Just read this news article and had to take a moment to remember what century it was!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080423/od_nm/witchcraft_dc;_ylt=ApiEaPYi79HfwBcVQYxVRKOs0NUE

By Joe Bavier
Wed Apr 23, 1:07 PM ET



KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

beware of the butt bandits....they are even worse!!!

someone stole my tits once.my bras just didnt fit the same.

that's my story and i'm sticking to it.......it was sorcery!!!

I had something similair happen in really cold water! Now I know the REAL reason!

you mean it wasn't the pool???

Whom ever said Fact is often times stranger than Fiction really summed up THIS article for me!

OK, have to post this.

'Shrinkage' clip from Seinfeld:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm3F9piwnTU

Lorena Bobbitt started this religion lol

might hire them for some of my exs lol

i guess all your exs must live in texas.

lol not all

Brings a whole new meaning to head shrinker.

They would have won the case but the prosecutor was a D I C K!