The Boy in the River (25 page)

Many of the pastors, perhaps most of them, were as worried as I was about this state of affairs. I contacted several during my research and found myself in the company of responsible churchmen, deeply worried about the dangers of the
kindoki
phenomenon.

‘It says in the Bible that there are witches,’ one told me, ‘but it is possible to accuse a child of being a witch who is not a witch at all. And that is very wrong.’

‘We are absolutely against hurting or frightening a child under any circumstances,’ said another.

But none of them denied that such things happened, or that pastors were sometimes responsible.

Claude secretly filmed an interview with a young pastor who claimed he could tell merely by looking into a child’s eyes if he or she ‘had’
kindoki
. He matter-of-factly described a witch-child who had levitated in front of him, and explained how demons could be driven out by exorcism.

Claude joined more than one congregation and attended services almost weekly. It was clear that exorcism rituals in Britain were, as we had suspected, the product of the fundamentalist Christian movements. Occasionally exorcisms took place in church, or what passed for church, by professional exorcists – itinerants who wandered from Christian splinter group to charismatic church, casting out demons from helpless and terrified children. But it appeared that demand had grown so rapidly that more and more parents were attempting exorcism in their own homes.

DI Brian Mather remained determined to achieve a conviction for Child B, but pointed out that without evidence of abuse they had no case to prove. The problem remained that the police were hamstrung by their lack of knowledge of the wider picture. British detectives, in my experience, were decent and hardworking, but usually mono-lingual and white. Interviews with church officials, for instance, had to be conducted through an interpreter, and against a background of cultural and religious references that were utterly alien to them. As a result, I suspected that some questions that needed to be asked were not being asked.

As the summer of 2004 drew on I became increasingly committed to the Child B investigation. Like Claude, I also wanted people to understand that this was not the African way. If and when the case finally got to court, I wanted the prosecution to show beyond any doubt that the abuse of Child B owed nothing to traditional African beliefs, just as it owed nothing to any reasonable person’s interpretation of Christianity.

In the meantime Kingsley Ojo, alias Mousa Kamara, was to go on trial on 10 July.

It had taken nearly a year to get him to court, but a number of his minions had already got their comeuppance. Some had received prison sentences of up to three years. Of those arrested, many hailed from Benin City in the Yoruba region of Nigeria, and several had been immediately deported for breaching immigration regulations.

It left a bitter taste that these people should be free to walk around their home city. They were no better than modern-day slave traders, and I would happily have seen them suffer a harsher fate. But I very much hoped that Kingsley Ojo, the mastermind of the whole nefarious racket, would receive a sterner punishment.

I arrived at Southwark Crown Court, a huge modern building with a cavernous foyer. After going through security I made my way along a softly lit corridor. At the far end, silhouetted against the window, was a huddle of figures, heads bent in earnest conversation. As I drew near, Will O’Reilly broke away. I could see at once that something was wrong.

‘There’s been an almighty cock-up,’ he said. ‘And I mean
almighty
.’

Despite the fact that Ojo had been arrested more than a year earlier, some of the court papers hadn’t been served until the end of the previous week which meant they were too late to be taken into consideration as evidence. Operation Maxim had been set in motion to keep tabs on the traffickers, but the existence of two parallel sets of dossiers had created the potential for confusion.

‘The prosecution counsel put a rocket under various people last week . . .’

Nick Chalmers emerged from the lift. He grinned at me, but looked more worried than I’d seen him at any time in the investigation. The prosecution counsel came over too and we were introduced. As the barrister drew on his cigarette I noticed his hand was shaking.

Half an hour later, an usher summoned all parties on the case of Mousa Kamara into Court Seven. Ojo was to be tried under his favourite alias.

I looked around the starkly lit courtroom. The barristers’ benches were immediately in front of us. The prosecution and defence counsels were already in place, piles of paperwork stacked in front of them. To our right was the dais where the judge would preside. To the left, behind a glass screen, was an enclosed space with a door in the far corner.

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!’

‘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.