In 2009, Yenitza Colichon was preparing to depart for Army basic training. Colichon was concerned about the welfare of her seven-year-old daughter, A.C., while she was away, and she asked two Palo Mayombe priests, Zahira Cano and Julio Cano, to perform a protective ceremony for the child. This ceremony appears to have been an initiation into the religion, during which the priests sacrificed several chickens and a goat. They also made ten small incisions on the child’s body—on her forehead, the front and back of her shoulders, as well as her feet, wrists, and calves. Devotees refer to this process as being “marked” in Palo.
After the ritual, Colichon’s daughter reported to her teacher that she was having nightmares and she explained some of the details of what occurred during the ceremony. The school called the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), who investigated the situation and, after conducting a brief interview with Colichon and her daughter, ordered an emergency removal of A.C. from Colichon’s home and placed her with relatives. DYFS initiated proceedings alleging that Colichon had abused and neglected A.C. by “bringing her daughter to the rituals and allowing others to inflict pain and fear on the child.” Colichon was ultimately found guilty of these charges. She was forced to undergo counseling before A.C. could be returned to her custody.
In addition to the juvenile court proceedings regarding Colichon’s custody of A.C., Colichon also had to defend herself against criminal charges for her family’s participation in this Palo Mayombe ritual. The prosecutor charged Colichon with felony child endangerment and felony child abuse. The prosecutor charged Julio and Zahira Cano with felony child endangerment for performing the ceremony.
Around ten years later, a similar case took place in Brazil. In October 2020, Juliana Arcanjo Ferreira and her ten-year-old daughter, Y.F.P., participated in an initiation ceremony at a Candomblé terreiro (temple) Campinas, Sao Paulo (Brazil). As part of the ceremony, small cuts were made on the back of the shoulders of both the mother and daughter. Three months after the ceremony, Y.F.P.’s ex-husband Bruno Henrique Penedo noticed the small scars on his daughter. Both Ferreira and Y.F.P. explained to Penedo that the marks had been made during a religious ritual.
Penedo took his daughter to the police precinct and registered a complaint, accusing Ferreira of domestic violence with bodily injury against her daughter. Y.F.P. underwent a physical examination as part of the investigation of Penedo’s complaint. Shortly thereafter, the public prosecutor decided to proceed with charges against Ferreira. He opined that the ritual was harmful to Y.F.P. and that Ferreira was guilty of harming the child by omission, and that she neglected her “obligation of care, protection or supervision of her minor daughter” by taking her to the ceremony where the “harmful” act occurred.
My presentation will analyze the similarities and differences between these cases. It will explore the ceremonies that were contested, focusing on the specific initiation rituals that were described as abuse. It will compare the defenses raised by the mothers to challenge these charges. It will also discuss the disparate outcomes in these cases—one mother was convicted and the other was summarily acquitted. Finally, my presentation will succinctly place these cases in the broader context of court cases about children and African diaspora religions in the United States and Brazil.
I believe that this presentation will be a valuable contribution to the conversation about religion and child abuse that particularly interests the Law, Religion, and Culture Unit for the 2025 meeting. In my work, I have uncovered an astonishing number of cases where devotees of African diaspora religions are losing custody of their children for merely belonging to these religions. This is a relatively unique situation that raises important questions about the breadth of legal interpretations of “religion” in the Americas.
Over the past forty years, litigants in U.S. and Brazilian courts have repeatedly questioned whether devotees of Santeria, Vodou, Voodoo, and Palo Mayombe are harming children when they include them in rituals and ceremonies. This presentation will explore two of those cases, one from the United States and one from Brazil, where claims of abuse were based solely on the child undergoing normal initiation processes in an African diaspora religion. It will compare the cases to one another, exploring the similarities and differences in the practices that were identified as the supposed harm. It will also examine the analogous defenses that the devotees raised to challenge the charges of abuse and the disparate outcomes of the cases.