The investigation had taken nearly three years to reach this point. Was it really about to collapse in failure? The door behind the glass screen swung open, and in walked Kingsley Ojo. He was flanked by security guards, one of whom locked the door after him.
Ojo was a big, heavyset man with an incongruously thin moustache. He looked straight at me and we held each other’s gaze. Was he wondering who I was? Or did he know? With all the press coverage since The Hague, my involvement on the case had hardly been a secret.
‘All rise!’
As everyone stood, Judge Hardy appeared. Ojo was asked to confirm his name and everyone sat down.
Over the next couple of hours, the prosecution barrister meticulously guided the judge through the dossiers in front of him. His tone was modest and understated. Though much of what he described was dramatic enough, he avoided grand statements and instead heaped fact upon fact, allegation upon allegation, listing them in a quiet, precise, level voice. The impression conveyed by the end was of a mountain of incontrovertible evidence.
Judge Hardy sat hunched slightly forward, watching impassively. Finally, when the barrister was finished, the judge simply stated that the court would be adjourned while he checked that all his paperwork was in order. As we filed out the defence counsel motioned to the prosecution team.
We all reconvened in the corridor, avoiding one another’s eyes, shuffling nervously. Thirty minutes later our barrister emerged from the courtroom and motioned for Will and Nick to join the conference that was already taking place inside. When Will came out again a few minutes later, his shoulders seemed a little less hunched.
‘The defence have taken a pragmatic view,’ he told me quietly. ‘The evidence that was submitted within the time limit is still overwhelming, and they know they won’t succeed in getting him off, so they’ve offered us a deal. Basically, he’ll plead guilty to some of the charges in exchange for us not pushing the ones we have the greatest problems with. He’ll try and get a reduced sentence, and in the process avoid a three-week trial.’
I wasn’t sure whether this was good or not, but it sounded better than I had feared.
‘I’ve insisted that we’ll only go along with this if the conviction states that he’s the mastermind of the trafficking ring,’ Will said. ‘I’m not just accepting a few petty charges. He’s the ringleader and I want him banged up for it.’
Within hours, Kingsley Ojo faced Judge Hardy again. A list of trafficking and immigration charges was read out. One by one Ojo softly muttered the word ‘guilty’.
At the end of the trial, Ojo, who had been identified as the ringleader of a major people-trafficking operation that had come to light during the Adam investigation, was sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment. The judge recommended that he be deported back to Nigeria at the end of his term.
Later we all gathered on the embankment. Tower Bridge stood to our right – and beneath it the spot where Adam’s torso had been found three years earlier. The police were in jubilant mood. They had broken up a massive trafficking operation. Who knows how many young people had been saved from crime, prostitution and death? Even from sacrifce?
A clearer picture had emerged during the investigation of just how extensive the trafficking operation had been. Young people had been recruited in Benin City with false promises of a better life in Europe. Others – many of them children, and some as young as Adam – had been bought outright. They were flown usually to Germany or Italy and transported from there to other parts of Europe.
Some were virtually enslaved into domestic service and others put to work in brothels. They were trapped, unable to approach the police for help because they feared deportation, and in terror of the traffickers themselves. Many, whose families had mortgaged themselves to pay for their journey, were too ashamed to contact their relatives back home. In some cases girls as young as twelve or thirteen had been forced into prostitution through pseudo-religious ceremonies in Benin City, and made to swear that they would never tell who was involved. Two such girls had been picked up by the police in leafy Surrey. They were traumatized, perhaps scarred for life.
As I gazed downstream, sunlight glanced off the river. The police had a right to be pleased, I thought. They had a result.
Nick Chalmers gave me a thumbs-up and Will O’Reilly smiled at me. But as soon as our eyes met, I knew we were thinking the same thing. No matter how pleased the team was about smashing the trafficking operation, the fact remained that they had not been able to charge those responsible for the ritual slaughter of a small boy.
It wasn’t over, and it never would be until we knew who had been responsible for sacrificing the child we knew as Adam. For the first time, I began to fear that we never would.
There might, however, be a chance to get justice for another damaged child. Now that Ojo had been convicted I could give my full attention to the Child B case.
36
London, September 2004–June 2005
I decided to take another look at Combat spirituel. I headed for the church that Sita Kisanga, Child B’s great-aunt, had said she attended, and whose former premises I had inspected after my first visit to the police at Tottenham. The warehouse in which they now met was grey and down-at-heel, but the atmosphere was anything but. I was met with smiles and happy greetings whichever way I turned, and I was led to a seat right up at the front.
I had told the elders on the phone that I was lecturing on African religions at King’s College, which was true, and that I had a purely academic interest in the revivalist movement, which wasn’t. They were delighted by my fluency in Lingala, and fascinated to hear something of my six-year history in the Congo. Yes, of course I was welcome to come. Why not? Their services were open to everyone.
