{"id":7012,"date":"2012-03-03T16:17:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T16:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7012"},"modified":"2012-03-03T16:17:53","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T16:17:53","slug":"london-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/london-in-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"London in the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing in the Daily Telegraph<\/em>, here\u2019s<\/a> Damian Thompson with a terrible story about superstition and murder in contemporary London:<\/p>\n

A 15-year-old boy is tortured to death for witchcraft. In London. In 2010. And the private reaction of police and social workers? Quiet despair. It\u2019s happened before and will happen again\u2026The Metropolitan Police waited until after the end of the court case to warn us that children are being abused and murdered in increasing numbers in Britain because their African relatives think they are \u201cspirit children\u201d \u2013 that is, witches.<\/p>\n

Also, children\u2019s charities and campaigners \u201curged communities to report abuse and said social workers must be firmer in confronting abuse in immigrant groups\u201d.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s deconstruct that. Campaigners are making this appeal because African communities in Britain have been too slow to report this abuse. And social workers have soft-pedalled on the subject, despite the shameful record of their colleagues in the case of Victoria Climbi\u00e9, an eight-year-old girl from the Ivory Coast who was tortured to death in 2000 by family members who believed she was possessed by the devil.<\/p>\n

Victoria\u2019s death could have been avoided if Brent and Haringey social services hadn\u2019t turned a PC blind eye to her abuse. Victoria\u2019s senior social worker, Carole Baptiste, was accused of \u201cspending her time talking about God and her experiences as a black woman, rather than looking after the interests of the vulnerable\u201d. She was found guilty by magistrates of failing to help the public inquiry.<\/p>\n

A contact working in this field told me yesterday: \u201cSocial workers from African backgrounds are scared. First, because they may have residual beliefs about witches themselves. Second, because they don\u2019t want to confront church pastors who make a fortune out of ‘exorcising\u2019 children \u2013 often at the request of their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Climbi\u00e9 and Bamu cases were atypical because they involved spectacular violence. But the charity Trust for London is talking nonsense when it says that \u201cno faith or culture promotes cruelty to children\u201d. In 2009, the African journalist Sorious Samura made a World Service programme about the slaughter of \u201cwitches\u201d in Ghana. He walked up one hill in which, he reckoned, the bodies of tens of thousands of \u201cspirit children\u201d were buried.<\/p>\n

An African organisation, Afrikids \u2013 one of The Daily Telegraph\u2019s charity appeal partners \u2013 is trying to challenge this mentality. But it\u2019s not easy, when the parents of a disabled or \u201cstrange\u201d child believe it will murder the rest of the family. Samura asked the pupils of a Ghanaian primary school about \u201cspirit children\u201d. Most of them thought they should be killed.
\nAfrikids provides shelter for mothers who have run away with their child rather than allow the local \u201cconcoction man\u201d to administer the appropriate poison \u2013 a daily occurrence in parts of Africa. Will it soon have to do the same in London?<\/p>\n

Prof Jean La Fontaine is the anthropologist who exploded the myth of satanic ritual abuse. She\u2019s based at Inform, Britain\u2019s foremost academic cult-watching body, and certainly doesn\u2019t think the abuse of \u201cspirit children\u201d in Britain is a myth. She is horrified by the rich African pastors who encourage these crimes, and adds: \u201cWe do not hear Christian churches raising their voices against the belief in child witches.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, here\u2019s Damian Thompson with a terrible story about superstition and murder in contemporary London: A 15-year-old boy is tortured to death for witchcraft. In London. In 2010. And the private reaction of police and social … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[250,468,438],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7015,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7012\/revisions\/7015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}