EXORCISM

When the truth was brought out the girl was epileptic and mentally ill, her mother, father and the two priests, who were supposedly helping her put her through horrendous and unbelievable things with their alleged exorcisms, they were eventually prosecuted and nearly sent to prison. In my opinion they should have been sent down for a long time. That poor girl died malnourished. Dammed Religion again.

Anneliese Michel was a beautiful German Roman Catholic young lady.

September 21, 1952 - July 1, 1976

Michel experienced what is, and was recognized by medical professionals as severe psychiatric disturbances from the age of 16 to her death at age 23 from malnutrition secondary to mental illness. She apparently intended her death by starvation to "atone for the wayward youth of the day and the apostate priests of the modern church". After several years of ineffective psychiatric treatment, she refused medical treatment and requested an exorcism. Both priests who performed the exorcism and Michel's parents were convicted of negligent manslaughter because they did not seek medical treatment (for her refusal to eat) on her behalf and over her objections.

Anneliese Michel was born in 1952 in Leiblfing, a small village in Bavaria, she was raised in the small Bavarian town of Klingenberg am Main, where her father who was a wealthy Mill Owner Josef Michel 60, and his wife Anna 57 lived. Her parents were devout Catholics and she grew into a deeply religious person. For the first 22 years of her life, Anneliese Michel was an unremarkable young woman--a teacher in training. Without warning, Anneliese's life changed on a day in 1968, when she began shaking and found she was unable to control her body. She could not call out for her parents, or any of her 3 sisters. A neurologist at the Psychiatric Clinic Wurzburg diagnosed her with "Grand Mal" epilepsy. This was because of the strength of the epileptic fits, and the severity of the depression that followed.

In 1968, Anneliese was 16 and still in high school, she began to suffer from convulsions. Court findings have her experiencing her first epileptic attack in 1969. It was then that a neurologist at the Psychiatric Clinic Worzburg diagnosed her with grand mal epilepsy.

Soon, Anneliese started experiencing devilish hallucinations while praying. She also began to hear voices, which told her that she was damned. By 1973 Anneliese was suffering from depression and considering suicide. Her behaviour became increasingly bizarre: she tore off her clothes, ate coal, insects and licked up her own urine.

Being admitted to a psychiatric hospital did not improve Michel's health. Moreover, her depression began to deepen. She grew increasingly frustrated with medical intervention as it did not improve her condition. Long-term medical treatment proved unsuccessful; her condition, including her depression, worsened with time.

Having centered her life around devout Catholic faith, Michel began to attribute her condition to demonic possession. Michel became intolerant of sacred places and objects, such as the crucifix, which she attributed to her own demonic possession. Throughout the course of the religious rites Michel underwent, she was prescribed antipsychotic drugs, which she may or may not have stopped taking.

In June 1970, Michel suffered a third seizure at the psychiatric hospital she had been staying in and was prescribed anticonvulsants for the first time. The name of this drug is not known, and it did not bring about immediate alleviation of Michel's symptoms. She also continued talking about what she called "devil faces", seen by her during various times of the day. Michel became convinced that conventional medicine was of no help. Growing increasingly adamant that her illness was of a spiritual kind, she appealed to the Church to perform an exorcism on her. That same month, she was prescribed another drug, Aolept (pericyazine), which is a phenothiazine with general properties similar to those of chlorpromazine: pericyazine is used in the treatment of various psychoses, including schizophrenia and disturbed behavior.

In November 1973, Michel started her treatment with Tegretol (carbamazepine), which is an anti-epileptic drug. Michel took this medicine frequently, until shortly before her death. (yet, is said in some quarters that she did not take the medicine and her parents wanted to deal with her problem through natural means).

In 1975, when Anneliese was 23 years old, an older woman who accompanied Anneliese Michel on a pilgrimage concluded that Anneliese was suffering from demonic possession because Michel was unable to walk past a certain icon of Jesus Christ and refused to drink the water of a holy spring. An exorcist in a nearby town examined Michel and returned a diagnosis of demonic possession. The bishop issued permission to perform the rite of exorcism according to the Rituale Romanum of 1614.

She and her parents were convinced that she was possessed. After years of unsuccessful psychiatric treatments, they gave up on medical treatment and chose to rely solely on the exorcisms for healing. The rites of exorcism were performed over the course of about ten months in 1976. A total of sixty-seven exorcism sessions were held, one or two each week, some lasting up to four hours. Michel at this time was refusing medical care, refusing to eat, and talking about her death being a form of atonement for other people's sins. Also during this time of turmoil and before, she tried to make reparations for the sins of wayward priests and drug addicts by sleeping on a bare floor in the middle of winter.

On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel died in her sleep. The autopsy report stated that her death resulted from the malnutrition and dehydration due to almost a year of semi-starvation during which time the rites of exorcism were also performed. Anneliese's release from alleged evil Spirits came only with death, after she was starved during a nightmarish ten-month series of Roman Catholic exorcism rituals. When Anneliese Michel died at the age of 23 in Klingenberg, West Germany, she was little more than a skeleton, weighing a mere 68 Ibs or 31 kilos.

