The worldwide Christian movement The Last Reformation is practising devil exorcism in children in the Netherlands, according to image analysis by Pointer and De Monitor. ” To make a child believe that it is possessed seems to me obvious child abuse,” says emeritus professor of developmental psychology Willem Koops of Utrecht University.

(Translated from the original article available here <–)

The Last Reformation has been performing ‘healings’ and devil expulsion in the Netherlands since 2012. The movement now has hundreds of members in the Netherlands and regularly organizes training sessions and weekends to train followers in ‘healing the sick’.

At the beginning of 2019 a documentary caused a stir in Denmark. The three-part series Guds bedste børn (freely translated: The best children of God) shows how the Dane Torben Søndergaard tells people to heal from some disorders and diseases. Videos on YouTube show how Søndergaard visits a girl in the hospital to cure her from pancreatitis. The Dane was already doing a demon exodus in 2016 on a girl with autism, he says in a message on Facebook .

The Last Reformation Søndergaard started the Pioneer School on YouTube , a series of 20 videos with teaching materials about Jesus. Many people shared this view as Søndergaard. In 2011 this was continued under the name The Last Reformation. The movement has followers worldwide. These are people who help preach the gospel. Many of these people are also on an interactive map on the website of The Last Reformation. From that data we see that more than 200 disciples or followers are active in the Netherlands. We also read there that ‘healing the sick and casting out demons’ is part of the training that you can follow in Voorthuizen. “We train people to share the gospel with others. That is our spearhead. If necessary, demons are driven out, “says Hans Dam on behalf of The Last Reformation. We see a lot of video material on social media channels such as YouTube and Facebook from The Last Reformation. It is also the place where we find, among other things, videos of demon expulsions.

One specific scene stands out.We see Torben Søndergaard in the picture and next to him a boy of around 10 years old. Søndergaard lays his left hand on the forehead and shouts repetitively: ‘Go out! Go out! Then Søndergaard continues speaking in tongues, an event where the Holy Spirit would manifest itself. Spectators are filming around the scene. In the background we see trees, water, a piece of beach and holiday homes. We see a similar setting on another video. In an area with the same trees, beach and holiday homes we see an adult man at the center. With him a demon is also driven out. Around it, at least two children witness the scene. We wonder whether this takes place in the Netherlands.

We visit the Facebook page of The Last Reformation. Under the heading ‘events’ we look for meetings from the past that took place in the Netherlands. At every meeting we check the address on Google Maps. Until we end up in Zelhem (Gelderland). On Google Maps we see that De Betteld holiday park has a small lake. And the trees and the beach also seem to match.

Back to the boy’s conscious video. We also see a nameplate pinned to the child’s chest there. It looks like a name tag with a logo at the top. In terms of color, it matches the De Betteld logo, but the shape is different. Via the Wayback Machine, a site that archives the internet, we find an older version of the website from 2017. And that logo exactly matches the logo on the nameplate. This devil expulsion probably took place in the Netherlands before June 2017. A month later, the new De Betteld website with the new logo was launched.

Gerhard Hobelman, owner of the Christian holiday park De Betteld, says in a reaction that The Last Reformation has twice organized a weekend at the park. “If The Last Reformation is here, I don’t have 100 percent control over what happens there. So in that sense the organization is responsible. If I came across things that crossed a border for me, I would no longer invite that organization, “says Hobelman. “But,” he continues, “in principle I believe that people can be infected by darkness and that they can get rid of it. You have to handle it with care. Furthermore, I can hardly comment on it. “

Anyone who can comment on this is Gerrit Breeuwsma, developmental psychologist at the University of Groningen (RUG). “All in all it is pretty bizarre and extreme,” says Breeuwsma after watching the videos of devil exorcisms. ‘The whole setting is also strange, on a campsite, where people apparently come together to participate. But is it out of curiosity or involvement? “

According to Breeuwsma, the chance of damage to children who undergo exorcisms is ‘probably high’. ‘You can devote some discussion to that by definition, but the boundaries between this behavior and abuse are vague and easy to cross. You can see that the boy is under enormous pressure, he also reacts excessively to that. But there is the reward afterwards that he is completely embraced – literally and figuratively – by the group. And now he is a “better person.” It reminds Breeuwsma of initiation rites, rituals that are applied in a certain community when taking in new members. ‘Only these children did not make the choice themselves. They have been encouraged to do so and do not do it on their own account.

I would not recommend this to my own children – Gerrit Breeuwsma

The university teacher also notes that the boy is brought into a kind of epileptic state in the video. ‘It can open the door to sensitivity to psychosis. The behavior actually triggers a kind of epileptic, psychotic attack. I would not recommend that to my own children. “”The whole situation in which it takes place has many bad sides. And the most important thing is perhaps that there is no room for freedom for the development of that child itself. And that is, for example, something that the Convention on the Rights of the Child strongly advocates. I think if you sued this group with the help of the treaty, you might end. “

“This seems pretty sick to me” Willem Koops, emeritus professor of developmental psychology in Utrecht, agrees with Breeuwsma. “I watched the videos. This seems pretty sick to me, “he responds. ‘ If you want to psychologically burden children and seriously damage them, you have to do this with them. The wait is for someone to sue the executors and instigators. Only then is it possible to investigate the children involved. The seclusion of these communities makes further independent research virtually impossible.

“I find this unpleasant images to see, I think this is indeed not good for children,” says SP MP Michiel van Nispen. ” The fact that two professors call this downright harmful to children also makes this clear.””It would be good if these types of actions were investigated, whether laws were violated here and whether the best interests of the child were at stake here,” responds Van Nispen. ” You should be able to protect children against this, which is more important to me than the right of people to confess their faith the way they want.”

“We try to handle it with care” “This is how I do it myself and how it happens in my immediate environment: if we think a child could be demonically burdened, then we pray for it when the child is asleep,” explains Hans Dam of The Last Reformation. ‘We have seen the child make a deep sigh, turn around and wake up very differently the next morning. And if we do that with children ourselves, then we try to handle it with care. But I cannot be with everything or see what happens where. But I have not seen a child go wild due to an expulsion. ”