One mother's struggle to get her unruly son to behave culminated in an attempted exorcism at a South Seattle church last week, a police report says.

On January 9th, police officers were dispatched to the Safeway in the 3800 block of Rainier Ave S—north of Columbia City—to take an assault report from a juvenile boy. When officers arrived, the report says, they "immediately recognized him as a problem child we deal with often," Officer Azrielle Johnson wrote in the police report. "His mother can not control him. He is violent and unmanageable."

In order to tame her problem child, the report says the boy's mother brought him to a church on Rainier Ave S and S Orcas earlier in the evening. The boy told police that while he was was at the church, "a group of males slapped him, scratched him, and hit him."

Police contacted the boy's mother about the incident, and she told officers she believes "her son was possessed by the devil." The boy's mother said that she took her son to church "to have the devil brought out of him" and admitted to asking "the men of the church to do what they needed to get the devil out of her son."

According to the report, the men brought the boy into a room in the church, circled him, and began chanting while they hit him.

Police took the report and sent the boy home with his mother.