On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that a three-year-old girl in California was fatally asphyxiated in a church exorcism gone wrong — and that her mother, now facing criminal charges, has not exactly expressed grief over what happened.
"In a video posted to YouTube on Jan. 27, 2022 and unearthed by The Daily Beast, Claudia Elisia Hernandez Santos, 25, told viewers, 'Like, I could sit here and be negative… be sad about the whole situation that she passed away, but it’s like, there’s no point, you know, because it is what it is. It is what it is. You know, she’s not here with me, it is what it is, you know? And it’s like, what’s the point, you know? I’m just gonna be… putting myself down when there’s no point for me to do that, you know? Like, I cannot change the past,'" reported Justin Rohrlich.
Hernandez now faces a charge of assault on a child with force likely to produce great bodily injury resulting in death.
"The charges against Hernandez can be traced back to Sept. 24, 2021, when Hernandez called police shortly after 8 p.m. to report that her daughter was dead," said the report. "When cops arrived at the Iglesia Apostoles y Profetas church, which is run out of a private home in San Jose, they found little Arely unconscious on the floor, states the affidavit, which was first obtained by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit. After attempting 'life-saving measures,' Arely was pronounced dead at an area hospital about 45 minutes later, the affidavit says."
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According to the report, autopsy found she had died due to suffocation. Under the observation of the pastor, Arely's maternal grandfather, Hernandez allegedly forced her finger down the child's throat and squeezed her neck in an attempt to induce vomiting, as part of the procedure to expel an evil spirit.
Exorcisms leading to the death of children have rocked communities in recent years. In Missouri two years ago, a couple reportedly gave their four-year-old daughter to two other members of their church, who over a period of several weeks beat her with a belt and wooden spoons, dunked her in a freezing lake, and sexually assaulted her with foreign objects, ultimately leading to her death.
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