It was easy to be swept up by the exuberance of the congregation, men in their best suits and women in traditional African dress, vibrant with colour. I was glad I had come. It reminded me of why the church was so important to these people. Many of them, I knew, had grindingly hard lives, often eking out an existence on the margins of London society. They crowded into squalid accommodation and took on jobs nobody else would do, often for illegally low wages. A fair proportion of them lived in fear of immigration officials, whose power over them they only half understood, dreading repatriation to countries engulfed by violence and poverty.
But here, for one day a week, they blossomed. Here they came together and were accepted, could dress with dignity, celebrate their faith, pray together and sing. And sing they did, joyfully swaying to the music and throwing up their arms in exultation. It was very moving and I saw just how powerful a figure their pastor must be for them, a guiding hand and a mentor, a leader of the only community to which they could fully belong. The pastor, as Claude had once told me, was ‘a little god’. To be cast out by him was to be thrown into exile.
Pastor Raph, head of Combat spirituel in London, arrived in some state, his chauffeur-driven black vehicle sweeping to a halt in the street outside. out leapt a brace of bulky sidekicks who looked very like bodyguards. They held the door for him, peering into the middle distance the way CIA agents do in movies, and ushered the dark-suited pastor up the stairs and into the room where we had gathered.
There was a certain froideur between Pastor Raph and me from the moment we met. He shook my hand briefly and loftily bestowed a greeting. I could see that he regarded me as a nuisance, and I guessed that he was annoyed with the elders for inviting me. Within moments he strode away to begin his preaching.
He marched around the packed room to cheers and acclamation, microphone in hand, whipping up excitement. In his dark glasses he looked like Ray Charles working a crowd.
‘Today you will witness something amazing!’ he promised, and jubilant voices rose around him. ‘Your lives will be changed! There will be a new beginning, in the name of Jesus Christ! Yes, many new lives will begin here today, and they will be dedicated to the glory of Jesus!’
‘Alleluia!’
&nb
sp; ‘You will be powerful and free, in the name of Jesus!’
‘Alleluia!’
And much more of the same.
I watched, fascinated, for about an hour, swept up by his masterly technique and the ecstatic responses of the crowd behind me. Then, right at the end, he crossed the floor to stand directly over me.
‘It is possible for a man to have evil spirits, even though he comes here,’ he asked, quite softly. ‘Isn’t that so?’
Murmurs of agreement rose from the congregation. I sat very still, wondering what was coming next.
‘In that case, you must have the devil cast out of you!’ he cried.
‘Yes!’ the congregation shouted.
‘You must be rid of these spirits!’
‘Alleluia!’
‘You must turn aside from your life!’ Pastor Raph swung his arm up and then down, pointing directly at me, jabbing his finger and then punching his fist in the air again and again, within inches of my face, hurling his whole body into the gesture. ‘You must have the devil cast out! Cast out! CAST OUT!’
The effect was extraordinary. I felt like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I just about kept my composure while his energy burst over me.
After my visit to Combat spirituel, I had to keep reminding myself that my discomfort was at least partly cultural. In common with most people brought up in a secular state I tend to regard religion as a private matter. That’s how the British normally conduct matters of faith, and it’s one of the reasons they are suspicious of exuberant expressions of belief, and perhaps blind to the fact that some 87 per cent of the world’s population remains fervently religious. But looking beyond our comfortable and sometimes hypocritical secularism is one of the challenges we all face in a rapidly changing world, if we are to understand the forces working on our society.
On 21 January 2005 Luke Mitchell was found guilty of the murder of Jodi Jones and sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison. I had known the trial was under way, but had avoided following it. I still had memories of the utter despair Faith and I had experienced during our brief involvement with the case.
But I could not avoid hearing the outcome of the trial, which was splashed over every newspaper and TV channel. The murder was tagged the most gruesome in recent Scottish legal history, and Judge Lord Nimmo Smith described the photos of Jodi’s body as the most shocking he had ever seen in his long career.
I remained keenly aware that I had failed to answer Superintendent Craig Dobbie’s fundamental question: how could people do such things? The further I went into this landscape, the more distressing I found my inability to answer, for others or for myself. However, with the Child B case coming to court it was a question I needed to face.
Patricia May QC was to lead the prosecution team in the Child B trial. I could have mistaken her for a kindly headmistress. I later came to understand that the air of gentle eccentricity she projected, if not exactly an act, was a weapon she used to extraordinary effect in the courtroom.
We met at her chambers near the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand. Ms May sat at the head of the large boardroom table with two or three members of her team and a prim secretary to one side, taking notes. Brian Mather, Jason Morgan and I faced her. With us was Michelle Elkins, press officer for the Metropolitan Police in north London. An attractive and compassionate woman in her late twenties, she did a great deal to soften the harder edges of the largely male police contingent on this case.
In a quiet, unhurried voice, Patricia May summed up what was known about the crime, the defendants and the evidence against them. she asked for confirmation of a number of points, jotting down the answers on her pad. A brief discussion followed, and when it was over, she turned to me.
‘This is much more than a matter of building the evidence against Sita Kisanga and her co-accused for what they’ve done to this girl, isn’t it?’
At last someone was interested in the wider picture.
‘As I see it, Richard, it’s crucial that Child B’s abusers are not only convicted and punished, but that they are not allowed to hide behind the smokescreen of religion. Everyone at this trial needs to understand that nothing can excuse this.’
