RedHanded - Episode 64 - A Modern Maori Exorcism: The Death of Janet Moses

Episode Date: October 4, 2018

On the 12th of October 2007, 22 year old mother of two, Janet Moses drowned...in the middle of her family's living room. Janet's family had become troubled by her increasingly odd behaviour in the days preceding her death. After consulting with a Maori priest they believed that she had been possessed by a demon; water, chanting and eye gouging became their only weapons in their desperate fight against the "Makutu" devouring Janet's soul. Join the girls this week as they ask; when a young woman is killed by her own family - claiming pure intentions - what does justice look like?   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to the first installmentment of Red Handed Halloween October Fright Night Tree House of Horror Extravaganza. As you know, if you've been listening to the show, we're doing, what are we even calling it? Apart from all the things I just called it. We're just doing pretty intense episodes for October. Yeah, you guys seemed to like it last year. We only did two then, so we're going to give you five episodes instead. And it's what? It's just Halloween at Red Handed. That's boring. Yours was better. Okay, so let's get on with it, I suppose. Our belief system, our worldview, is constructed through conclusions that we make based on our experiences,

or on the experiences of those we trust that are passed on to us. So when someone we love is in trouble, it is only natural that we react to this with tools that we have collected through our paradigm. But is there a point where certain worldviews can be overruled by others? In our society, if a family member is having a psychotic break, you would take them to a doctor, a psychiatrist, and if things got bad enough, you might even get them sectioned. But when in 2007, Janet Moses exhibited increasingly erratic and concerning behaviour, her family didn't take her to the doctor. They took her to an exorcist. And what followed divided a nation, and it restoked a debate that has rumbled on for years.

Modern psychiatry versus ancient cultural practice. We're in New Zealand this week, if you hadn't already guessed, and before you even think about coming for us over the pronunciation of words, we're just trying our best. If we had a penny for every time people mispronounce Lester and Gloucester on true crime podcasts we'd both be able to quit our jobs so just sit down I genuinely heard on a very very big successful podcast this week someone described people from Liverpool as Liverpudlian and the other guy on the podcast said oh no isn't it Liverpudlian he was like no no I've looked it up it's Liver Liverpudlian. You hear some fantastic pronunciations. My favourite are Gloucester.

It's Gloucester. And also a more common one, which is the River Thames. It's not. It's the Thames. The Thames. Yeah. I also think there is a big difference between mispronouncing something and saying something in your own accent.

I think that's a distinction. But all just pronunciation of place names. It doesn't mean we don't care. It's just difficult. We're trying. We we're trying we're trying our absolute best so yeah be kind to us and i also think with this case before we get in this is 2007 just hold that that number at the front of your mind throughout this that's fucking like 11 years ago that's crazy so So back then, Janet Moses was a 22-year-old mother of two living in Wainui Mata. And 2007 was a really shit time for Janet. Her grandmother had died and she just found out that her partner of nine years and the father of her two children had cheated on her. Janet was

part of an enormous but extremely close-knit family that her late grandmother had been the matriarch of, and she was sorely missed by everyone. But before we go any further, we should say that Janet and her extended family were Maori, and they held very strict and private spiritual beliefs. We would also not be doing our jobs properly if we didn't mention that in New Zealand, Maori people are massively overrepresented in the prison population. Maori people make up a staggering 51% of the prison population, whilst just making up 14.9% of the population on the outside. But I do think it is important to clarify here, Maori people are, if we're talking about indigenous peoples in the modern world,

they are pretty integrated. It's not like in Australia or some parts of the United States where they're in reservations and totally separate. Maori people are much more integrated as we'll go on to see makes this a bit more even more shocking I think. As is pretty common in Maori communities Janet Moses's family all socialized together constantly. They had their own sports team and I think it's best to imagine them as the kind of people who refer to their cousins as being their best friends. Members of the Moses clan started to notice that Janet wasn't entirely herself on Saturday the 6th of October 2007. Oh whose birthday it's at? Oh it's Hannah's and it's on Saturday if you're listening to this on the day of the

release don't send me anything. So they're all gathered on Hannah's birthday on the 6th of October for a 21st birthday. It's Janet's sister's 21st birthday and they're at the Polisa Hotel. Janet was not her usual self. She was just sitting in silence and not joining in the festivities. And this worried everyone around her. Her partner Shane was at the party too. But when Janet asked him to leave with her and their two daughters, he refused.

This is cheating, Shane. Cheating Shane, the very same, yeah. Why is he at this fucking party? I think, honestly, it's one of those member of the... I don't think they were actually related, but I think this group is so closely regulated. He probably had cousins. I don't know. I think it's just that they socialise in this massive circle.

And now he won't even take her out of this fucking party it's such a piece of shit yeah shane does not come off well in this situation i was going to say something about men called shane then but i'm not going to it's a naughty boy name so janet leaves with her mum and her and shane's two daughters and they drove to one of janet's many auntie's houses and this does get confusing because this family group is so big. Literally everyone is an auntie or an uncle. That's my family background. Everyone is my auntie. I have hundreds of aunties. They drive to one of the million aunties' houses and they all went to bed. Janet got up before everyone else on the morning of the Sunday, the 7th of October and

wandered into the street in her pyjamas, muttering under her breath. She seemed to be in a trance, and she wasn't responding to anyone or anything around her. Behaviour like that is enough to put anyone on edge. So Janet's mum, Ollie, and her aunt, Glennis Wright, who, remember that name because she will become a major player in this story, decided they needed to call a family meeting. Janet was taken by her mum and Glennis to John Te Hana Rauri's house. Since the death of Janet's maternal grandmother, John had become the head of the family,

which in Maori culture is not a position to be taken lightly. It would be arrogant of us to imply that we've got a total handle on thousands of years of Maori culture in a week's worth of research. But from what we've gathered, family meetings, or huii are an extremely common step in the decision-making process within Maori communities. The whole extended family, which in this case was about 40 people, gathered together to decide what they were going to do about Janet. It's also important to say that the elders of the

family very much had the last word. Janet was quickly deemed to be incapable of making decisions for herself. During the hooey, many of Janet's relatives told her that they were really sorry if they had hurt her in any way. Her family were really, really worried and they were trying to make things right for Janet. But the issue here is, even though they could tell something was wrong with Janet, they didn't take her to a hospital. Throughout all of these declarations of love and apologies Janet remained totally silent staring into space and refusing to take off her jacket despite the heat so in this kind of hooey where they're all kind of saying oh Janet we're really sorry if we've done anything we really you know we love you we're sorry we're sorry is this kind of like um they think that her behavior is coming

out like this because she's been wronged by somebody and they're trying to, it's like an intervention? I think at this stage, they really, I think their problem solving process is everyone mucks in together and talks it through. I think at this stage, they just genuinely have no idea what's wrong with her. So they're trying everything except taking her to a fucking doctor. I think they're just sort of process of elimination, like, oh, well, it's not this person, it's not this, it's not that. What could it be? Okay.

