Parents attack their daughter, drink her blood

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-blood10.html

Cambodia -- Black magic may have driven a Cambodian couple to bite off their daughter's thumbnails and suck her blood, officials said Sunday.

Chheng Chhorn, 46, and Srun Yoeung, 37, attacked their 12-year-old child before dawn Thursday while she was still asleep, biting off her thumbnails and a small part of her nose to drink her blood, said Keo Norea Phy, a police official in Kampong Cham province where the incident occurred.

Neighbors rushed to the couple's house and rescued the girl after hearing her screams, he said.

After treatment at a hospital in Kampong Cham, about 50 miles east of Phom Penh, the girl was placed in the custody of other villagers. Relatives had taken her parents to a black magic healer to chase away the evil spirit that was thought to have possessed them, the police official said.

the healer will bite of their nails and nose tip and drink their blood???????????????????

But seriously, these people are fundamentalists in their own right and it's another example of taking the practice of religion to the extreme. I hope the Cambodian court administers the appropriate punishment. This is akin to families that beat, starve, and torture their children with the sanction of their so-called church.

Sounds more like superstition than religion.

But there are some differences.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines superstition as:
1 a : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition
2 : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

Religion is partly defined as:
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

Both can and often do function separately from each other. Religion also tends to teach the philosophy of structure and order to the universe, separate from any form of animism, which many superstitions attempt to placate. It was this religious teaching of deliberate universal structure that led to a rational theory of causation and thus to modern science and the debunking of superstition through the scientific method.

Peace

exactly fits my perception of religion (raised super-Catholic and spent some time in an "evangelical" crowd--hands waving in the air and all).

I happen to know a bit about cults.
<grins>

The parents weren't trying to exorcise their daughter - the family of the parents has taken THEM to be exorcised.

They believe the PARENTS have been possessed and that caused them to attack their daughter.

What that last paragraph in your quote is saying is that the daughter was placed in the custody of other villagers BECAUSE the parents had been taken away to be exorcised.

So your subject line is wrong.

This part (from link above) also indicates that it's the parents that were possessed by a spirit:

This is disgusting beyond words! Poor child:cry: