Senegal: fake marabout referred to prosecution for filming and blackmailing rapes committed under pretext of djinn-consultation and curse-removal

Proceedings

1. 2025-10-20 · referred to prosecution (charges: rape, charlatanism/'charlatanisme', unlawful distribution of personal data)

   Gendarmerie investigation, referred to the Prosecutor of the Pikine-Guédiawaye Court, Senegal. P. S. Seck, a mason from Linguère posing as a marabout, and an accomplice Y. Sagna were referred to the Pikine-Guédiawaye prosecutor on 20 October 2025 following a gendarmerie investigation. Investigators recovered more than 75 obscene videos and photographs from Seck documenting assaults on women who had come to him believing themselves cursed or seeking mystical treatment for marital and health crises. One documented victim, a restaurant owner, consulted Seck in August 2024 during a marital crisis after a neighbor recommended him; he told her he needed to consult his djinns before he could help her. Of the women identifiable from the recordings, only two agreed to testify in the proceeding. As of the sources consulted, no trial verdict is yet reported; the matter stood at the referral-to-prosecution stage.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• claimed ability to consult djinns and to identify and remove curses (maraboutage) afflicting women in personal crisis
• 'mystical baths' and rituals offered as the ostensible treatment, used to obtain access and compliance
• covert filming of the assaults by an accomplice, then implicit threat of exposure through the resulting recordings, which the plan's own taxonomy notes as an aggravating instrument of coercion beyond the original spiritual pretext