Child exorcised in Gallura: mother also on trial for reporting abuse

The charges are extremely serious. According to the Tempio Pausania prosecutor's office, a child was exorcised from the time he was in kindergarten until he was eight years old . The allegations involved "daily" rituals to free the young victim "from the phantom consequences of nefarious forces of evil," and then trips to Sassari every Sunday to a parish for prayers and other "liberating" practices.

The reconstruction is the one contained in the request for indictment signed by the prosecutors, the final act of an investigation into alleged mistreatment of the child, which occurred in a village in Gallura . The Tempio Prosecutor's Office has requested the trial of the minor's grandmother, the main protagonist in the case (according to the State Police investigation), and of the child's father . The position of a third suspect, a priest, has been separated because the man is "incapable of understanding and willing."

The charges, however, also concern the child's mother, the person who contacted the Tempio Police Station in 2023, initiating the investigation . The woman is accused of complicity in the abuse, accused of having attended the rites and of having failed to comply with parental authority requirements , namely, taking the child away from his grandmother, a pensioner obsessed with the presence of "nefarious forces of evil." But it was the young victim's mother who contacted the police to report the abuse and mistreatment. In the initial version of the indictment (for mistreatment and sexual violence) , the woman was the injured party . She too, at least according to the initial investigations, had been subjected to exorcisms and physical and psychological abuse. But now she is accused, along with her husband and mother-in-law . The situation is grim: the child was stripped, doused in oil, forcibly taken, and carried into the room where the priest was waiting . The mother also risks losing parental authority.
Attorney Edi Baldino, who is representing the suspect along with criminal lawyer Giovanni Azzena, declined to comment on the request for indictment. The child's grandmother and father are being represented by attorneys Domenico and Anna Putzolu. The priest who allegedly saw the child in Sassari has not been charged, because he only prayed with the suspects and the child . Investigations reveal that other clergy were aware of the incident but never participated in the "liberation rites."