaning of Force
Ordinary force is relatively easy to recognise.
Somebody holds another person down.
Somebody blocks a doorway.
Somebody compels another person to remain somewhere they do not wish to remain.
Religion can alter the story told about exactly the same conduct.
The restraint becomes necessary.
The fear becomes spiritual.
The pain becomes purification.
The adult becomes an instrument of God.
The child's resistance becomes resistance to God rather than resistance to the adult.
That is an enormous transfer of authority.
Authority Without Appeal
Human authority usually has some possibility of appeal.
A teacher can be wrong.
A police officer can be challenged.
A doctor can be asked for evidence.
A court can be reviewed.
At least in principle, human decisions can be questioned.
But an adult who says,
“God requires this,”
has moved the decision somewhere the child cannot reach.
The child is no longer arguing with the adult.
The child is supposedly arguing with God.
That can make ordinary resistance appear morally illegitimate before it even begins.
The Body as Evidence
Years later, some of the material returned through physical sensations and reactions rather than through a complete verbal memory.
That does not mean every bodily sensation proves a specific historical event.
Bodies react for many reasons.
That is something I have become increasingly careful about.
But when a physical response occurs alongside fragments of memory, particular names, repeated imagery and later documentary material, I do not simply discard it either.
I record it.
Then I ask what can actually be established.
Observation Before Interpretation
This has become one of the most useful disciplines in reconstructing my life.
First:
What happened in the memory?
Then:
What did I think it meant at the time?
Then:
What did adults say it meant?
Then:
What do I think it may mean now?
Those are different layers.
They should not be collapsed into one statement.
The Child Did Not Need a Demon
This distinction changed the way I looked at the experiences.
The adults may have believed something supernatural was taking place.
The child did not need a demon to explain his behaviour.
Fear was enough.
Pain was enough.
Confusion was enough.
Sexual abuse was enough.
Being restrained was enough.
Being surrounded by frightening adults was enough.
Being told that something evil was inside him was enough.
Once those ordinary human circumstances are restored to the picture, supernatural explanations become unnecessary.
What Would We Call It Without Religion?
I sometimes remove the religious vocabulary entirely and ask myself what remains.
Take away the word Satan.
Take away possession.
Take away exorcism.
Take away divine authority.
What is left?
Adults frightening a child.
Adults imposing a belief upon him.
Adults using procedures the child cannot understand or refuse.
Adults interpreting his distress through a framework he did not choose.
That is a very different description.
Belief Does Not Cancel Consequences
The adults involved may have sincerely believed that what they were doing was necessary.
I cannot know the private thoughts of every person who was there.
Sincerity is therefore something I have to leave open.
But sincere belief does not eliminate consequences.
A person can sincerely believe something which is wrong.
A person can sincerely believe an action is helpful and still cause harm.
Good intentions, where they existed, would not alter what the child experienced.
Doing Harm for the Child's Own Good
Some of the most dangerous acts adults commit against children are justified as being for the child's own good.
Punishment is for the child's good.
Obedience is for the child's good.
Silence is for the child's good.
Religious correction is for the child's good.
Exorcism, if adults truly believed possession was involved, could also be presented as rescue.
That is precisely why the child's perspective matters.
An adult's explanation of benevolent purpose should never be allowed to erase what was actually done.
The Test of the Conduct
A much simpler standard is available.
Forget for a moment what the adult believed.
Ask what the adult did.
Was the child frightened?
Was the child restrained?
Was the child struck?
Was the child sexually touched?
Was the child forced to ingest something?
Was the child prevented from leaving?
Was the child threatened with supernatural punishment?
Was the child's refusal respected?
Those questions can be examined without deciding whether demons exist.
Faith Is Not Evidence of Possession
There is another distinction which now seems obvious.
An adult believing in possession is evidence of the adult's belief.
It is not evidence that the child was possessed.
Those are entirely different propositions.
The first can often be established through what adults said, wrote or did.
The second requires evidence of something supernatural.
I have never found a reason to treat the first as proof of the second.
A Child Under Observation
Once adults begin looking for evidence of evil in a child, ordinary behaviour can become loaded with meaning.
Anger is no longer anger.
It is wickedness.
Fear is no longer fear.
It is spiritual disturbance.
Sexualised behaviour following abuse is no longer something requiring protection and investigation.
It can be treated as evidence that the child himself is corrupt.
Defiance is no longer a child saying no.
It becomes rebellion against religious authority.