If we couple this non-responsive behaviour with the wandering out into the street in the early morning in her PJs and how quickly this behaviour had come on, there's evidence to suggest that Janet was becoming psychotic. And during this process, changes can happen very quickly. Dr. Rhys Tapsall, who's a clinical psychologist of Maori descent, who gave evidence in the trial that we'll come on to in a bit, pointed out that when people are becoming psychotic, it goes without saying that they're very vulnerable, mentally speaking, and they're also likely to incorporate what people around them are saying about their situation into their psychosis, which then, of course, in turn, reaffirms what the people around them are saying.

I never thought about that before. they do absorb kind of whatever's around them, which is why you see people in different cultures or follow different sets of religious beliefs portray that as the reason, which is why it then reaffirms the idea that the group they're a part of thinks that they're possessed. It's that kind of intense absorption of everything that's around them and then reflecting it back.

It's really interesting, which is why religious psychosis is something that you see all the time because those people have been brought up around that story around those books around that belief system and they just throw it back out during their times of psychosis it's crazy it makes total sense i think if you think about it if you're maybe this isn't 100 correct but surely if you're becoming psychotic that's basically as vulnerable as your brain is going to get so obviously you're going to be susceptible to suggestion and i feel like that is a huge part

of what happens to janet and obviously we have a western medical paradigm but the fact is not everyone does not everyone shares that opinion so janet's family understood her condition in a very specific way they thought that she was cursed or possessed and due to her fragile mental state, Janet believed it too. We are going to hear the word makatu a lot this week, so let's clear up exactly what we mean by it now. Translated into English, makatu means witchcraft or sorcery, but it's more like a kind of Maori karma. It's like what goes around comes around. But it doesn't work on a person-by-person basis. If you do something bad, the makatu won't necessarily fall upon you.

It will fall on the weakest member of your family. Oh, what a bummer if it falls on you. Oh, so I'm the weakest member of our family now. I'm the limpy gazelle. It did seem to fit that it would then fall on Janet because Janet had been a sickly child growing up and it was decided by the group that the makatu had been inflicted on her

because she was the weak one of the pack. It wasn't a mental illness that was making Janet act so strangely. It was the makatu that had possessed her and it needed to come out. According to Dr. Heather Craven, who studies extraordinary religious experiences and grew up also in Wainui Mata, there are some Maori people who still

maintain the belief that makatu are misdiagnosed by Western doctors as mental health issues. And this is a really good example of kind of how colonization instigates the replacement of traditional practices. And it raises a really interesting question. How far is the preservation of old beliefs safe? No one is saying, before we get into this, nobody is saying that Maori beliefs should not be preserved. But is there an absolute somewhere? Can we say that Western practices are absolutely the right way of doing things sometimes? Like when we look at what we would consider

to be a mental health issue, which is what I believe is happening to Janet at this point, can we ever just say, no, like, don't do an exorcism, take her to the hospital? Can we override the way of thinking? If you move it up a level, it's not just in terms of like old Maori beliefs and medical intervention.

It is just the ongoing battle between old religious beliefs and scientific thinking. As much as I would always veer towards scientific thinking because I don't hold religious beliefs, I don't ever think that people's religious beliefs should be lost, that their practices or beliefs should be undermined. But I think it's that question of if it comes down to the health and well-being of a person, I think scientific thinking should take precedence. That's what can probably really help that person but I don't know it becomes very difficult because of how much do

they trust that outside force yeah exactly and I think it is quite it's a bit of a sticky wicket really because if there are people who so our western paradigm is like, oh, this person is mentally ill. They've had a psychotic break. We need to put them in a psychiatric hospital and put them on loads of drugs. A lot of people think that isn't the best thing. A lot of people have a problem with heavy medications and like, God knows, like some of the mental health medications that you have to go on for the rest of your life, like fuck up the rest of your body. I'm not saying that it's an invalid approach, but when it comes to this sort of thing. It really is difficult. I think it's an imperfect world. We're imperfect

beings. We can never say, no one can objectively ever look at a situation like this, especially when it's drenched in their own beliefs and maybe their own stigma or prejudices about external help. And also their genuine love, I'm sure, for Janet and wanting to do the best for her. It's like, look at those extremely religious groups who don't believe that they should ever have blood transfusions, that they shouldn't go to the doctor, they should never get help. Christian scientists. Absolutely.

And if their children are sick, they won't take them to the doctor. So the courts have to subpoena them and force them to take their children to hospital. And again, they might say, I don't believe that it's natural. I don't believe it's right for my child to get a blood transfusion or for them to take these drugs that will save their life. When does it stop being that we have to cherish their beliefs? And when does it become sort of abuse and neglect? It's a really difficult conversation, but I think it has to be always in the interest of the person that is suffering and their well-being and their lives. Oh, absolutely.

And I think it all has to be done on a case-by-case basis. There is no... There's no absolute. No. And this is the theme that we'll keep coming back to this episode. And the intense pockets of isolated spirituality in Wainui Mata and what becomes of Janet Moses is the reason why. At this family meeting, it was brought to John, the head of the family,

it was brought to his attention that a member of their enormous family group had stolen a stone lion from the Grey Town Hotel. Exactly who had stolen the lion isn't too clear and I think this might be because they're a minor and they're not named in any of the reports. Whoever they were, they'd stolen the lion because it was the family's emblem. John and several other members of the reports. Whoever they were, they'd stolen the lion because it was the family's emblem. John and several other members of the family had lion tattoos and it was the logo of their sports team. So whoever had stolen the lion, they had stolen it for the family to unite over. The family deduced during their meeting that Janet thought there was something very wrong with the lion. It didn't belong. She thought it was evil. After the meeting,

Janet was taken to a flat where her grandfather had lived with her other family members, and a group of them slept together in the front room. This is another thing. They all seem to house hop like nothing else. It doesn't seem like anyone lives in their house 100% of the time. They all seem to go around each other's houses and sleep there constantly. And Janet woke everyone in the middle of the night with blood-curdling screams. Janet violently shoved anyone who came anywhere near her and she seemed to be convinced that someone or something was coming to get her. Janet's mum, Ollie, called Glennis in a panic, not knowing what to do with the inconsolable screeching Janet. Glenys told Ollie that she must get Janet to John's house as soon as she could.

Once they got Janet to John's house, in the morning they contacted yet another member of the family, Timi Rahi, who was a Tohunga, which is kind of like a Maori priest, but they are defined as people who are highly proficient in a skill or art, spiritual or otherwise. John Glenys and the rest of Janet's family begged Timmy Rahe for some spiritual guidance on how to cure Janet. And this isn't too bonkers. It's just like consulting their priest or their pastor like I guess any religious community would do.

