Durban school children who are dabbling in occult practices have been warned that their activities, which start out as “games”, could lead to HIV/Aids infections and serious psychological trauma.
The warning from medical and psychology experts comes after a concerned Durban parent contacted The Independent on Saturday to expose a game his son had played at school with friends, which left the youngster traumatised and “seeing visions of a cloaked figure with red eyes” who apparently threatened to kill him.
The parent of the 13-year-old child, who attends Apollo Secondary School in Chats-worth, asked to remain anonymous to protect the identity of his son.
He said the school had told him that his son had been playing a game which involves cutting his hand to draw blood.
“They put match sticks wrapped in three separate squares of toilet paper and then take scissors and make a small incision in their hands and drop their blood together and call on this spirit, ‘Ronald’.
“They write yes, no and maybe on each square of paper. Then they ask a question and the match stick moves out of the paper.
“He went early one day to school and this is what happened,” the father said.
“I have spoken to teachers who say kids have levitated…
“The school says they are aware of it, but they have done nothing concrete to deal with it,” he said.
“And now at night he can’t sleep and he says he sees a certain person who says he is going to come and kill him. We had pastors coming to pray for him and then he was fine. But the other night he woke up and said he saw a guy standing outside with a black cloak and red eyes saying he was going to kill him.”
The school’s principal, R Naidoo, said the school was investigating the incident.
“We have heard of it, but we don’t have any detailed information. We are looking into it to get to the bottom of it. We want to find out if there is any truth to it,” Naidoo said.
“We are checking who the ring-leaders are,” Naidoo said.
Emeritas Professor of HIV/Aids at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and director of Maternal Adolescent and Child Health Jerry Coovadia said while most children had been vaccinated against hepatitis B, there was a risk of contracting HIV with blood contact.
“You can get a lot of blood-borne infections such as hepatitis C, which is fairly rare, and hepatitis B. It is always dangerous, particularly in our province which has a very high prevalence of HIV/Aids, and if it was my child I would be very concerned about any blood contact with any child,” Coovadia said.
However, he said the risk of contracting HIV among children is relatively low as the latest statistics showed there were 300 000 out of 18.2 million children in the country living with the disease, and most infections of children older than 15 had occurred through having unprotected sex. About 60 000 babies are born HIV positive annually.
Durban child psychologist Jimmy Smith, who has worked with children who have played with Ouija boards, said parents should not drill their children to find out the truth. He said children suffering from trauma and anxiety experienced horrifying intrusive thoughts, which adults should not trivialise or rationalise.
“Children need to feel safe in order to self-disclose because they are really frightened of what will happen. If you push them they tend to withdraw.”
Smith said researchers had found that a child experiencing more than three nightmares a week could be suffering from anxiety.
An expert in Satanism, psychologist Dr Herbie Staples, said psychological trauma was “the logical consequence of playing with something where the variables can’t be controlled.” He advised parents to seek help from professional counsellors with a grounding in Christian theology and an understanding of demonology. - Independent on Saturday