How media whipped up a racist witch-hunt 

Despite the lurid headlines, police dismiss claims of child sacrifice 

Ian Cobain and Vikram Dodd
Saturday June 25, 2005
The Guardian 
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1514334,00.html

The front-page headline leaping from the newsstands could not have been more
clear: "Children sacrificed in London churches, say police". At the same
moment, the BBC was reporting that detectives trying to investigate the
ritual murder of children accused of witchcraft were facing a "wall of
silence". Lord Stevens, the recently retired commissioner of the
Metropolitan police, was weighing in to damn African churches, which he said
were "obsessed by witchcraft, exorcism and evil spirits". 
"We must", Lord Stevens railed in a Sunday newspaper column, "stop this
madness costing children's lives." 

It looked, at a casual glance, like an open-and-shut case: Scotland Yard
must have investigated the ritual abuse of African children, found that
significant numbers of them had endured violent exorcisms, and uncovered
evidence of children being trafficked into this country to be slaughtered. 

Nothing is further from the truth. The police had conducted no such
investigation, have scant evidence of ritual abuse of African children and -
with the important exception of the young boy known as Adam, whose torso was
found floating in the Thames four years ago - have seen nothing to suggest
that any child has been sacrificed. 

Media fascination with the "exorcism scandal" continued last week, however,
reaching an almost hysterical pitch and leaving one police officer feeling
he was "in the middle of a medieval witch-hunt". Others wondered whether
they were edging towards "another Orkneys" - an alleged child abuse scandal
on the islands that never was. 

The tumult was triggered by a leak to the BBC of a report examining
attitudes towards child abuse among ethnic minorities in east London. The
report had been commissioned by Scotland Yard after the official inquiry
into the death five years ago of Victoria Climbié. Back then, the Yard
hailed the research project as "an exciting and ground-breaking" attempt to
discover more about the way in which cultural and religious values influence
opinions about abuse. "It was intended to open a dialogue, to give us a list
of perceptions," a senior officer said last week. "It was not an
investigation." 

After 10 months of research, Perdeep Gill, a social worker, and Mor Dioum, a
Senegal-born civil rights worker, delivered their 85-page report earlier
this month. 

During a meeting with members of an African community, the researchers had
learned of a belief that children were being abused during exorcism rituals
at Pentecostal churches. Many such churches have sprung up in Britain's
inner cities in recent years, some taking over shops or small factories,
others simply gathering in churchgoers' living rooms. 

Some pastors, according to people interviewed, were denouncing children in
the congregation as witches, or declaring them to be possessed by demons,
then forcing them into exorcisms in which they were starved and beaten, or
had objects forced down their throats. At least one person is said to have
told the researchers he had heard about children being smuggled into Britain
to be sacrificed. 

No evidence was offered to support these claims, and none was needed: Ms
Gill and Mr Dioum had been asked to gauge beliefs, not establish facts, and
the Yard believes there is no spate of ritual murders to investigate. 

Shortly after the leak, however, came a flurry of media accounts of "a
shocking Scotland Yard report" which was said to detail the way in which
young African boys, "unblemished by circumcision", were being smuggled
through ports and airports to be slaughtered during the concoction of
"powerful spells". One BBC reporter described the report as "absolutely
chilling". The corporation says it stands fully behind its reporting. 

Many newspapers, meanwhile, were reminding their readers that Scotland Yard
had disclosed a few weeks earlier that 299 African boys had vanished from
London school rolls. 

Few mentioned that the police also said they were highlighting an
administrative problem, and had no reason to believe any missing child,
other than "Adam", had come to any harm. 

African church ministers and their congregations were outraged. "There is a
lot of anger - we are taking a hit for something we are not engaged in,"
said the Rev Nims Obunge, the minister of an evangelical church in north
London. 

Backlash


Lee Jasper, an adviser to London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, turned his fire
on the police, accusing them of being responsible for "a very dangerous
report" which was resulting in "a racist witch-hunt of African communities".


