Mom Faces 25 years Jail over Daughter’s Death in Church During Exorcism

A California mother has been charged over the death of her three-year-old daughter who last year died from asphyxiation after having an exorcism performed on her by her pastor grandfather at the family’s tiny Pentecostal church in San Jose.

Arely Naomi Proctor died in September last year after her mother Claudia Hernandez, who goes by a different name on social media, and her pastor grandfather performed an exorcism, according to police.

The event happened at a small Pentecostal church in San Jose, California.

Court reports linked the death of the 3-year-old girl to an attempted exorcism conducted on her last September.

On September 24 at 6:30 pm, Arely Naomi Proctor was brought to Iglesia Apostoles Y Profetas by her mother, Claudia Hernandez, and her uncle. The mother claimed that her daughter was “possessed by a demon” because she would wake up periodically in the middle of the night screaming and crying.

It was reported that the girl’s mother, uncle, and Rene Huezo, the church’s pastor and the girl’s grandfather, tried to conduct an exorcism on the child. She died about 12 hours later.

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The police report states that Hernandez tried “to stick her finger down the victim’s throat and squeezed the victim’s neck to induce vomiting” in order to cast out the demon. She also attempted to open Proctor’s mouth with her hands. When Huezo arrived at the church to assist Hernandez and her brother in praying over the girl, the three of them reportedly took turns holding the child down by her neck, abdomen, and legs to induce vomiting until Proctor “vomited a clear/purple liquid.” The incident left the girl with injuries around “her eyes, throat/neck, and chest.”

As stated in the report, Hernandez (the mother) called the police around 8:12 pm and reported that her daughter died at the church between 6:00-6:30 pm following the exorcism. The child was pronounced deceased by Valley Medical Center at 8:59 pm.

In January, Hernandez was arrested on felony child abuse charges after The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner’s office ruled Proctor’s death a homicide.

The police report stated that no “lifesaving measures” were performed to help Proctor and that her last meal was the night before her death, in which she was only given “about 6 oz of water.”

Pastor Huezo recently explained that they were trying to follow Biblical instructions on casting out demons. “If you read the Bible, you’ll see that Jesus casts away demons and made sick people healthy again. It’s not when I want to do it; it’s when God, in his will, wants to heal the person. The preacher is like an instrument of God; what we do is what God says”.

Days before her arrest in January, Hernandez addressed her daughter’s death in a video on her YouTube channel.

“I could sit here and be negative … be sad about the whole situation that she passed away. But it’s like, there is no point because it is what it is. It’s many reasons why God took her. What if something would have happened to her, what if she would have had a sickness? It is what it is. I gotta be positive about the situation. You know, like at least she’s not suffering. That’s what I’m thankful for, that she’s not gonna grow up in that world, like in that world we live in”.

The mother was the only person arrested in connection to Proctor’s death. She is currently behind bars with no bail. She faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.