In 1993, Joan Vollmer died during a 4-day exorcism. There was no justice.

No one heard Joan Vollmer screaming. Begging. Crying for help.

Her torture, over the course of four days, happened at her farmhouse in the tiny town of Antwerp in rural Victoria.

The closest neighbour was kilometres away, and besides, it was some of the neighbours encouraging the abuse.

Listen: To what happened to Joan Vollmer. Post continues below.

Because in 1993, the 49-year-old was subjected to an exorcism at the hands of her husband and members of the local Christian fundamentalist community.

Despite a history of schizophrenia and a hospital stay just a few years prior, when Joan started exhibiting strange behaviours — dancing outside, behaving like a dog and a pig, and using provocative language that was unlike hers — Ralph Vollmer's first thought was possession, not mental illness.

Instead of admitting her to hospital, he called his neighbours John and Leanne Reichenbach and their spiritual leader, 78-year-old Leah Clugston, (who'd been expelled from her church for her beliefs), for guidance.

It was decided that Joan had 10 demons in her body, and the only way to save her was to expel them.

Ralph tried to handle things on his own first; he tied her to their bed and denied her food and water. She screamed throughout the night.

Leanne Reichenbach came to the house, and so did two young men — 22-year-old local green-keeper Matthew Nuske, and 28-year-old grain harvester David Klinger (who travelled to help from South Australia). Both were church members, with the former called in for no other reason than his mother believed him to have "special powers" that could help.

Together, these four people subjected Joan to horrific abuse.

They tied her to a chair using her own stockings.

They used a hammer to smash her possessions and her flowerbeds.

They slammed her head against a wall, slapped her and eventually, on the fourth day, they sat on her head, chest and neck to "squeeze" the demons out of her body.

It was during that final assault that she died. But the group believed they'd won; that the demons had been released, and Joan would be resurrected.

Police were finally called two days later on February 1st, 1993, and officers arrived to find the group calmly eating lunch while Joan's decomposing body lay nearby.

Watch: Joan Vollmer died during an horrific exorcism. Post continues below.

No one was arrested for three months. In fact, a week after Joan's death, the media were invited by Ralph to attend his wife's funeral.

He believed they were going to witness a miracle.

"God has made a solemn promise that she will rise on the day of the funeral, and he wants us to witness it," he told AAP journalists at the time.

When she didn't rise from the dead and her body was lowered into her grave, he began to cry. The local media were there to snap pictures of him weeping.

Arrests, a trial and a baffling sentence.

Eventually, police charged Vollmer, Nuske, Reichenbach and Klingner, with manslaughter.

They'd all given detailed descriptions to the police of the goings-on inside the remote farmhouse, but their sentences didn't reflect the brutality of their crimes.

Initially, a magistrate ruled that there was insufficient evidence for the four to stand trial, because of a pathologist's finding that even though Joan likely died from a cardiac arrest caused by compression to the neck, there was no certainty — it could have also been something like an epileptic fit or an asthma attack.

The decision was overturned, and during the trial the court heard that Ralph had "no intention of causing harm to his wife," and that the four genuinely thought they were harming the demons, not her.

A court reporter for The Canberra Times wrote at the time, "There can be few criminal trials which hear a frequent answer to the question 'why did you do this?' Is: 'The Lord told me.'"

The harshest sentence went to Reichenbach, who served four months in prison for manslaughter and false imprisonment.

Klinger served three months for the same charges and both Nuske and Vollmer received suspended sentences for false imprisonment and reckless injury — neither served time in prison.

Judge Graeme Crossley described the case as "bizarre and quite extraordinary."

As was reported in the local papers prior to their sentencing, he told the court that he was agreeing to the "highly unusual" step of granting bail to convicted people, because of their "prior good character and the exceptional circumstances of this case".

Ralph went on to marry again. We don't know what became of the other three perpetrators.

But we do know that Joan Vollmer died a horrific, torturous slow death.

That she cried out for help, and was aware of large portions of the torture.

That she suffered. That she was in pain.

And yet, the people that subjected her to that horrific death were barely punished for it.

We're not talking about a crime from centuries ago; this was 1993.

Where is the outrage? The newspaper columns berating the decision? The condemnation from fellow Australians?

This story appears to be little known. Barely remembered.

Where is the justice for Joan?

Feature image: Herald Sun/Daily Telegraph.