As many as 600 witches put a hex — a curse — on convicted rapist Brock Turner, his father, and case judge Aaron Persky on Tuesday night, June 7, 2016. Brock Turner, a student at Stanford University, raped an unconscious, intoxicated woman; his father wrote that a prison sentences was a steep price to pay for “20 minutes of action”; Judge Persky gave Turner only 6 months in jail (a sentence already cut in half), saying Turner had “less moral culpability” since he was drunk, and that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him.”

Witches from around the world, mostly women but some men, organized on Facebook to coordinate the hex. It was launched by Melanie Elizabeth Hexen, a midwife and bellydance teacher from rural Iowa. She said, “We all felt so much injustice and anger and sadness and the need to connect on a psychological level with other people who felt the same and could do something about it.”

Hexen recommended the following curse:

In the most holy name of Hecate, the Goddess of Life and Death, She who holds the key to the underworld, let this rapist meet justice. Let him be destroyed.

Brock Allen Turner we hex you.
You will be impotent
You will know constant pain of pine needles in your guts
Food will bring you no sustenance
In water, your lungs will fail you
Sleep will only bring nightmares
Shame will be your mantle.
You will meet justice.
My witchcraft is strong. Our witchcraft is powerful. The spell will work. So Mote it be.

One of the male witches explained his process: “I lit a seven-day candle, glued his picture to it, and wrapped it with cording. I meditated and offered blessings to the Goddess, specifically about [how] the lack of justice in his sentence caused harm to women. I then ‘hexed’ the harm onto the candle to be burned out.”

Others incorporated feces, urine, menstrual blood, spit, and other substances into the ceremony — smeared on an image of Turner before burning.

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