After an investigation, the state prosecutor maintained that Michel's death could have been prevented even one week before she died. He charged all four defendants; Pastor Ernst Alt and Father Arnold Renz as well as the parents, Josef Michel 60, and his wife Anna 57 with negligent manslaughter for failing to call a medical doctor to address her eating disorder, which the defendants blamed on Anneliese herself not wanting to eat or drink.

The trial started on March 30, 1978, in the district court and drew intense interest. Before the court, the doctors claimed the woman was not possessed, although Dr. Richard Roth, who was asked for medical help by Father Alt, allegedly said after the exorcism he witnessed on May 30, 1976, that "there is no injection against the devil, Anneliese".

Yet shortly before she died, her parents said, Anneliese performed an astonishing 500 deep knee-bends in one day. The source of her power, her parents believed, was nothing less than the devil himself.

The priests were defended by church-paid lawyers, and the parents were defended by Erich Schmidt-Leichner. Schmidt-Leichner claimed that the exorcism was legal and that the German constitution protected citizens in the unrestricted exercise of their religious beliefs.

The defense played tapes recorded at the exorcism sessions, sometimes featuring what was claimed to be "demons arguing", as proof that Michel was indeed possessed. Both priests presented their deeply held conviction that she was possessed and that she was finally freed by exorcism just before she died.

Ultimately, the accused at the court in Aschaffenburg found two priests and Anneliese's parents, wealthy Mill Owner Josef Michel, 60, and his wife Anna, 57, guilty of negligent homicide in her death and were sentenced to a six months in prison and three years of probation. They later appealed against their convictions, it was then suspended to six month suspended prison sentences. It was a far lighter sentence than anticipated by most people. Yet, it was more than demanded by the prosecution, who had asked that the priests only be fined and that the parents be found guilty but not punished.

During the trial, the major lingering issues were related to the church itself. A not-guilty verdict could be seen as opening the gate to more exorcism attempts, and possibly unfortunate outcomes. But for the most part, experienced observers believed the effect would be the opposite: that merely bringing charges of negligent homicide against priests and parents would provoke changes and more caution.

Bishop Josef Stangl, who approved the exorcism and corresponded by letter on the case with the two priests a dozen times, also was investigated by state authorities. It was decided not to indict him or summon him to appear at the trial due to his age and poor health. The bishop stated that his actions were all within the bounds of canon law.

The courtroom case, called the Klingenberg Case, became the basis of Scott Derrickson's 2005 movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The film significantly deviates from the actual events (for example, the film is set in the United States, Michel was renamed Emily Rose, and the court case was shown with a substantially different outcome). The German-language film Requiem (2006) by Hans-Christian Schmid is a much truer account of the real-life events.

Today, Michel's grave in Klingenberg am Main remains a place of pilgrimage for many Catholics who consider Anneliese Michel a devout believer who experienced extreme sufferings to assist departed souls in purgatory.

Since her death, various psychiatrists and other people have speculated that she might have had dissociative identity disorder (commonly known as multiple personality disorder.) Some doctors have suggested that many of Michel's symptoms are consistent with, and suggestive of, mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) section on dissociative disorders, and/or with behaviors observed in patients with these disorders, such as the temporary adoption of bizarre, rigid body postures (dystonia); the use of the first-person plural pronoun we to describe one's self; the markedly dilated pupils not explained by any external stimuli; full or partial amnesia; the emergence of distinct personalities among the demons; Michel's feeling as though her body was acting outside her volition (depersonalization); fear or rejection of sexuality; the persistence of these symptoms despite medical treatment, and in absence of any known medical cause; and many others. Anneliese's symptoms have also been compared with those of schizophrenia.

The links below will take you through to youtube if you would like to look at some of the details of this and different cases. the opposite: that merely bringing charges of negligent homicide against priests and parents would provoke changes and more caution.

Bishop Josef Stangl, who approved the exorcism and corresponded by letter on the case with the two priests a dozen times, also was investigated by state authorities. It was decided not to indict him or summon him to appear at the trial due to his age and poor health. The bishop stated that his actions were all within the bounds of canon law.

The courtroom case, called the Klingenberg Case, became the basis of Scott Derrickson's 2005 movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The film significantly deviates from the actual events (for example, the film is set in the United States, Michel was renamed Emily Rose, and the court case was shown with a substantially different outcome). The German-language film Requiem (2006) by Hans-Christian Schmid is a much truer account of the real-life events.

Today, Michel's grave in Klingenberg am Main remains a place of pilgrimage for many Catholics who consider Anneliese Michel a devout believer who experienced extreme sufferings to assist departed souls in purgatory.

Since her death, various psychiatrists and other people have speculated that she might have had dissociative identity disorder (commonly known as multiple personality disorder.) Some doctors have suggested that many of Michel's symptoms are consistent with, and suggestive of, mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) section on dissociative disorders, and/or with behaviors observed in patients with these disorders, such as the temporary adoption of bizarre, rigid body postures (dystonia); the use of the first-person plural pronoun we to describe one's self; the markedly dilated pupils not explained by any external stimuli; full or partial amnesia; the emergence of distinct personalities among the demons; Michel's feeling as though her body was acting outside her volition (depersonalization); fear or rejection of sexuality; the persistence of these symptoms despite medical treatment, and in absence of any known medical cause; and many others. Anneliese's symptoms have also been compared with those of schizophrenia.

The links below will take you through to youtube if you would like to look at some of the details of this and different cases.