Hackney 'witch-child' torture case

Cited record

Sources

BBC News (2005) 'Witch child cruelty trio guilty', BBC News. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ uk_news/england/london/4607435.stm (Accessed: 29 June 2024). [archived copy]

Three people have been convicted over the torture of an eight-year-old girl they thought was a witch... The Old Bailey heard the orphan was beaten, cut and had chilli peppers rubbed in her eyes to 'beat the devil out of her', in Hackney, east London... The girl's aunt was found guilty of child cruelty charges while Sita Kisanga and her brother Sebastian Pinto were convicted of aiding and abetting... The cruelty started at the beginning of 2003 when a boy told his mother that the girl had been practising witchcraft. It was an accusation the woman believed... Jurors were told that the child was cut with a knife and beaten with a belt and shoe to 'beat the devil out of her' during her ordeal at a flat in Hackney, east London... During police interviews, the girl said Kisanga had cornered her in the kitchen and told her 'today you die'... The court also heard the girl, now 10, was put into a laundry bag and believed she would be 'thrown away' into a river... Patricia May, prosecuting, said: 'This child was treated as a scapegoat by family members, tormented, subjected to all sorts of assaults which must have caused her considerable pain, fear and distress.'