Kid's astral travelling amazes

2003-02-05 21:57

Pretoria - A seven-year-old girl claimed to have been told to "leave her body to go and help other children so that they would not be hurt like her", a police superintendent testified in the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday.

Superintendent Ria Everton was testifying in the trial of 38-year-old tattoo artist Robin Malcolm Classen, who stands accused of subjecting three young children to sexual and Satanist rituals over a period of several months in 2000.

Everton, an occult expert, said she was shocked on finding out that the young blonde girl had knowledge of astral projection, the practice whereby a person's soul purportedly leaves the body.

The child told the policeperson of special words she had been given. The girl also said she left her body one night in the bath. She and her two older brothers had on a previous occasion left their bodies together and the girl remembered seeing her siblings' bodies lying on the bed.

Everton said she had practised astral projection herself and dabbled in the occult after her husband's death in a car accident. She felt that her late husband might give her answers about the circumstances of his death.

She never received any answers and gave up the practices - which she described as a "personal thing not practised in groups" - when she became a reborn Christian in 1991.

The girl appeared to be experienced in astral projection. The first time Everton's soul had left her body, it was such a shock that she immediately returned, but the girl seemed to be able to do it successfully.

The child's mother had also described an incident where she found her daughter in the bath with only her face showing out of the water and her eyes rolled back.

According to Everton people in such a condition did not appear either awake or asleep.

The superintendent said her late husband had once come across her while she was practising astral projection and thought she was dead.

She remembered being upset because she had to come back.

Counsel for Classen said it was strange that the children never testified about being taught astral projection, although one of the boys said he had been crowned as "the king of Satan" and claimed he could move objects with his eyes.

To suggestions by the defence that the children's mother could have introduced them to the occult and could have taught them astral projection, Everton described the mother as a "typical humble Christian" who did not have any in-depth knowledge of the occult.

Everton said as someone experienced in the occult she could immediately sense negative vibrations on a crime scene or when meeting someone. She had experienced a cold tingle down her spine on meeting Classen, who told her he was possessed by demons, but never experienced it with the children's mother.

The trial continues.

- SAPA