A priest has been summoned to court to answer questions about more than a dozen exorcisms he allegedly carried out on an teenage girl with anorexia, according to The Guardian. The investigation began after the girl and members of her extended family complained to Spanish authorities in August that she had been put through at least 13 exorcisms. The girl, from the northern city of Burgos, told police that she began having problems with anorexia and anxiety when she was 16, which her parents saw as a “sign of her possession by the devil”.
She was undergoing psychiatric treatments at the time, in May 2012, but her parents, convinced that exorcisms would help, took her to a priest from Valladolid, who carried out several of them on her over a three-month period. In her initial filings, the judge said that the practice of exorcisms on the girl may have crossed the line into “domestic violence, causing injury and abuse”, according to Diario de Burgos, a Spanish newspaper.
Anorexia Nervosa is a psychological condition characterized by refusal to eat and fearing that food would eventually increase the body weight. It normally affect girls more than boys and is part of the spectrum called poor mental health.
