6/9/05 Witch trial pair facing jail

Witch trial pair facing jail

hg.editorial@archant.co.uk
08 June 2005

Sita Kisanga
TWO relatives of an eight-year-old girl they branded a witch are facing jail for torturing, starving and threatening to drown her.

The child was cut across her chest with a knife, beaten with a shoe and belt, kicked, slapped and punched during a campaign of cruelty in Hackney from August, 2002, until January, 2004.

Her aunt and another relative, both devout Christians, even rubbed chilli peppers into the little girl's eyes before forcing her into a laundry bag and threatening to dump her in the New River.

The abuse took place at the hands of the child's 38-year-old aunt, who was helped by a distant relative, Sita Kisanga, 35, and on one occasion by Kisanga's 33-year-old brother, Sebastian Pinto.

An Old Bailey jury last Friday found the aunt guilty of four counts of cruelty to a child and also convicted Kisanga of three counts of aiding and abetting the cruelty. Pinto was found guilty of one charge of aiding and abetting the cruelty.

It had been alleged that Kisanga and the aunt, who cannot be named, had planned to kill the child by drowning her. However, the pair were cleared of conspiracy to murder.

The child revealed the horrific scale of the abuse over the course of three police interviews. She was also trussed up in the sack her aunt used for sheets and it was threatened that she would be thrown from the balcony of Kisanga's third-floor flat.

FOR THE FULL STORY SEE THIS WEEK'S GAZETTE AVAILABLE FROM THURSDAY JUNE 9