Credit: Deni Béchard

Child sorcerers have become a national fixation in large part because revival churches condemn them as the most virulent of all evils. While theories about sorcery abound in Kinshasa, many churches see children as the perfect vectors for bad spirits to wreak havoc on the world. They cannot be avoided because there are so many of them all around. And when spirits invade children, rather than only causing bodily or other pain, they turn their vessels into sorcerers, hiding behind the innocent look of youth and inflicting harm on others. "Child sorcerers scare people more because we don’t know when they might act or what weapons they might use. Everyone, everyone is afraid of them," Charles said.

It is true that children are everywhere, requiring care from families, the state, and churches that cannot always be provided. Congo has a very high fertility rate — six children per woman — and the country’s median age was just 17 in 2010, according to U.N. statistics. And in Kinshasa specifically, there is a booming population of homeless children. Djokaba of REEJER said a 2010 survey suggested some 20,000 children were living on Kinshasa’s streets-up from 13,000 in 2007. In 2011, UNICEF estimated the numbers at 30,000. These children are called shegue, an abbreviation of "Che Guevara," because of the toughness they require to survive.

Their ubiquity and susceptibility, however, also make children easy scapegoats. As in the religiously fueled witch hunts of Europe and America centuries ago, which pursued widows or solitary women, perhaps children in Congo are accused of sorcery because they are society’s most vulnerable members. Perhaps some are accused, too, because – in suffering or even in fending for themselves – they are symbols of the disintegration of family and communal bonds brought on by Congo’s decades of struggle. Belgian anthropologist Filip De Boeck has described Kinshasa’s children as "the human intersections where the ruptures and fault lines of an African world in transition are manifested."

According to UNICEF, anthropologists, and international and local NGOs, almost anything can trigger an accusation of sorcery: not only sickness, death, or other loss within the family, but also a child’s own hunger or illness-even precociousness or adolescent anger. Save the Children has reported that signs include "dirtiness, red lips or eyes, deafness, ugliness, young body but old face, epilepsy"; being "untidy, disobedient, sad, mentally retarded, impolite, full of hatred, mysterious, disrespectful, quick-tempered, unruly"; and behaviors like "do not sleep at night or sleep badly, eat a lot … wet the bed, defecate in their clothes, talk to themselves, sleepwalk, collect rubbish, wander, don’t study, go out even when they are ill."

Children are generally powerless to protest the accusations and have few places from which to seek help. The government is more often an enemy than a friend. In 2013, it launched an operation called Likofi ("Punch" in Lingala) to round up delinquents living on the streets; reportedly, at least 20 people, 12 of them children, were killed. UNICEF, which has said that 70 percent of street children receiving assistance from its programs have been accused of sorcery, provides aid to local shelters, orphanages, vocational training programs, and centers that reintegrate children into their families. But there are more needy children than resources available to help them.

Many children accused of sorcery find refuge in churches because they have no other option or because they believe what is said about them and want help — ironically searching for it in the very institutions complicit in their misery. I spoke to dozens of children in Kinshasa accused of sorcery, and most appeared confused when asked whether they believed they were possessed. Some simply said no, but others said they must be since a pastor had told them so. Most looked to the nearest adult for guidance on how to answer.

In seeking help from churches, children are taking their chances. Revival churches are not only complicit in ratcheting up fears of child sorcery, but they also profit from them — when parents pay to have their child exorcised and when parishioners come to see the show. And the churches perpetrate abuse that only boosts their popularity. Congolese told me of pastors rooting out spirits by spitting into children’s mouths or pouring the wax of church candles on their bodies until they confessed. One pastor reportedly forced a child to stand in a dark room for days, never letting him sit, and then made him drink olive oil until he vomited. The pastor inspected the vomit to see whether it contained human flesh or money — both alleged signs of sorcery.

Other pastors, however, offer shelter in addition to superstition. At the church and orphanage Coeur et Mains du Christ ("Heart and Hands of Christ"), I met with pastors Jerôme Anto Kashala and Shium Bukassa Shidisha. They told me about the children they protect, including one boy whose parents blamed him for an illness that killed his brother and accused him of eating the brother’s heart. The parents beat him, tied him up, and cut his skin repeatedly with a knife, trying to make him confess. Eventually, they took a discarded tire from trash in the street, put it over him, and set it on fire. He was seriously burned by the time he was able to flee. Today, he is working toward a mechanic’s certificate.

When I asked whether they had ever encountered any real child sorcerers, they glanced nervously at each other. "Well, there was one."

Yet the pastors’ willingness to care for children accused of sorcery, it seemed, was complicated by their religious convictions. When I asked Kashala and Shidisha whether they had ever encountered any real child sorcerers, they glanced nervously at each other. "Well, there was one," Kashala said. "She posed very difficult problems for us, to the point that she killed another child. She started giving rotten food to the others until finally one died."

Charles was with me, and he nodded gravely, agreeing.

Ultimately, the pastors determined that the girl could not be saved, and they had no choice but to send her away from the orphanage, back to the family that had chased her away in the first place.