A Church of England parish in Sheffield has given compensation to a Gay man who was subjected to an “exorcism” at an “encounter God weekend” in 2014, The Times has reported.
37-year-old Matthew Drapper was a volunteer at the Anglican-Baptist joint congregation of St Thomas Philadelphia at the time of the incident.
The exorcism was carried out by a married couple acting as prayer leaders, who told him he was under “demonic possession” and that he needed to purge the “sexual impurity” from his body. They said they could “see the demons leaving” while standing over him.
“Looking back it seems like something out of a horror movie,” Drapper told The Times.
He left the church in 2016, and made a formal complaint three years later.
Drapper was initially told there was “no evidence” to pursue his complaint, but a Barnardo’s review commissioned by the Diocese of Sheffield in 2021 reported it was a “supported fact” that Drapper was subject to a prayer session, which was “in our view a form of exorcism”.
“It is our view that the session took place as described by [Mr Drapper] and prayers were administered with the intention of changing his sexual identity,” the report concluded.
The report emboldened Drapper to pursue a legal case against the church, leading to a five figure out-of-court settlement.
St Thomas Philadelphia did not respond to The Times’ request for comment, but in response to the Barnado’s report in 2021, said: “We have accepted the outcomes of the first investigation and are saddened that one of our community was not cared for in the way we would have liked. We sincerely apologised to them for this.”
