On Tuesday, a judge found Sarah Ferguson not guilty of second-degree murder, but guilty of first-degree manslaughter, first-degree assault, and first-degree gang assault for her role in a mass beating that left her 19-year-old half-brother Lucas Leonard dead and her 17-year-old half-brother Christopher Leonard severely injured.

The father of two boys beaten and whipped in a group counseling session last year testified on Wednesday that his sons were attacked by members of their church because they had been suspected of sexually molesting their sister and their half-sister’s children. “Blows that hurt drive off evil,” Bruce Leonard told the court, by way of explanation.

The murder trial of Sarah Ferguson began in Utica, New York, last week. Ferguson is accused of participating in a group counseling session at the Word of Life Church that left her 19-year-old half-brother Lucas Leonard dead and her other half-brother, Christopher, mutilated. Prosecutors said the beatings began when Tiffanie Irwin, the church pastor, allegedly accused the boys of using witchcraft, making a voodoo doll of the pastor, and sexually abusing their siblings and nieces.

In Oneida County Court on Monday, Tiffanie Irwin, the pastor of the Word of Life Christian Church, in New Hartford, New York, where a teenage boy was fatally beaten and his brother assaulted in October, turned down a plea deal, opting instead to go to trial. She is charged with second-degree murder.

On Wednesday, seven members of the Word of Life Christian Church plead not-guilty in the beating death of Lucas Leonard and the assault of his younger brother Christopher Leonard in New Hartford, New York last month.

Christopher Leonard, the 17-year-old boy whose older brother Lucas died in a brutal beating the two of them received last week at the Word of Life church in New Hartford, New York, will testify against at least one of his assailants, the New York Times reports.

Word of Life Christian Church, the upstate New York congregation where two teenaged brothers were allegedly brutally beaten by their parents and others, one fatally, had a creepy reputation among its neighbors in New Hartford. According to one former member, the goings on inside were even more chilling than the rumors suggested.

The New York Times has an extensive piece documenting the various, conflicting accounts of the beating death of Lucas Leonard at the cultish Word of Life church in Chadwicks, New York, on Monday.

According to New Hartford police, an upstate New York couple accused of beating their 19-year-old son to death inside a church allegedly did so during a counseling session, “in the hopes that each would confess to prior sins and ask for forgiveness.”

This week, Bruce and Deborah Leonard were charged with allegedly beating their son to death inside the Word of Life Christian Church in Chadwicks, New York. According to neighbors, there was always something a little creepy about that church, even before the alleged murder.