That was the message she wanted us to get across. Most people saw Victoria Climbié’s death as the result of sheer sadism, or grotesque neglect. An isolated atrocity. But the Child B case must not be seen as isolated. We had to link it with this new pseudo-religious movement, and at the same time show that no religion, or set of beliefs, could possibly excuse it.
She needed me to establish in my evidence that what had happened to Child B had no foundation in African tradition either; that it was down to the perverted behaviour of cruelly misguided people. We mustn’t allow them to call on either Christianity or African beliefs to justify their actions. If we succeeded in making that point, the crime was clearly indefensible.
The meeting launched a period of intensive work: writing reports, briefing the prosecution team and preparing myself to testify as an expert witness. Not all Ms May’s colleagues, middle-class professionals that they were, understood the central issues as readily as she had. I felt that I constantly needed to steer lawyers and policemen away from the suspicion that the defendants had done these awful things because they were African and held African beliefs.
My argument was that the crimes had been committed despite their African heritage. I was even more determined than Ms May that the defence must not be able to use their African origins as an excuse. That would not help British society tackle such crimes, and would be a betrayal of all that I knew and loved about Africa and its people.
The Child B case came to court on 9 May 2005. After emerging from the City Thameslink station, I arrived at the Old Bailey. The narrow street was jammed with camera crews, witnesses, lawyers, police officers and members of the public queuing for entry – some of them with folding stools and picnic baskets. Technicians tested their equipment, glamorous young women presented early pieces to camera.
I pushed through the crowd and up the steps, and as I did so I caught sight of Sita Kisanga and her co-defendants emerging from a taxi. In that instant I saw Kisanga the way millions would see her on television and in the newspapers, an iconic image of her walking towards the crowd, her head and face swathed in a red scarf. She was trying to disguise herself, but the effect could not have looked more sinister if she’d tried.
I shoved my way into the gloom of the lobby. Behind the scanners and the uniformed guards was a great sweeping staircase beneath a vaulted ceiling. I looked around me in something like awe, overwhelmed by a sense of occasion. So many infamous criminals had been tried in this building – Dr Crippen, the Kray twins, Myra Hindley, Ruth Ellis, Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr. The Old Bailey could rightly claim to be the heart of British justice, but no trial like this had ever been heard within its walls.
Jason Morgan met me on the far side of security. The prosecution’s witness room was a bleak chamber with cream walls, high windows and plastic chairs. There were half a dozen people in there already, one or two talking in animated whispers, others silent, avoiding one another’s eyes. I didn’t recognize any of them.
I had only been there a few minutes when Jason returned and called me out again.
‘The prosecution team’s asked if you’d like to sit with them,’ he said, leading me away down the crowded corridor. ‘I’m assuming you’d prefer that?’
‘What happens when I’m called to testify?’
‘You probably won’t be. Word is, the defence won’t put you on the stand. The judge has ruled that your written evidence is to be accepted as it stands.’
‘They won’t even challenge it?’
‘Patricia May reckons that the defence think that if they tried giving you a grilling they’d only shoot themselves in the foot.’
Throughout the days that followed, my research was constantly cited by both sides without my ever having to stand up and defend it.
I h
ad a ringside seat at a groundbreaking trial. The benches all around me were jammed with lawyers, every inch of table space stacked with files and papers. The defendants were all blaming one another, and each had to be separately represented.
The jury sat to my right. I noticed a large lady with bottle-blonde hair, an elderly man in a suit and tie, a younger man in a T-shirt. Immediately facing me was the clerk of the court, a young woman who was forever holding hushed conversations on a phone that stood on the desk before her – ordering documents, I assumed, or lining up witnesses. Judge Christopher Moss, resplendent in ermine and very much in control, sat high up above the body of the court.
The four defendants entered the glass-shielded dock no more than five metres behind me. I twisted in my seat to study them. Sebastian Pinto was young, tall and slender. The three women – Pinto’s girlfriend, Child B’s aunt Sita Kisanga, and the girl’s mother – were all full-figured after the African fashion and brightly but formally dressed. They avoided eye contact with one another and gazed around the court with some of the awe I felt myself. I had the impression that none of them understood quite what was going on, or why they were there.
On the first day, Child B gave evidence by video link. Though the trial would go on for another three weeks, this was its defining moment. I doubt anyone who was present will ever forget that girl’s face. she was pretty, with large eyes and her hair in cornrows, but she had a calm and resolute air that was extraordinary in a child of eight. The room was utterly silent when she spoke, her voice clear and unhurried. Once or twice she wept, and I saw several people around the court moved to tears in sympathy.
Child B was evidently highly intelligent and mature beyond her years. I wondered if perhaps that precocity was part of the reason her family had decided she must have kindoki. She was certainly in no doubt about what had happened to her and who was responsible. She immediately cleared Pinto’s girlfriend – who was then released – of any involvement, but roundly condemned the other three.
The Boy in the River: A Shocking True Story of Ritual Murder and Sacrifice in the Heart of London Page 20