I believe in voodoo. Or rather good and evil spirits people of many faiths believe in. Be it Haitian voodoo, Latin American Santeria or Brazilian Candomble. What I cannot believe is how a mother of any faith could harm her own child for religious purposes. Just minutes from where I grew up in Queens, New York, police say a woman named Marie Lauradin poured a flammable liquid on her 6-year-old daughter and placed her naked inside a ring of fire. Ignoring her cries for help as she sustained life-threatening burns, Lauradin and the girl's grandmother washed her and put her to bed. (read the story)

I believe the mother had to be possessed herself to do something so vile. I shutter at the thought of a 6-yr-old me looking at my mother through flames as my flesh melted. Who, if not she, could protect me?

The Associated Press reports that the Lauradin was practicing a ritual named "Loa." But, my research indicates that "loa" is the voodoo name for spirits. According to the New York Daily News, Lauradin was trying to drive out a "loa" from her daughter. Even if that young girl was as evil as Macauley Caulkin's character in the movie "The Good Son" or Linda Blair's in "The Exorcist", why didn't something trigger in her maternal psyche to use some other form of "cleansing" that didn't involve physical harm? Had she tried something along those lines that didn't suffice? Did she feel her own life or sanity was in danger because of her own daughter? Only she can answer these questions but let's hope the criminal justice system does more than punish. I hope those in the system try to understand the mechanics behind her belief to prevent something like this from happening again.

I'm praying for more understanding in light of this horrible incident and my own run-in with the religion.

I've seen the effects of voodoo firsthand. My husband and I helped clean and paint the Vailsburg teen center near our home in New Jersey 2 summers ago, after it was turned over by the nuns who lived there. The heat intensified a nauseating smell as we cleaned the kitchen. The teen center director explained that a few of the Haitian nuns wanted the nunnery to be used by the adjacent Catholic school instead of the community organization. Before leaving for good, the nuns were seen yelling and chanting at the building in Creole. When the community group went into the building after, they found a sink full of fish heads that looked and smelled liked it'd been there for days. And flies covered the stairway hall though there are no windows and the walls are solid concrete. A priest had to be called in to exorcise and bless the center. The fish were removed before I got there but the smell was unbearable. The director then told me to see for myself. I walked to the double doors of the stairway hall he spoke of and, sure enough, it was covered floor to ceiling with flies. So much so that they could not open those doors. And these were nuns!

There are still people who believe voodoo doesn't exist. The Canadian group Consultants on Religious Tolerance put the number of people who practice some form of spirit worship at more than 60 million. It's your choice to think voodoo and possessed children are found just in movies but what happened to the daughter of Marie Lauradin is real. And that's no laughing matter.

Shanida Smith Carter is a television producer and writer in New York City. She also teaches college courses on the Latin American and Caribbean Diaspora. She lives in New Jersey with her husband. BBN looks forward to her coverage and perspective.