The word of the man of God is taken to be the word of God. There are incredible levels of trust running through this whole idea. And what is really interesting here again is that they never take Janet to hospital. It's not as if they took her to hospital, they took her to a doctor, and the doctor said, we can't help her. Spiritual Maori practice is their very first port of call. On Monday 8th October 2007, Timi Rahi met the whole family and Janet. He blessed Janet with water, which interestingly only came into Maori practice with the force of Christianity that came

to New Zealand in 1814. There's a lot of merging of ideology in New Zealand. There's even a Maori Anglican church. Dr Honoka is the Anglican archdeacon and is a big supporter of spiritual duality. He says that there's no conflict in my being Maori and my being Christian. We still hold vestiges of the old world attached to us. Water is super important in Christianity. It's used in various baptism ceremonies in various amounts from sprinkling to being fully dunked in a river by a man in a dress. And these ritual practices appear to have merged with Maori ones. It's also super important to note that Maori spiritual practices were outlawed in 1907 by the Tohunga Suppression Act, so it's pretty understandable why practices changed

to appease the new Christian overlords. Maori people weren't allowed to do anything else. That act was instated because of an impatience with regressive Maori attitudes. So what they mean is, our way is better than yours, and we're not going to give you a choice. So it's Christianity, once again, causing trouble. I mean, yes, definitely in this case, it is Christianity. But I think this is, I genuinely believe in cases like this with colonialism, it's always going to be the most dominant aggressive culture, language, religion

that is put forward and suppresses or completely destroys the other ones. And I genuinely think that this is always more of a thing around power and control rather than genuinely held religious beliefs. We see this all the time. Oh, fully, yeah. Right now, in the Middle East, in Pakistan, forced conversion is a huge problem. And even think about like the USSR, where it was like irreligion. And I'm totally an atheist, but I'm 100% against that. The state cannot force a religion or irreligion upon people. But that's what you do to control people. And that's how you get people to go to war for you, to die for you and totally be under your

control. This is definitely Christianity in this case, but it's definitely not unique to them. Everybody's at it. Oh, I think it's the human condition that puts on a religious jumper now and again. It's just the people who are in power know the best way to control the masses. So the Tohunga Suppression Act was technically repealed in 1962. But by that time, I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that the damage was already done. So back to our Tohunga, Timi Rahi. He confirmed what the whole family had feared, that Janet was not suffering from a mental breakdown, but rather she had been struck by a makatu.

The makatu's main aim is to damage someone's soul. And that is how the family processed what was happening to Janet. Her soul was being destroyed. Timmy Rahi told the family that he had a vision of Janet being grabbed by three claws. He told them that they had to return the stolen stone lion to Grey Town as it was over 100 years old and part of a pair. Timmy Rahi has so much to answer for. We'll go on to see, but I really think if anyone's the villain of the piece is him

i think absolutely because the story he spins whether he believes it or where this is coming from he's basically telling the family feeding their fear and paranoia in seeing their relation janet go through this he's telling them the lion was attacking janet's soul because he missed his partner and needed to be reunited. At this news, the family breathed a huge sigh of relief. The problem was solved. All they needed to do was return the lion to the Grey Town Hotel and Janet would be back to normal. So the next day, Tuesday the 9th of October, they all drove in a convoy over to the hotel to return the lion.

In one of the nine cars that made up this convoy, Janet was sat next to her paternal grandmother. Halfway through the journey, Janet broke into a fit of rage and told her grandmother that she was going to kill her. She repeated this over and over again. When we get there, I'm going to kill you. And that is fucking terrifying. Can you imagine? You're in a car. You can't get away. I know. And it's genuinely genuinely like you can understand if this is all happening over like a layer of deep beliefs that these people have that this kind of thing can happen of course they're freaking out of course they think janet is possessed it's terrifying and nobody was able to calm janet down until they arrived at the hotel and her grandmother was able to get out of the car i mean i was thinking like why didn't they just stop the car before but

i think they so believe we just need to get to the Grey Town Hotel. We just need to give them back this stupid fucking lion and it will all stop. And I think it's such an intense version of, like, superstition almost. We just need to do this and then everything will be fine. Keep going. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And also what's just struck me is, like, there's nine cars. There's loads of them. None of them have gone to work. It's Tuesday now.

And I think that really hammers home like how important the family structure is in their community. It comes before anything else. The lion was returned to the spot where it was stolen from next to its lion friend that it had been missing so desperately apparently. So after returning the lion Janet seemed to calm right down and the family started to believe that everything was back to normal. They all went to Carl's house and Carl is another member of this massive family and there there's a general feeling of relief they all ate fish and chips and they spent some time together as a family. Timmy Rahi was there too he was was Janet's uncle after all. And he told the family that he could do no more for Janet. He said that two out of the three claws that he had seen in Janet had now gone because the lion had been returned. The one remaining claw had nothing to do with the lion.

It was actually to do with the damage caused by Janet's ex-partner, Naughty Boy Shane, the one who had been caught cheating. Timmy Rahe said that this claw was not for him to solve, but for the family to heal. Even though he is a family member, that makes no sense. So he really is just passing the buck here and saying that it's up to the rest of the family to fully save Janet. He's literally just saying like, oh, my job here is done. I can't, I can't go any further it's because he was like oh there's a very convenient story for me to spin with this fucking lion and then when they do it and he's like oh i don't know she's still acting kind of odd i better say something else two of the claws are done i've done two thirds of the work for you guys you're gonna have to figure the rest out on your own yeah exactly

flicking some water in her face and telling him to put the lion back was all he had time for. So he left the family wondering how they could help Janet. And Timmy Rahi would be no help at all from this point on. Not that he's been any help in the first place, really, because the next day he was hospitalised. Just for like a minor operation, nothing drastic happened. But it meant that the family couldn't reach him when things started to go awry. The Moses family took the next steps in cleansing Janet of the remaining claw, the rest of the Makatu, totally unassisted by a guide of any sort. Except Tanganoa Apanu, another one of Janet's aunties, who had vague memories of their mother conducting a Markatoo exorcism or lifting when she was a child. Later, she said in court when asked if she had any knowledge of

Markatoo lifting, quote, I still remember a lot of it because we, us kids, had to walk around the whole house with our mother with a cross in her hand and follow behind her while she will bless the whole house and say a prayer as she was doing it. And I think that that very weird statement she gives in court is all you need to know. Wherever you stand on the spiritual world, demons, makatu, curses or possession, this family had absolutely no idea what they were doing. It really feels like someone was like, oh, who knows how to do a lifting? And she was like, I did one once when I was a kid. We did this.

I watched my mum do one when I was a kid exactly she just walked around the house holding a cross and saying a prayer which is really interesting if that's Christian iconography put into this ritual it's really interesting it is all those places that were more sort of far removed from the Christian world when they did go over there and sort of colonize and take over they couldn't go as far as they could in some of the other more Western countries that were being converted because their beliefs were so deep and so different that all they could do was assimilate the two, bring them together and say, you can still have these things and your iconography, but absorb what we're telling

you and let us just mainly control what you think. I went to Indonesia. I was in North Sumatra. And there it's fascinating because they have all of the very traditional, like almost boat-shaped houses. And that's very linked to their traditional beliefs as part of their old religion. And the churches you see are built in the same shape. They couldn't get rid of that.

