Police: 5-year-old girl burned in voodoo ritual; 2 charged
A five-year-old girl was tied down and permanently disfigured by two sisters during a voodoo ritual meant to rid her of a demon causing her to misbehave, police said.
Authorities said the women also threatened to cut off the head of the girl's eight-year-old brother with a machete.
Peggy LaBossiere, 51, and Rachel Hilaire, 40, of East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, pleaded not guilty to charges including mayhem - the premanent disfigurement of a child's face - assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and are being held without bail, The Enterprise reports.
Authorities said Peggy LaBossiere, 51 (left), and Rachel Hilaire, 40, permanently disfigured a girl, 5, while performing a voodoo ritual to cleanse her of evil spirits causing her to misbehave
Police were sent to LaBossiere and Hilaire's house in mid-January to perform a welfare check on a woman and her two children who were staying with the sisters at the time.
Upon arrival, in their report, police said they found the five-year-old girl with a third-degree burn running across her face. The girl's mother - a hairstylist said to be of Haitian descent - claimed that the girl had woken up with the burn a few days prior and that the burn had been caused by a demon leaving her body.
Police said the burns will leave her permanently disfigured.
The girl's burns were treated at a hospital and she was taken into custody by state welfare authorities, along with her brother, who described to police what happened at the sisters' house over multiple days.
LaBossiere and Hilaire (in court on February 1) pleaded not guilty to charges that they injured the five-year-old girl and threatened to cut the head off her eight-year-old brother
Police were called to this house in East Bridgewater for a welfare check on the two children
The girl's brother said that his sister had been tied down on at least two occasions while LaBossiere and Hilaire blew fire over her face and cut her on the arm and in the collar area with a needle-like object, drawing blood, according to police. The girl said the women also poured over her eyes a substance that stung.
Authorities said that in addition to threatening to cut off the boy's head with a machete, LaBossiere had held a stick against his throat, constricting his breath, and that she had made him remove his clothes so she could rub his boy with a 'plant-life substance' and blow fire over him.
The sisters told police that they have performed 'cleansing baths' for family and friends in the past, something that involves chanting prayers, rubbing frankincense and eucalyptus oils and sea salt on their bodies, and burning myrrh.
Children sometimes get burned as spirits leave the body, they said.
Police say the girl's mother, who has LaBossiere as a client, requested the ritual be carried out in an effort to stop her children from misbehaving by driving out evil spirits. She has not been charged but is receiving mental health treatment.
The sisters will be back in Brockton Superior Court on February 7 for a hearing to determine whether they're too dangerous to be released.
Voodoo refers to religious practices developed centuries ago by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, primarily in Haiti, where the practices are sometimes spelled 'vodou.'
Experts said that the rituals performed by LaBossiere and Hilaire were atypical of traditional voodoo practices, however.
'This does not sound like the normal practice of Haitian Voodoo,' Wesleyan University professor and Afro-Caribbean religion expert Elizabeth McAlister told The Enterprise.
She noted that, 'While incense and herbal baths can be part of healing rituals, it is not the norm to tie children up, to burn people, to threaten to cut them or to actually cut them.'
Likewise, Boston College assistant professor of Art History and African & African Diaspora Studies Kyrah Malika Daniels said that, 'It is not part of the tradition to endanger a child by burning their face or exorcising demons - this last act is more connected to evangelical Christianity.'
Daniels also added that, 'Protecting children is paramount in the Haitian Voodoo tradition, as children are regarded as the bright hope of the future.'