Amid this backlash, senior officers decided not to publish the report,
fearing that to do so would unleash more lurid reporting and burn more
bridges to African communities. 

Nevertheless, many at the Yard remain convinced that it was a worthwhile
research project. Indeed, the evidence of a degree of superstition among
some Africans in Britain is obvious to anyone who reads the Voice, the
national black newspaper. Each week the paper carries up to two pages of
display advertisements for self-styled marabouts and psychics, men like
"Professor Ki Kee", who offers help with "voodoo and witchcraft" from his
council flat in Peckham, or "Professor Baraka", who offers to assist
"victims of black magic" from his house in Nottingham. 

Nor is there any doubt that there has been a rapid growth in belief in child
witches in some parts of Africa. Aid workers in Congo, in particular, say
they are alarmed by the number of children accused of being witches who have
been cast into the streets after denunciation by fundamentalist Protestant
pastors. 

Save the Children saw little evidence of this when it first established a
large presence in Kinshasa, the capital, in 1994. But by 1999 it was so
concerned that it conducted a survey, which showed that between 30% and 40%
of the estimated 70,000 street children in just one area of the city had
been abandoned by their families after being accused of witchcraft. The
charity believes the phenomenon has grown steadily since. 

"At the root of this problem is poverty, pure and simple," a spokesman said.
"This is a country that has been deeply traumatised by war, disease and
corruption, and where many people cannot afford to look after all of their
children. One of the few growth industries is Pentecostal churches, which
are offering salvation after years of bloodshed." 

Too many pastors, he added, were encouraging a belief in child witches, and
too many desperate parents were seizing upon a reason to have one less mouth
to feed. 

To date, however, just two "witchcraft" abuse cases have come before the
British courts. Victoria Climbié, who was brought to London from the Ivory
Coast by her aunt, suffered terrible abuse before being taken to a church in
south London where the pastor decided that she was possessed. The beatings
continued and she died soon afterwards. 

Three people are awaiting sentence after being convicted this month of the
abuse of an eight-year-old Angolan orphan. They starved the child, who can
be identified only as Child B, struck and cut her, and rubbed chilli in her
eyes in an attempt to drive out the "devil" within. 

Richard Hoskins, an African religions specialist at King's College London,
who advises the police, said he was aware of seven other recent cases where
social workers had intervened: five in London, one in the south-west of
England and one in the north-west. All involved people from Congo, he said. 

There is also the deeply disturbing case of Adam, whose torso was dragged
from the water near Tower Bridge in London in September 2001. He was aged
between four and seven when he died, probably when his throat was cut, and
forensic scientists have pinpointed the area of Nigeria where he was raised.
Nobody has yet been charged with his murder, but detectives are convinced he
was the victim of a ritualistic killing. 

Commander David Johnston, head of child protection at Scotland Yard, said
the police were well aware that "African communities do not tolerate the
abuse of children any more than any other community". The Yard, he said,
needed to know more about occasions when "issues of faith and culture, which
are perfectly acceptable, may cross a boundary into becoming criminal abuse
of children". He also said that "like in any other community, there are some
people who are intent on harming children". 

A seven-strong team of detectives under his command, in an operation named
Project Violet, has been examining past child abuse cases to see whether any
signs of ritualistic violence emerge from the files. While police say that
ritual abuse, like all other forms of child abuse, is probably
under-reported, Commander Johnston is convinced that such cases are "very
rare". 

Exactly how rare may be demonstrated by the child abuse figures from just
one London borough. Over the last two years, social workers in Haringey have
come across two children suffering ritual abuse, including Child B. Over the
same period they have been alerted to about 6,000 cases of children in need,
of whom about 650 were children in high need of protection, many of them
suffering serious physical or sexual abuse. 

Mr Obunge said it was this that most angered his congregation - a huge
amount of attention being paid to allegations, largely unproven, of a
relatively small amount of abuse by African people. "And it isn't gullible
people who are to blame," he said. "It's a gullible press." 

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