And they still do a lot of their practices where they do their dancing, their drinking, and their sort of burning of effigies and a bit of animal sacrifice, which is very, very pagan. And I asked the guys who we met who were showing us around, that's not very Christian. How do you get away with that? And they said, if they ever took that away from us, we would turn on Christianity. We would throw it away tomorrow. So it's a compromise. Okay, you keep that. Can we take it? Oh, we can't take it? Okay, have it. Have your animal sacrifice, but call yourselves Christians.

It's a box-ticking exercise for the church, isn't it? Oh, totally. I mean, even Christmas is a pagan festival. Oh, of course. It's just to say that territory has been converted. They have been saved. Those missionaries were successful. Those people identify as Christian.

That's what they need. Numbers. Yeah. Right? It's a numbers game. It's all a numbers game believe what you want think what you want do what you want kill your goats but you're a christian if anyone asks and that's the main thing on the census what do you put christian yes good next

it's winning numbers it's saving souls etc etc i'm jake warren and in our first season of finding i set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's

taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead

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Back to our story, though. After Timmy Rahe left, the family put Janet in a bed in the living room of Carl's house and Janet's mental state here was just deteriorating. She was muttering to herself and staring into space and the family decided that they needed to get the demon out. After all, Timmy Rahi had told them that it was down to them. The family formed a circle around Janet's bed and chanted, go with peace and love whilst rhythmically stamping. The late head of the family, Janet's grandmother, had always insisted that all members of the family carry out safeguarding rituals involving water. And so as a result, the family had an incredibly strong association with water. In later statements, family members would refer to doing their waters as a regular ritual.

And we've spoken to quite a few people who are Maori and others who study Maori spiritual practices, and nobody that we spoke to had ever heard this term of doing their waters before. So it seems quite unique to this particular family. And so yet again, we have another indicator that this makatu lifting was the blind leading the blind. Glenys led the family in a karakia to ward off the makatu but Janet didn't seem to get any better. So I should say karakia is kind of like a prayer but it's not from what I understand and please correct me if I'm wrong from what I understand it's kind of like a prayer but it's not used for worship it's just a conversation. And this chanting and stamping as they did this karakia to ward off the makatu

continued throughout the night and neighbours attested that up to 40 people were in that house making all sorts of noise. You'd be so pissed off wouldn't you? I mean you would. I can't stand it when the woman who lives next door to me speaks on the phone. Honestly the walls are so thin I'm like for god's sake what's Leroy done now? Imagine if they were stamping around trying to exorcise a demon. Sometimes it sounds like that's what they're doing, to be honest. Even stranger still was that Janet would take breaks from the lifting, from the exorcism. She would go outside with her cousins and smoke cigarettes. She could have walked away, but she always went back inside.

And this point in the story raises a lot of questions about consent. There are people that argue that because Janet didn't walk out on her family during one of these fag breaks, that she consented to the whole thing. But I think it's pretty obvious from what we've heard about Janet's behaviour that she was in absolutely no state to consent to anything. And even if she was, it seems like her family structure was so rigid that she would have just had to do what her elders told her anyway quite a lot of me is made of it later on people are like oh well she could have just left at any time i really don't think she

could have absolutely she couldn't have she was held in this situation not yet by ligatures but by her own mental vulnerability at this point she can't consent to what's going on. Just because she has breaks in like lucid thinking doesn't mean she can walk away from this. And you're right. The family structure that she has is very much geared towards the elders. She couldn't have just walked away from this situation. I also find the people, you know, if anybody is supporting this saying, well, you know, she consented to doing this because she was really possessed. Like if she was really possessed, wouldn't the demon have made her run away during one of those breaks?

It's like witch trials. If you drown, what was it? If you drown, you're innocent. If you survive, no. Yeah. You're a witch. You're a witch. The real witches wouldn't have fucking let you strap them to a chair and dunk them in the river.

Do you really think if I was in league with Satan, I'd be here letting you like prick my thumbs? You fucktards could tie me to this and burn me. Yeah, she goes outside and has a cigarette break. What's the demon also having a little fucking break? Like, no. The demon smokes marlboro reds. But the other thing that's really interesting though, I think no matter what culture you're from, no matter how involved you are in sort of family proceedings,

you want to believe that your family are doing what's best for you. And she grew up also hearing about these things, about hearing about the market. She's being told we're doing everything we can to save you. She might be experiencing pain, but she thinks it's the right thing to do. It's like you not running away from a doctor who's about to give you an injection that you're being told is going to cure you. You know it's going to hurt, but you do it because you're told it's the right thing to do. That's exactly it. I think you've really hit the nail on the head there. She knows it's going to hurt, but she thinks she needs to do it. But no matter how long they kept chanting and stamping, Janet didn't seem to improve. She was still screaming, lashing out and convinced that something was coming to get her.

One relative suggested that they call another Tohunga, but this proposition was rejected by Glenys and John. For them, it was Timi Rahi, or it was nobody. So now we see a real shift. The chanting still wasn't working, and Janet was becoming more and more erratic. Janet wanted to be in the shower for long periods of time. And the reason for this isn't totally clear. Some of the family said that this was because she often showered her grandmother when she was alive. So she was trying to recreate that moment. Janet had been incredibly close to her maternal grandmother who's since died. And they think that a big part of her mental breakdown was the loss of her grandmother. So I can sort of buy into that idea of wanting to feel close to her grandmother. However, I do have my own theory. I read about it last week and I've been gagging to get it into a case

and I've managed it. Hooray. So here we go. Being in water actively calms human beings down. It's called the mammalian diving response. And I am really about to trigger any creationists that are listening. I don't think you need to worry about them. Do we not have any creationists?

Even if they are, I don't think you need to worry about them. Do we not have any creationists? Even if they are, I don't think we need to worry about them. But this reflex is an evolutionary trait left over from when we lived in the water all the time. Swimming is a super high calorie burning activity. So when we are in water, our heart rate automatically slows right down in an attempt to conserve energy for when we really need it. This is why when you're upset, it's really common to be told to splash water on your face. The mammalian diving response can be triggered by just the feeling of water on your face and around your nostrils.

Being in water makes us feel calm. So could it be possible that instead of Janet feeding the demon inside her by being in the shower, maybe she was just trying to calm herself down? And I do do that. If I'm like feeling really stressed, like go and have a shower, sort yourself out. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. And when Janet was in the shower herself, she had the hot water running like every other normal human being. But for some reason, Glenys kept turning the water to cold and Glenys and John would hold Janet under the shower head. So this escalates pretty quickly.

