'Witch' child cruelty trio guilty
Three people have been found guilty of cruelty charges over an eight-year-old girl they had believed to be a witch.
The girl's aunt, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of four charges of child cruelty.
Sita Kisanga, 35, of Hackney, east London, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of three charges of aiding and abetting child cruelty.
Kisanga's brother Sebastian Pinto, 33, of Stoke Newington, London, was found guilty of aiding and abetting cruelty.
The two women were found not guilty of conspiracy to murder. The three were remanded in custody and were warned by Judge Christopher Moss that they faced jail sentences.
Beating ordeal
The child, now 10, had told the trial how she was put into a zip-up laundry bag and would be "thrown away" into a river from a third floor flat.
The cruelty started at the beginning of 2003 when a boy told his mother that the girl had been using witchcraft.
The child was cut with a knife, beaten with a belt and shoe and had chilli peppers rubbed in her eyes to "beat the devil out of her" during her ordeal at a flat in Hackney, east London.
The orphan, who was brought to Britain in 2002 by her 38-year-old aunt from Angola after her parents died, was beaten until she was made to admit she had been doing witchcraft.
'Horrific' case
Det Supt Chris Bourlet, head of the Metropolitan Child Abuse Command, said: "This was a distressing case involving a vulnerable child who suffered at the hands of adults who should have cared for and protected her."
Mary Marsh, director of the NSPCC, said: "This is a horrific case, which has exposed beliefs held by some in the African community that can lead to child abuse."
Cultural relativism is bunk. All cultures are not equally as good as each other. Some are stupid and wicked.
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