Tragedy from a zealotry beyond belief
The Star, Jan. 14, 2002.

Rosie DiManno "THEY DIDN'T DO anything wrong; they were practising their faith. It's not anything that you would understand.'' Thus spoke one Alex Luis, a friend and fellow congregant of Walter Zepeda's parents at the Missionary Church of Christ in London, Ont. Luis made this comment the other day to The Star's Sonia Verma.

And the man is absolutely correct.

I do not understand. We â€" the overwhelming majority of Canadians who believe in freedom of worship and respect for differing creeds â€" do not understand.

There can be no understanding, goddamnit, and there should be no tolerance for such unsavoury exculpations of murder, which is what the police are calling the crime that was done to Walter Zepeda. Even a sliver of proffered justification for homicide is, if not in itself a crime, then certainly a sin.

You'd think such people would know a little something about sinning.

Religious zealotry is a malignancy that festers among us.

It blinds and distorts, turning aggrieved Muslims into Islamist terrorists and Zionist West Bank settlers into Palestinian-baiters. It transfixes some Christian evangelicals and Pentecostals and charismatics to the extent that they gamble with the lives of their own precious children, insisting on the biblically approved parental option of beating rambunctious youngsters into respectful submission. It allows dirty old men â€" Muslim, Mormon, whatever â€"

to enslave a posse of females as wives/breeders, permitting husbands to righteously hop from one bed to another, spreading that seed.

Allah's will. God's will. Jehovah's will.

And sometimes, in the most monstrous of misdiagnoses, when mental illness or organic disease is ruinously misinterpreted as demonic possession, some religious zealots turn to the generally discredited (even within traditional religious circles) practice of exorcism.

The ritual as most of us know it â€" perhaps only from the movie, The Exorcist, and the book on which it was based â€" is now a rarely sanctified eccentricity of the Roman Catholic Church, somewhat embarrassing to the Vatican and officially approved only in a few instances, after exhaustive observation of the afflicted individual. But the Vatican is not consulted by exorcism freelancers.

It's most definitely not an assignment to be undertaken by the unskilled or the self-taught, even for those who truly believe that Satan can be cast out of a person's soul by ritual and prayer and holy water.

Walter Zepeda, a 19-year-old described by friends and co-workers as quiet and shy and afraid of crossing his father, died in his home last week. Police say the young man had been strapped to a bed of chairs with neckties for three days, during which he was denied food and water.

Enquiring minds, while imagining the ordeal of such horrid captivity, must also wonder why an otherwise healthy, even strapping, teenager could have expired after just three days, if he was "merely" denied food and water during that period. The body can withstand more punishment than that. Even a wounded mind can withstand more than that.

Maybe these details will come out in court, at some distant date. But what's undisputed at this moment is that Walter's parents, Diego Cordero, 43 â€" a barber from El Salvador converted to Pentecostal Christianity and a ceaseless proselytizer â€" and Ana Meija-Lopez, 51, have been charged by London police with first-degree murder in their son's death. Also charged with first-degree murder is family friend Alex Osegueda. All three are in custody.

Police did reveal that Walter apparently struggled against his restraints, tried to free himself, without success. Who knows how much he piteously begged for release, what madness descended upon him in his last hours of existence.

What is known, according to those who saw the young man in the days before his captivity (missing his last shift at the part-time restaurant job where he washed dishes) is that Walter had been acting strange, seemed manic or distracted, speaking gibberish at times in French and Spanish and English.

But even before that worrisome personality shift, Walter was known to have become increasingly disenchanted with the religiosity of his family; was, it sounds â€" as uncovered by Hamilton Spectator reporters Bill Dunphy and Paul Legall â€" longing for a "normal" life, not quite so encumbered by the rigidity of fundamental Christianity.

He didn't want to be a religious freak but, it seems, his parents, his father most especially, would not let Walter turn away from evangelical dogma, even as the young man, wildly naive for a 19-year-old, attended college and began hesitantly probing the larger world.

The Spectator quoted one of Walter's restaurant co-workers recalling something the victim said recently about his family's preoccupations: "Walter said, `I'm not going to live like that.' His dad was very religious; all he would do is preach about God.'' Is that longing for a normal life what needed to be excised from Walter Zepeda's soul?

Poor soul.

There is speculation that Walter may have been the subject of an exorcism gone bad, gone mad â€" though how an ancient exercise in casting out the devil can ever be described as anything other than inherently mad is beyond me.

Neighbours now say they heard strange sounds coming from Zepeda's basement â€"

screaming, hysterical laughter and chanting. The family's pastor, Guillermo Fabian, is known to have visited the home as Walter's condition deteriorated, allegedly at the parents' request. Fabian, scheduled to appear as a crown witness at the trial, is no longer taking questions from reporters.

He has, however, denied participating in any exorcism.

And of course that is only an allegation, and the three accused are not facing charges of exorcism. They're charged with murder.

Exorcism or not, clearly there were demons present in Walter Zepeda's bedroom in the days leading up his death.

God damn them.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. E-mail:

dimanno@hotstar.net

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