They're like, she likes being in the shower. Grab her, hold her down. Let's basically waterboard her under the shower head and put the water to cold. And obviously, Janet didn't like that. And it caused her to scream and try and get out of the shower, which seems like a pretty normal reaction to me. But it translated to Glenys totally differently. Glenys took this to mean that the Makatu didn't like

cold water. I mean, again, it's just the interpretation of the things that are happening in front of them. You hold somebody down under a cold water tap forcibly and they try to run away and they're like, no, it's the Makatu that doesn't like the cold water, not Janet. And this led to water being seen as a weapon against the Markatoo. In later statements to the police, John described seeing the blackness in Janet's eyes. After the extended cold shower stint, which went on for hours at a time, Janet seemed to calm down and she vomited up a load of mucus. I think she calmed down because she's probably fucking knackered from screaming and trying to get away from you. And presumably she's vomiting up mucus because her stomach was so full of water from being held under a shower head. But this mucus was decided instead to be the market to, at least part of it. So the vomit was wiped up with a towel and locked

in the bathroom where the shower and the toilet were. This meant two crucial things. Firstly, the idea that water was an effective way of getting rid of the demon or the curse or whatever it was that of Janet. And secondly, that the marketoo was locked in the bathroom. And this meant that over the next three days, not one of the 40 people in that house had access to a toilet. So let's set the scene for the next few days. There are 40 or more people crammed into this really small house and we'll post a picture of it. It looks like a static caravan and it's also over 40 degrees centigrade in there which is about 104 Fahrenheit. They're all jumping around chanting for days on end and none of them

has access to a loo. According to statements given in court, the family soiled their clothes, and some of them even took to wearing nappies. As you can imagine, no one was sleeping either. Unsurprisingly, with a room full of sleep-deprived, boiling hot people living in their own faeces, things started to get out of control.

I can't even imagine it. I think what we can't really get across in words is just how hot it was in there and the amount of people shoved into a small space. And everyone's losing their mind. And I can absolutely say in a situation like this that no one would have been able to leave. If you'd have left, it would have been that you didn't care about the family. Shane, Janet's ex, showed up at the house. And he was denied entry by the men in the family.

And he wasn't the only one. Concerned neighbours were kept out of the house too. All of the family stayed inside, chanting and stamping. All sorts of members of the community showed up offering help but nobody was allowed inside. Glenys and John kept holding Janet under the cold shower, attempting to make her swallow so much water that she would vomit again. Janet's father, Gerald Moses, showed up too.

He was also sent away. He asked Janet to leave with him. He really seems to be the only one in this situation who has his head screwed on. But Janet didn't leave with him. He promised that he would come back to get her. Why he doesn't just take her with him at this stage, I have absolutely no idea. But it's a decision he's going to have to live with for the rest of his life. Because by the time he returned on the 12th of October, it would be too late.

After her father left, Janet finally slept. And everyone thought she had come back to herself. Perhaps seeing her dad was all she needed. Everyone got some much-needed sleep. But the lifting of the marketoo was far from over. John Rowery awoke in the morning to utter chaos. Janet was screaming and kept repeating, they're coming, they're coming, they're coming.

She said that she wanted to lay down her life for her family as a sacrifice during an imminent battle with whatever was coming to get her and this turned the house into a kind of spectral battleground it's recreated in the documentary and obviously it's not real footage so we don't know how much truth there is to it but it seems like this is the point where the family really do start to lose their minds they literally start fighting thin air. It's like they can see what Janet is seeing. You see it sometimes with pairs of people who kind of have a shared delusion.

This is 40 people sharing a delusion. It's... Yeah, it's mass hysteria. Janet also had a bone carving necklace that she wore. The family thought that it might be giving power to the demon so they cut it off. But it made no difference. All the while, they were forcing Janet to drink as much water as possible to try and get her to vomit out the rest of the market too. But Janet kept resisting, so eventually the family members held her to the floor while water was poured into her face and eyes, primarily by her Aunt Glennis. And remember,

the bathroom was off limits. So the family were filling up containers from the kitchen sink and passing it down to Glenys like an assembly line. So it's literally like the kitchen sink and a chain of people stood leading up to Janet, passing buckets of water down so they can just continuously waterboard her. Everything in the house was also completely drenched. The carpets were squelching and it's boiling. It's 40 degrees in there. It must have been like a total hellhole. John Rarie hammered a steel through the floor of the kitchen to drain some of the water from the house. But I can't imagine that that made anything really much more habitable. Glenys was convinced that she could see something moving around in Janet's eyes and she claimed in some of the eyes of the children present and yes as if this couldn't get any worse there were children witnessing this whole thing

so to get what they assumed to be the demon out of Janet's eyes not only did they pour water into them repeatedly but they sucked them with their mouths yes and just once more for the people in the fucking back, they sucked Janet's eyeballs with their mouths. I've read some pretty grim stuff for this podcast. Nothing made me feel as ill as reading that sentence. And unsurprisingly, the eyeball sucking didn't work. So there was a new rule set. No one was allowed to look into Janet's eyes at all, but they were allowed to keep pouring water into them. Apparently Janet asked her auntie for a breather, but was denied because Glenis and John thought it was the demon talking. So they kept Janet pinned down and kept pouring water onto her face. There's nothing she can do at this point.

It's like those famous stories of an actor dying on stage, but actually really dying. There's nothing she can do at this point. It's like those famous stories of an actor dying on stage but actually really dying. There's nothing, there's absolutely nothing she can say. No, she's done because anything she says, it's the demon saying it. And you do have to ask, why did no one out of the 40 plus people there, those of whom who were adults all had normal jobs and were pretty integrated into normal life,

why did none of these normal people suggest taking janet to a hospital this could be mob mentality and mass hysteria and not questioning your elders or a bit of all three but if i was in a 40 degree box swimming in my own shit i probably wouldn't have my best decision making hat on either. And we know, like we've seen this so many times, people get swept away. If there's 40 of you in a tiny room, you're going to get caught up in it, you just are. Glenys and John became convinced that some of the children were possessed too. They focused their attention on one teenage girl in particular. She was about 14 at the time of the lifting and her name has never been released to the public. The teenage girl was also held down by her family members and had a

copious amount of water poured into her face, into her eyes and into her mouth. In an attempt to keep her eyes open, one of her eyes was gouged and began to bleed. At one stage, both Janet and the teenage girl broke free. The family took this to mean that the makatu had doubled its strength. So they doubled down and kept pouring the water, chanting and stamping even more forcefully than before. Janet's jaw locked. And again, the family took this to be the work of the makatu. So they prized it open. I can't imagine how much force that takes to prize open a clenched jaw, a locked jaw. I don't know. I don't even know what that looks like.

