The Boy in the River (26 page)

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 had 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.

There wasn’t much they could say in their own defence. It was suggested to them that Child B’s exorcism had been carried out at the behest of someone in the revivalist movement, but Sita Kisanga denied this. She insisted that she had rarely even visited her local church, Combat spirituel, though her earlier statements, her diaries and the marginal notes in her Bible all indicated that she was a regular worshipper there, and I had seen her name on the list of helpers pinned to the kitchen wall. Perhaps simple desperation was making her deny everything that was put to her.

On the last day of May, Judge Christopher Moss concluded his summing up and sent out the jury.

The jurors had to consider a number of different charges against each of the three defendants, including conspiracy to murder and child cruelty. They deliberated for three days, but finally we were all summoned back.

The atmosphere was electric. The courtroom was packed with journalists waiting for the verdict, and when the foreman read out that first ‘guilty’, several of them rushed for the exit.

The defendants were cleared on the conspiracy to murder charges, but all were found guilty of child cruelty. The two women in the dock shrieked aloud as they realized what had happened and Pinto shouted in disbelief.

Judge Moss restored order with his gavel.

‘I’m remanding you in custody,’ he told the defendants when the hubbub had died down. ‘When I am ready to pass sentence you will be brought back to this court. But I will tell you now that each one of you can expect to spend a long time in prison. Take them down.’

The three were ushered away to the cells, the women still wailing and Pinto looking stunned.

The courtroom emptied with all the noise and excitement of the last school assembly before the holidays. I slipped away from the jubilant prosecution team, and managed to avoid Jason Morgan and Brian Mather too. I pushed through the packed corridors outside the courtroom and found a bench in a relatively quiet corner.

I wanted to keep out of the way. There had been intense press coverage of the trial and I knew that Brian and Jason would be swamped by reporters the moment they stepped outside. I had attended a news conference with them a week or two earlier and the media interest had been overwhelming.
Witchcraft? In London? And you’re an expert on this?
I didn’t think I could face any more of that at that moment. I felt drained, wrung out.

I hadn’t realized quite how much this case had taken out of me, and now that it was over I felt a crushing sense of anticlimax. I stayed on that grubby bench watching the life of the Old Bailey bustle around me for at least an hour and a half. The Old Bailey. now that it was over I couldn’t work out quite how I had got here. A few years ago I had been pursuing a quiet career as a West Country academic.

Finally I made my way to the door and slipped out with a group of people into the summer afternoon.

‘It’s Mr Tip-of-the-Iceberg!’ a voice called and I was instantly engulfed, microphones and lenses thrust into my face and questions shouted from all sides.

I didn’t have the will or the tactical nous to escape. Child B was the news of the day and there was no way the press were going to let me go without an interview. I answered such questions as I could, hardly knowing who I was talking to. The Child B case was the lead story on the BBC six o’clock news and on ITV’s six-thirty bulletin, and clips from interviews with me featured in both.

Eventually I allowed myself to be bundled away by a Channel 4 team, more or less to get away from the noise and confusion. Apparently, I was to be interviewed live by Jon Snow.

I calmed down a bit on the way there. I’d wanted publicity for Child B, I’d wanted people to realize what was going on and to be outraged by it. That was the whole point.

Snow talked briefly to me before the programme, suggesting the line he was going to take, checking facts, asking what I particularly wanted to say.

‘I can tell you that in a nutshell,’ I said, suddenly sparking up. ‘It’s that we in this country have to stop sitting on the fence. The Child B case shows that we can’t close our eyes for fear of being labelled cultural imperialists: it’s time to stand up and be counted on this. Child abuse is wrong, and it has to stop.’

Snow raised his eyebrows, surprised by the passion in my voice. I was surprised by it myself.

‘Fifteen seconds, Jon,’ somebody called, and the studio fell silent around us.

Faith had managed to make it to the Channel 4 studios in time for my interview, and watched from the observation box. When it was over, we took a cab to a pub near the Old Bailey, where the police team were still celebrating their win. They had been there some time, and despite their beery camaraderie, we both felt rather out of it, so after an hour or so we decamped to a quiet Italian restaurant.

My mobile didn’t stop ringing with calls from national newspapers and TV and radio stations, and then later from the regional media. I was a little wired and couldn’t settle. I wanted to catch my breath, but the process had a momentum of its own. I was wary of the media’s determination to feed so greedily on the torture of a young girl, and I rather despised myself for being part of it, but I still wanted to get my message out there. I knew that I had to strike while the iron was hot.