The interpretation begins before the behaviour occurs.
There Was Another Possible Explanation
There was always another explanation available.
The child may have been reacting normally to abnormal circumstances.
A frightened child struggles.
A hurt child screams.
A trapped child tries to escape.
An abused child can become confused about bodies and boundaries.
A child who expects danger may remain watchful.
A child who cannot safely describe what happened may appear inconsistent.
None of those things requires possession.
The Missing Adult Question
The question which seems largely absent from the childhood religious framework was:
“What have adults done to this child?”
That question changes everything.
Instead of examining the child for evil, it examines the environment for harm.
Instead of asking why the child resists, it asks what the child is resisting.
Instead of asking why the child is frightened, it asks who or what has frightened him.
Instead of demanding confession from the child, it asks whether an adult has something to answer for.
Herbie Asked Different Questions
Again, Herbie provides a useful contrast.
When something happened, he tended to ask what had happened.
He did not need to begin with a supernatural explanation of me.
He listened.
He questioned.
He acted.
He tried to provide safety.
That difference now seems profound.
One approach begins with a theory about the child.
The other begins by listening to the child.
My Mother
My mother also belongs within this complicated picture.
She did not always know what was happening.
At times she learned only after an event.
At times I could not tell her enough for her to understand.
At other times she did act.
She carried me home.
She went to Herbie.
She challenged situations which she understood to be wrong.
Her position was not the same as that of the religious adults who claimed authority over me.
That distinction also needs to remain visible.
Memory and the Religious Frame
There is another problem in reconstructing these experiences decades later.
The religious explanation can become attached so tightly to the memory that it is difficult to separate the event from the interpretation.
Was I told something was an exorcism at the time?
Did I learn that word later?
Did different adults use different terms?
Were some events tests and others exorcisms?
Did later understanding group experiences which were originally separate?
Those are legitimate questions.
I do not resolve them by pretending certainty.
The Name Is Not the Most Important Part
Eventually I realised that the precise label is not the most important question.
If an adult calls something an exorcism, the name does not make harmful conduct safe.
If an adult calls it a test, the name does not make coercion voluntary.
If an adult calls it prayer, the name does not make restraint disappear.
If an adult calls it spiritual care, the name does not remove fear.
The conduct remains the conduct.
What Religion Can Conceal
Religious language has the capacity to make ordinary human actions sound as though they belong to another category.
A person does not merely frighten a child.
They confront evil.
They do not merely restrain a child.
They prevent a demon from acting.
They do not merely demand obedience.
They require submission to God.
They do not merely inflict suffering.
They save a soul.
Once that language is accepted, scrutiny can become much more difficult.
The Child Still Experiences the Act
But the child does not experience theology.
The child experiences the room.
The hands.
The voices.
The fear.
The inability to leave.
The uncertainty about what will happen next.
The child experiences what adults physically do.
That is the layer I keep returning to.
Removing God's Name
One of the most useful exercises for me has been to remove God's name from the explanation.
Not because doing so proves that there is no God.
It does something simpler.
It forces the human conduct back into view.
Who decided?
Who touched the child?
Who restrained him?
Who frightened him?
Who watched?
Who stopped it?
Who failed to stop it?
Who later explained it?
Those are human questions.
The Responsibility Remains Human
Whatever an adult believes about God, Satan, possession or salvation, the decision to act upon a child is made by a human being.
The hand is human.
The voice is human.
The restraint is human.
The authority exercised in the room is human.
Attributing the instruction to God does not remove that responsibility.
If anything, invoking God should demand greater caution, because the person claiming divine authority is exercising power which the child has almost no ability to challenge.
The Question Changed
For many years, the religious framework encouraged a question about me:
“What was wrong with the child?”
The question I ask now is different.
What did the adults believe?
What did those beliefs permit them to do?
What actually happened?
What evidence remains?
What did the child experience?
And who carried responsibility for the acts performed in the name of something the child could neither understand nor verify?
What Adults Called an Exorcism
I cannot reconstruct every occasion.
I cannot give a reliable final number.
I cannot tell the reader precisely what every adult in every room believed.
I can preserve what I remember.
I can identify the names that return.
I can distinguish the tests from the experiences I associate with exorcism where the distinction survives.
I can compare memory with documents and with what other people later said.
And I can refuse one assumption which was placed upon me as a child.
I do not have to accept that there was something evil inside me in order to explain what adults did.
The supernatural explanation belonged to the adults.
The actions were theirs as well.