I can't fathom that. But that's what they do. It's horrifying. It is extreme and sustained torture. They are waterboarding her and they will not stop. Like you said, there's nothing she can do. She's being held down. Every time they even escape or say something, they're thinking it's because the marketer was gaining strength. What's really, really horrifying

about this, apart from all the eyeball sucking and eyeball gouging and the torture, these are the people who love her the most and she loves the most. It is so, so dark. The mechanics of drowning are something that I have never really given that much thought to before. I just thought as the water gets into your lungs, you can't breathe anymore and then you die. But this is what actually happens. When water gets into your lungs, it causes the lung membrane to produce a frothy liquid, which is further absorbed and collapses some of the air sacs in your lungs and that compromises the body's ability to circulate oxygen. Then the vocal cords go into spasm and the heart goes into abnormal arrhythmia. With not enough oxygen circulating the drowning

person succumbs to hypoxia or not enough oxygen and hypercarbia, too much carbon dioxide. Either or both of these conditions will cause the person to fall unconscious. The heart will eventually stop and the brain is irreversibly destroyed by the acidic environment created by hypercarbia. And really interestingly, in warm water, the process actually just takes a few minutes, from water in the lungs to being completely dead. But in cold water, metabolism slows. Carbon dioxide is generated more slowly. The blood is slower to become acidic and the brain does not get damaged as quickly. Drowning victims can spend 30 minutes or in some cases even longer underwater and be rescued and even survive without long-term effects as long as they are put on a

respirator. You'll be more torturous for you to drown in cold water, but you have much more chance of surviving. But that was not the case for Janet. Even though Janet Moses died on dry land, she drowned very, very slowly. So slowly that no one performing the Marker 2 lifting even realised she was gone. John in later interviews stated that he didn't notice when it was that Janet died, that they just kept going. He said, we were trying to get the other girl right, he means the teenage girl. The whole place was full of evil. I tried CPR, but I don't know how to do it. So it would seem that when they all realised that Janet was dead,

there were some attempts to revive her, but no one called an ambulance and no one called the police for another nine hours. They put Janet's body to one side and kept pouring water onto the teenage girl. So they've killed janet they know at this point they've killed janet and they just put her to one side and carry on with the teenage girl that blows my mind i think how they probably thought of it was the market who's left janet

so now there's even more in the girl so we have to keep going the teenage girl later told police and social services that she was scratching punching and kicking because of the demon inside her and she kept saying to her family you're fucking drowning me i'm going to die and i think they knew that she might die i mean they'd already killed janet but i think potentially at this point it's also that they're fighting for their souls. Yeah. They think she's dead anyway. They think, you know, this demon, this makatu is a soul destroyer. So even if Janet and this teenage girl die, maybe it's okay as long as their souls are saved and they can go to, you know, I don't know, heaven, whatever, like the next life, and their souls are intact. And maybe it's just their earthly body that's died. And that's tragic. And we couldn't save both. But we have to carry on. In the teenage girl's recollection of events, she passed out.

And when she came to, it all seemed to be over. On the morning of the 12th of October 2007, the family were paid a visit by a man they called Pakiha Dave, who was a man of European descent claiming to be a spiritual conduit. Pakiha is the Maori word for white New Zealander. So basically this guy they call Pakiha Dave is white boy Dave. White boy Dave, yeah. He's white boy Dave. Yeah. So he comes over claiming to be a spiritual conduit and he wants to help this family. And he tells them that he had received a message from their dead grandmother that the Makatu was gone. Dave blessed everyone and told John Rowery that he should take the teenage girl

to hospital. Finally, nine hours after Janet died, the police were called to the house and Superintendent Tusha Penny, who was second in charge of the investigation, later told the press, quote, What we could never have appreciated when we first walked through the door was that what was about to unfold was something incredibly unique, something incredibly tragic, and something very challenging. We worked very hard to understand how a family could do that to one of their own. They were really set on fixing it and thought they had to fix it themselves. They kept at it and kept at it and lost their way. Which I think is letting them off a bit lightly.

What's really obvious in the investigation is that, like, the police are bending over backwards to be culturally sensitive throughout the whole investigation. They really, really are. I think actually this is one of the cases where I'm not going to say the police did a bad job. It's too far the other way. They're just like, oh, they were really trying to help her. They were really trying to fix it.

They just lost their way. They fucking waterboarded Janet to death and would have killed that teenager. They would have killed her if this hadn't stopped. If it wasn't for white boy Dave. So this idea of like cultural sensitivity yes absolutely but we see this in cases again and again and again with criminal investigations here as well is fear of being point like of being accused of racial profiling of cultural insensitivity of ignorance stops people from pursuing crimes and convicting people who have done terrible things in the names of their sincerely held beliefs or not. Still, you know, Janet died. Yeah, well, I think, you know, FGM is the classic example. It's such a big deal at the

moment in the UK. And people are terrified to approach it. People are saying, oh, it's my culture. It's my religion. It's for the good of my daughter, for me to mutilate her. It is. It's mutilation. And I used to spend a lot of time talking to teachers who are responsible for child protection, particularly in urban places like in London. This is a huge fucking problem. Things like female genital mutilation, like this happens and they're saying it happens. We don't know how to stop it. We don't know how to report it. If we tell the police, nothing happens. They say it's their culture. Do we need to be culturally sensitive? No, no. They're mutilating people. It's the same with so many things you could say, like forced marriage. It's not religious. It's not, it doesn't matter if it's cultural. Your cultural beliefs don't take precedent over

the well-being of these people. When the teenage girl was taken to Hutt Hospital, she told staff and a social worker that the muck to lifting performed on her lasted around six or seven hours. So she had water being poured into her face and into her eyes for six or seven hours. How she's alive is magical, honestly. When she arrived at the hospital, her eyes were scratched and they were oozing blood. She couldn't even open them. And she smelled of urine. Janet's body was found with bruises and scratches all up her arms.

So it was clear that she had been restrained for a long period of time. The police department questioned over 70 people in this investigation. And Janet's death was initially reported as an unexplained death. Until the post-mortem showed unequivocally that Janet had drowned and that's another thing that Tusha Penny says is that literally everyone they questioned said the same thing they all said the same story so she knew that that has was what had happened no one's lying about it no one's trying to hide it they all just say this is how it happened in 2008 11 members of Janet's family were brought to trial. So we've got John Rowery,

the head of the family, Georgina Rowery, Tanjanoa Apanu, she's the one who claimed to have been part of a lifting before when she was a child, Hal Jones Waripapa, Angela Orupi, Gaylene Kepa, Ahura Waripapa, Alfred Hughes, and of course, Glennis Wright. They were all tried for the manslaughter of Janet Moses. The only reason I can think of that they weren't tried for Janet's murder is that throughout the investigation, the police keep hammering home that Janet's family were only trying to help her, but they were just misguided. Is that even an argument they drowned her in her living room there are so many people who kill her what about um mums who've got munchausen syndrome by proxy you wouldn't say oh they're doing it because they love them they're

mentally ill this doesn't sit right with me at all like it's irrelevant trying to help her lost their way they tried so hard to fix it. No, absolutely not. How is this manslaughter? This is murder. And this extension of like cultural beliefs or religious beliefs to mask what is absolutely murder and would have been two murders is bollocks, quite frankly. It's absolutely rubbish. And I think, you know, this is really close to, say, so my family are from India and they are, like, when I go back to India to visit them, most of them are Hindu. And if you ever go to a Hindu temple when there is a mass exorcism going on, this is a fucking, they put on a show. Believe me, you've got the holy men, there's fires, there's powder being thrown around, there's people being beaten with leaves and all this kind of nonsense. And there are a group of people there whose families have brought them there and they are mentally ill.

