While I appreciate your take on the practice of exorcism, my heart sank as I reached the end of the article. The obvious was never stated. Depending on which statistics you accept, up to 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are victims of sexual assault. I was one — at the age of 5 (and later as a teenager). You describe a practice which effectively re-enacts sexual trauma — a young woman pinned down, on her back, while a man unleashes the full force of his passion on her. He doesn’t physically penetrate her, but he overpowers, overwhelms, dominates — with the institutional force of the faith she espouses granting him full permission. That she experienced temporary relief isn’t shocking. Desperate, victims will hand over their power to anyone who appears authoritative enough to help — often, because we believed that the abuse happened because we brought it on ourselves, in the guise of another abuser. For the sake of argument, even if this particular young woman hadn’t experienced sexual assault prior to the “exorcism,” the damage of such an attack is only going to compound whatever drove her eating disorder and cutting in the first place. Trauma begets trauma. Full stop.