Clearly accusing you of condoning it was going over the top, but just as clearly, he's having difficulty understanding why you and others do not share his outrage. Many people do indeed commit heinous acts under cover of religion, and there are indeed those who commit heinous acts in the sincere conviction that they are behaving righteously. He is outraged by this and is in turn seeking to provoke outrage in others, a common first step in building pressure for change. Those who criticize such efforts run the risk of being characterized as apologists for the status quo; neutralizing the voices of reason is also a fairly common tactic in pushing for change.

Given that this is a civil suit rather than a case involving criminal law, different standards may apply. I have to wonder why criminal charges weren't filed in the first place. There may be something in that fact that explains the decision.

Civil court is about compensating damage. The plaintiff sought and won actual damages for pain and suffering, but it was clear that the only physical damage was some bruising and rug burn, nothing lasting or impairing. Thus the Texas SC's comment that the case "was not about her physical injuries." It revolved around her claim of psychological injury.

http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/HTMLopinion.asp?OpinionID=2001228

With regard to that claim, a big part of the plaintiff's argument was not just the restraint and exorcism, but the counsel and teaching she had received from church about demons and demon possession, counsel that had given her nightmares thinking she might have been or was at risk of being possessed. THAT counsel does fall under 1st amendment privilege - she wasn't bound or restrained, she was there of her own free will trying to understand what this "demon" thing was all about. Plaintiff testimony in the trial made it difficult to impossible to parse out what part of her anguish came from being restrained and what part came from being willingly fed religious nonsense about demons and demon-possession.

The appeals court had found in favor of the plaintiff on the basis of "estoppel", which is basically a legal term that means you can't adopt two different conflicting legal strategies to win your case - as for example claiming innocence but saying that, if you did it, it was self-defense. The church had initially allowed the plaintiff's suit to move forward rather than claim 1st Amendment protection because they agreed they could not use the 1st amendment as a shield against physical damage claims. However, they later cited the 1st amendment as a defense against the claim of psychological harm, arguing that IF it occurred, it occurred as a result of consensual participation in religious instruction. The Appeals court ruled that they could not do that because they had not made that claim as their initial defense argument against the physical damage claim.

The Texas SC basically said they could make that argument, that the physical and psychological damage claims were two different things. It went on to say that, since the psychological harm claim was deeply intertwined with religiously protected behavior - the crazy, but consensual, counselling and religious teaching - the church could not be held liable for it.