One thing is for sure: as of August 22 2004, eight-year-old Terrance Cottrell Jr. is as dead as he will ever be. While his mother and two other women held him down, Ray Hemphill lay on his chest for an hour until he suffocated. The two women were not punished. The mother was not punished. Hemphill was punished with about two and one-half years in jail. What makes this murder special, such that of the four people involved three walked free and one got such a small sentence? Read on.

Terrance had autism. Autism is a medical condition for which there is currently no known cure. But Ray Hemphill knows more than all the physicians in the world - he knows that autism is really caused by something no physician has ever encountered (demons) and is cured by something no physician has ever given credit to (exorcism). Hemphill's particular style of exorcism involved smushing the demons out, apparently. Instead it crushed Terrance's chest until he could no longer breath. His mother and the two other women held the thrashing boy down until Hemphill finished the job.

The miserable horror of what happened is plain: a little boy was murdered for no justifiable reason. The miserable horror of what came of it is plain: because the child was sacrificed in the name of religion, three of the murderers went free and one is doing a short amount of time in jail. Now let's look at how the mainstream media handled this case. Most of the nearly seventy articles online about this case describe the murder as an exorcism, but a few cover Hemphill's tracks by merely describing it as a religious service. A few writers are brave enough to cast a small shadow of doubt on what happened by placing exorcism and demon in quotes or writing about so-called exorcisms (as if, just maybe, we shouldn't give credit to such things here in the 21st Century). But not a single writer had the conviction to plainly say the truth: autism is a medical condition for which there is currently no known cure, there are no such things as demons, exorcism is an imaginary cure for an imaginary problem, this little boy was murdered by these four people.

I suggest that religion is the reason the media backed off from telling the plain truth in this case. Religion has been given a get-out-of-jail-free card by both the left and the right. If you criticize religion you are being culturally insensitive or a racist. The mass media is under the sway of religion. The courts are also under the sway of religion. Hemphill has been forbidden from conducting any more exorcisms until he gets training in how to do them. No training in critical thinking, medicine, first aid or common fucking sense was mandated, but the judge did require him to get training in how to conduct exorcisms.

The assumption that allows the courts and the media to excuse murder is that religious behavior must be protected at all costs - including the cost of an occasional child sacrifice. This assumption places religious people (and what does that really mean, when merely saying you are religious is the only qualification for being so?) over atheists in the eyes of the law. Let an atheist go kill some children, fire people for eating the wrong kind of sandwich, or any of the other protected behavior of religious people - then see if atheists get the same kind of protection. Their bottom line is that with God on your side, all things are possible - including getting away with child murder. It is time to challenge this assumption.