Child Sacrifice

The topic no one wants to talk about or address. If you don't see reality you will never be in a position to help. This page contains graphic and real images.

Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please or appease a deity, supernatural beings, or sacred social order, tribal, group or national loyalties in order to achieve a desired result. As such, it is a form of human sacrifice. Child sacrifice is thought to be an extreme extension of the idea that the more important the object of sacrifice, the more devout the person rendering it.

Project Rescue Children's 2024 documentary highlighting real child sacrifice stories as told be families, witnesses and law enforcement in Uganda.

Face to face with the core issue of child sacrifice... the witch doctor who is explaining that approximately 400 children in his village alone have been sacrificed.

All images copyright PRC 2024

Child sacrifice opens the door for illegal organ trade and trafficking including from children. Organized crime groups and individual organ brokers exploit the situation and, as a result, black markets are becoming more numerous and organized organ trafficking is expanding worldwide. By presenting a global picture of child organ trafficking, we emphasizes that child organ trafficking is no longer a myth but a reality which has to be addressed. It argues that the international efforts against child organ trafficking and trafficking in human beings for organ removal have failed to address child organ trafficking adequately.

Rural districts near Kampala, Uganda's capital, have been badly affected by kidnappings of vulnerable people, children in particular, for sacrificial purposes. There are two kinds of child sacrifice in Uganda. The most popular of the two involves abduction, murder, and the removal of certain body parts, including blood. Those parts are taken to the witchdoctor who uses them for remedies and spells. The other form is usually committed by family members of the child, so it’s much less publicised. Children are abducted by witch doctors who sacrifice them in order to provide their clients with success, prosperity, and good fortune in business.

All images copyright PRC 2024

All images copyright PRC 2024

In Uganda when the worst drought hit Uganda, cases of ritual murders increased. The sorcerers believe that only human sacrifices can save the country from impending hunger. Although Liberians formally are Christians, most of them actually profess the traditional African religions associated with the cult of voodoo. In Tanzania, as in some other African countries, there is a real hunt for albinos. It is believed that their hair, flesh and organs have magical powers, and sorcerers use them to make potions. Special demand is for dried genitalia: it is believed that they can save from AIDS. Every five years, the Gadhimai festival is held in Nepal, during which more than 400,000 pets are sacrificed to the goddess Gadhimai. Human sacrifices in the country, of course, are officially banned, but still practiced.

Human sacrifices are not uncommon in the remote provinces of India. So, in the state of Jharkhand there is a sect called "mudkatva", whose adherents are representatives of agricultural castes. Members of the sect kidnap people, decapitate them and bury their heads in the fields to increase yields. Ritual murders are fixed in the state almost every year. In 2013, in Uttar Pradesh, a man killed his 8-month-old son to sacrifice him to the goddess Kali. Allegedly the goddess herself ordered him to take away his own child's life. In March 2017 in Karnataka, relatives of a seriously ill person turned to the sorcerer for help. To heal the sick, the sorcerer kidnapped and sacrificed a 10-year-old girl.

Most of the population of the Caribbean country of Haiti adhere to the Voodoo religion, which practices human sacrifices. Previously, there was an eerie custom: each family had to give its newborn first-born as a sacrifice to sharks to propitious predators. In African Nigeria, sacrifices occur quite often. In the south of the country, the sale of organs that are used in a variety of magical rituals is common. In the city of Lagos are often found disfigured human corpses with a torn out liver or carved eyes. Most children are at risk of becoming victims of sorcerers or witch doctors, as well as albinos.