That's what is like, they're not well. They're not well people. They're being told, this is what's wrong with you. You're possessed. There's something in you. They are writhing around. They're screaming. They're having powder blown in their faces and whipped up into a frenzy until they're so tired that they're basically comatose. And then they're taken away. How incredibly damaging. And I don't want to be like, anybody's been like, well, you're being incredibly culturally insensitive to their beliefs.

No, those people need help. Those people need help. How incredibly distressing and damaging for them. So no, your beliefs don't take precedent over what's just right. And even if you read things and you believe things, what about basic knowing the difference between what's right and wrong how did 40 people this is my question in this case how did 40 people look at what was happening to janet and think this was okay to carry on until she died well i don't know but i can imagine that if you are in that family and you're not the elders, it's probably quite difficult to say, I think we need to stop.

It's like a cult. That's what it becomes like. Yeah. Because if this was one person that had done it and they had admitted it to the police, they said, yes, she was possessed by a demon. I had to kill her. That person would be deemed not guilty by reason of insanity and they would be sectioned and they would be institutionalized for the rest of their lives. When it's a group of 40 people and they're claiming they're doing it because of their cultural and religious beliefs, what is then that? Yeah, why is that different? Yeah,

and that's the interesting argument in this. And two more members of the family were also tried for willful cruelty against the teenage girl. I'm not too sure why their names were suppressed because we couldn't find them. I think maybe they were minors as well. And the trial, as you might expect with a case like this, was a total media circus. The people of New Zealand, both Maori and otherwise, couldn't believe the details of this case. The trial lasted 29 days in total, with over 100 witnesses called throughout its duration. Several shocking details came out in the trial, and it was proven that none of the family nor janet herself had taken any illegal drugs so yeah they're completely fucking sober during this entire process the prosecution also brought several experts in maori spiritual and cultural practice

to the stand and not one of them had heard of any instance where that much water was used in a market to lifting That's a really interesting thing. What they were doing isn't even Maori spiritual practice. They'd completely made it up. So in a way, the sort of protection of cultural beliefs argument doesn't stand up because they weren't doing ancient practices. They weren't following their Maori culture. They were doing something else entirely. And this is the argument that you could make with lots of religions and cultural practices, like it's interpretation. People will read a book. You could read the Bible and you could pull out some absolutely horrendous passages from that. You could read the Quran and do the same. You could

read the Bhagavad Gita and do exactly the same. People will push aside and they'll be like, let's just not talk about that. Let's not do that bit. It's all just down to interpretation. If these people held it as a sincerely held belief, why is it different if it is sanctioned by the rest of the Maori community or not? That's such an interesting point and a really interesting point of the whole thing. It's like, whose beliefs are more important? Why are mine more right than yours? Because I've got a Maori stamp on it or because the Archdeacon says, you know? Exactly. And just because that's how it's always been done for thousands of years by the rest of your community, and suddenly these people are doing something different, but they believe it

as sincerely as the rest, why is it less sanctified? I don't know. I think it becomes very, very murky, but I understand what they're saying. This isn't how this kind of practice is done in any case. And according to Dr. Hone Karr, Maori lifting ceremonies are still really commonplace. The key thing they're saying is this is not how they're done when they are done and he stated that water is used to cleanse the victim during the ceremony but not in anywhere near the quantities used in janets. Dr. Karr told the New Zealand Herald that such ceremonies are very emotional, very intense, but he had never heard of anyone being badly injured. But the worst detail of all was that the stone lion that had started the whole thing, the one Timi Rahi had told the family was over 100 years old and of great spiritual significance,

was just made out of concrete and had been bought from a garden centre. The oldest it could have been was about 10 years. The owner of the hotel it had been stolen from had covered the lion with yoghurt in the hope that they would age in the sun and look a bit more legit. Who is this hipster upcycle hotel owner weirdo do you know what i need i need some moldy lions at the front that's really just my aesthetic i'm gonna go buy some concrete shit statues cover them in yogurt and leave them in the sun my god this man needs like a youtube

channel he needs like an arts and crafts youtube channel he'd make a killing that is hilarious so there's a documentary about this case on netflix it's called belief and it says that the trial proved the beliefs of janet's family to be fixed and false and by that i think they mean what we've been saying that they're not in line with any maori teachings or practices but as we've said just because they believe it, does that make it any more real? How can you say that their beliefs are fixed and false when they believe them? Beliefs are beliefs.

If they believe it, sincerely held beliefs, why is it any less believable than somebody who's just believed something for thousands of years? Have you seen American Gods? No. I really recommend it. I think you'd really enjoy it that it's a book but it's amazon prime made a tv show the concept of it is that gods exist because we believe in them so there's like mexican jesus black jesus white jesus all of these different gods that are imagined into existence

and they all hang out with each other it's a very highly recommend okay i'll give it a try but yeah it's absolutely the case i think we've been obviously very like oh well this is rubbish and you know you should just go to a doctor i genuinely believe there's a place for things like this i do believe that and my grandmother is a very religious person she genuinely has like an intense faith and she hobbles around the house like struggles to walk up a couple of flights of stairs in her house you take her to the temple she will beat you to the top of that temple 500 steps she'll do it because her faith is that strong when she's there so i'm like there's nothing really probably that wrong with you it's your faith and your fear and it gives her peace of mind say she's worried about something, she's anxious, she's scared, something terrible has happened, you take her there,

holy man talks to her, he ties a talisman on her arm, she's happy. Her fears are alleviated, the anxiety is gone, she's happy. There is a place for this. It's like homeopathy. Don't use it to try cure your cancer, but maybe it has a place to cure your fear of flying, you know? There's a place for these kind of things. And, you know, that's why I think when the legit, quote unquote,

I guess when the legit Maori priests come forward to give evidence against this and say this isn't how it would be done, it would be emotional and all of this, it kind of sounds like it would be like hydrotherapy, like water. I was going to say hydrotherapy, but that's a real thing. I meant like therapy but with water. It sounds like they talk about it. It's emotional. They get things out and there just happens to be a bit of water flinging around. These people took it too far. They took it too literally and they ended up killing somebody.

