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Originally published in 2013, VICE’s Teenage Exorcists documentary gives a look into the world of Bible-thumping teens bent on saving souls and exorcising demons in Phoenix, Arizona.

Then-18-year-old Brynne Larson and her friends, Tess and Savannah Sherkenback (18 and 21, respectively, at the time), seemingly prey on the broken and the traumatized, convincing them they have the devil in them and require a special form of exorcism, delivered by Brynne’s father, a failed televangelist named Reverend Bob.

Charlet Duboc of VICE traveled to Ukraine back in 2013 to accompany the girls and Reverend Bob on their tour. Their efforts were aimed at “helping” or “saving” recovering drug addicts and heavily-abused women, some of whom they claimed to have “sexually transmitted demons.”

“This town is unique in the fact that only coal miners live here, so there have been a lot of drug addicted people,” said Andrey Tishchenko, head of the New Generation Church, who hosted Reverend Bob and the Teenage Exorcists. “It’s important to understand that we use exorcism specifically to release people from their addictions.”

“There is a common belief that drug addiction is purely physical, but the reality is that medical centers can’t help people with addiction,” he continued. “And now we’ve built a network of 60 rehabilitation centers all over Ukraine, where we place addicts and where specially trained ministers pray for them.”

Through a “spiritual warfare” of sorts, many of these victims start to truly believe they’re possessed by the devil. 

One such woman was named Olga Lakut. After opening up—on stage, in front of a massive crowd and recorded for the media, of course—Reverend Bob asked, “Are you ready to fight the devil?”

He then begins to shove the bible into her back, quite forcefully. Eventually, as if knowing it was her only way out of this public exhibition, she began screaming, stomping, shaking, and groaning. The sisters placed the cross on Olga’s head while two men held her down.

When asked about Reverand Bob and the entire exorcism process afterward, Olga confessed: “To be honest, I didn’t know exactly that he was an exorcist. We were told that he is a servant of freedom and healing.”

Originally, she’d gone there in hopes of healing her varicose veins. However, Olga added, she started to realize how her childhood trauma was impacting her life. 

“There was a feeling of uncleanliness and shame,” she admitted. “When Bob Larson told me to repeat after him the words of disownment, as far as I understood, something started to happen to me completely unexpectedly. And when I looked into his eyes at that moment, I realized that it was no longer me, but something else looking at him through my eyes.”

She told Charlet that she’d felt disfigured and uneasy, but after the “exorcism,” she felt relieved, light, and unburdened. 

Whether Reverand Bob and his teenage allies really helped these traumatized people is up for debate. However, it does seem like the three teens truly believe they’re saving their victims.  Of course, the three privileged women say they’ve never experienced abuse themselves, so they don’t actually know what it’s like to be in that vulnerable mental state. 

Nevertheless, they credit their lack of personal trauma to their sacrifices. The girls refrain from witchcraft, sex, drugs, violence, and, well…Twilight and Harry Potter. 

After she tried her own hand at it, joining the sisters during their exorcism process on another woman, Charlet of VICE summed up the experience perfectly: “I mean, I obviously didn’t just exorcise a demon. I just made a woman cry and get angry and have some release, hopefully, by screaming and crying.”

As for the props, like the Bible and cross, they were merely symbolic.

“All the women who were called out were abused,” Charlet said. “They were physically abused by their father or their boyfriend. And then these women are worked up into a state of hysteria, mostly by being held in a stronghold by two big, burly Ukrainian men. I just think that’s a form of abuse in itself.”

You can watch the full documentary on the teenage exorcists below.