And David Stubbs, the maker of the documentary on the death of Janet Moses said that it's a crime of love. There's no doubt Janet loved them and that they love Janet. It's recognized there are times when hysteria can take over and people are not in control of their actions, almost like being controlled by a substance. You're not in your right mind. Nobody intended to murder anyone. It wasn't calculated, it wasn't deliberate,

and it was coming from a place of love, not malice. But again, does that matter? She's fucking dead. Do I think it's murder in the first degree no because i don't think they premeditated i don't i genuinely don't think they meant to kill her does that mean it's not murder no but they continued they continued with it she was in distress they were pouring water on her face again and again and whether it wasn't like premeditated but it was sustained it wasn't like oh whoops we dropped something on her and she died, or we gave her this thing and then she had an intense reaction to it and died. It was sustained. They saw the stress

and distress she was under and they carried on. This idea of it being like out of your mind because of this, the mass hysteria, I can get that, but I find it really hard. This doesn't, I don't feel like justice was done in this case in any means for what was done to Janet. Our mate Dr. Helen Craven, the extraordinary religious experiences scholar, is quite emotive in her description of this trial, I think. She likens it to the Salem witch trials, which honestly feels like a bit of a lazy comparison. I know I made it earlier, but talking about the witches, but I think she means that it's like they're on trial for being witches or for like holding subversive beliefs that's not what they're on trial for they're on trial for literally having killed somebody this isn't a

witch hunt exactly and that's what she makes it sound like dr helen craven like i think a lot of the things she says are very considered and intelligent but when she talks about the trial she's like it just got to a point where i couldn't look at them because i'd just start crying and it was just like oh helen shut up maybe you should cry for janet but i i kind of get that if you are a professor of extraordinary religious experiences you probably have to say you believe in them otherwise people aren't going to want to talk to you so i kind of i kind of get it from that place either and she even says at the end of the documentary she's like well we don't know it might have been a market to helen you're not helping anyone helen shut up yeah she's the kind of person i absolutely detest jesus i can't it's hurting so trial, you've got people like Dr. Helen Craven giving this testimony,

and after 20 hours of deliberation, the jury were sympathetic to the family members in the dock. Although five of them were found guilty for manslaughter, not one single one of them faced any prison time. That blows my mind. Even the two ringleaders, Glenys and John, were given six months community detention, which essentially meant that they were allowed to carry on with their lives as normal, but they were given a curfew of nine to six every day. What? Yeah, so you just have to be home in time for The Simpsons. Like, that's your punishment.

I could happily lead my life on a nine to six curfew. That's not a punishment. Basically my dream situation. They also had to carry out 300 hours of community service. Oh, boo hoo. And attend Maori cultural education course. That's my favourite. That's my favourite bit of this whole thing. They were like, no, you're doing it wrong.

This is how you be a person. Oh my God. This is the most bullshit sentencing I've ever heard. So basically what's happened here is they've been held criminally responsible, but they don't seem to have incurred any real punishment at all. The name-suppressed defendants were found not guilty of willful cruelty towards the teenage girl, and the rest of the family, the ones whose names I read out, were all let off with varying hours of community service.

After a coronial inquest, it was determined that lifting practices generally were safe and should continue under the guidance of experts. According to historian Paul Moon, water and simple karakia are used to cleanse a person of a makatu. And they can be submerged in water, but the process is a gentle one and it could be accomplished in a river like some christians do that they get baptized in rivers another traditional method of lifting a makatu is dabbing sweet potatoes on people apparently that's another one um so really nothing as violent as what happened to janet is found anywhere but i think we've talked we've talked about this before. I think in the cult with no

name when we're talking about Palo Mayombe and people are saying that, oh no, but what they're doing isn't a part of our religion. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. Some Christians will look at extremist Christians and say that's not part of our religion. Muslims will look at extremist Muslims and say that's not part of our religion. It doesn't matter. They're getting it from the same place. They're interpreting it in a different way and they're acting out in a different way. Like there's no, I don't know, you can't just be like, well, that's not real. That's not the real made up thing. That's not the problem. That's not the problem.

The bastardization or the subversion of your religion isn't the problem. It's what they're doing with it. That's the problem. Beliefs are conclusions that we draw from our own experience. But surely, in the words of Grant Erston, who was the lead prosecution on the Janet Moses trial, you can't just act on bizarre beliefs and kill someone and nothing is done about it. Grant is correct. Because take out the religion, take out the cultural sensitivity and all of that sort of minefield. If someone had just believed something that as a society, everybody thought was completely mad and they killed somebody,

I'll just lock them away, put them away, section them. We don't wonder about the raving lunatic who's like, oh, I did this because there's a demon in her. They're like, oh, he doesn't really believe in anything though. He's not part of a group of people that believe in that. So he's mental, section him. What was his name? The guy in the Sims family case

who killed his girlfriend because he believed that he was going to protect the world from Satan for a thousand years. He believed that enough to kill his girlfriend and cut out her liver. He went to prison.

Maybe if he'd assigned the census saying that he was part of a, you know, a marginalized group that he could subvert into saying believed that kind of thing. Got away with it. Maybe he'd have got away with it. Janet was buried in a traditional Maori ceremony and the house where she was exercised

was knocked down just months after her death. The lot is still empty. And I just have one final thought on this before we wrap things up. I wonder, you know, people could say looking at this, oh, well, you know, we have to be sensitive to these beliefs, to these genuinely, sincerely held beliefs, the cultural practices, the religious beliefs, and that's the right thing to do. And it was right that they weren't punished because they weren't trying to kill her. Doesn't it seem more to you, like as a person who wants justice and is righteous about these things, that actually they

massively failed this marginalised group because they didn't bother to go after and get justice for someone like Janet, who was murdered. She was a Maori person. She was from this smaller group. They are a minority. But why can't we say then, why was the justice system not willing to go full force and get justice for Janet? Does she not matter? And I wonder, had this happened to a white person, would they not have gone full force, thrown the book at them, the full force of the law gone after to get justice for them? Oh yeah, I really think if it was nine members of or 11 members of a christian family they'd all be in prison they had gone after them and imagine if this maori family had done it to a white person they would have gone oh yeah that's i'm not trying to sort of like race bait what i'm saying is let's

not twist this and say well they were trying to be culturally sensitive and that's very important what about fucking justice and your country's justice system protecting you you can say all you want that this was the right thing to do because it was very difficult and culturally sensitive but janet deserved more than this she deserved justice and she didn't get it and she's got two daughters she's got two and her daughters were like two and four when she died they've grown up completely without a mother because of this and so i think sweeping all of this away and just being like oh well these people you know they're just doing what they believe they're just doing this thing we can't intervene and like exact justice we'll just brush it away and say it's all okay and they can just do some community service

and go to some Maori cultural lessons no Janet deserved justice and that's what should have been given her and it wasn't and i think you could say it was cultural sensitivity, you could say it was apathy towards a minority woman being murdered. Because that's what happened. That is it. And actually, I'd like to say a massive thank you to our Facebook group. I never really thought it would turn into a research resource, but that's exactly what it's been.

Twice now. But especially for this case, I got put in touch with loads of people who know a lot more about Maori culture than I do and it was really really helpful with the research so thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your information it's made such a huge difference that is week one of week one Halloween Halloween and we will be back next week with more terrifying eye g eye-sucking stories and all that. But until then, if you would like to follow us, you can do on social media. We are on Twitter, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, at RedHandedThePod. And if you'd like to go, you know, just that one step further and help support the show, you can do so on Patreon.

And here are a couple of people who have done so this week. So we have Marie Harris. We have Amy H. Sturgis, we have Sarah Edwards or Sarah Edwards, Shatoya Green, Alex Ankerson, Amy Gibbs, Tegan Parks, Katie Douglas, Chelsea Wainerski, Bogged Down, Celine Singley and Susan Adams. So thank you guys very much. Thank you so much. Yeah, we will see you next week. See you next week for Halloween episode two. Bye. Bye. So get this, the Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile.

Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes.

She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. Aie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't.

I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained.

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