Police in London have been investigating a child murder case for 4 years. The torso of a young black boy was found in the river Thames. Forensic examination, including the stomach contents, suggest that he was killed for ritual purposes and that he came from Nigeria.
As part of the investigation police asked the education authorities to tell them how many black boys between the ages of 4 and 7 had disappeared from school in the three month period leading up to the discovery of the body. The total came back at 300, one from the Caribbean and the rest from Africa. Only 2 have been traced.
The BBC report gives further details. For the most part there seems to be innocent reasons for these disappearence. Most seem to be down to parents arranging informal fostering with distant relatives.
There is also the suspicion that they may be being used for benefit fraud and then passed on to other people. There also seems to be a possibility that older children are being used as illegal house servants or in vice. The problems of unofficial fostering are not confined to African communities. Similar arrangements also occur within communities of recent immigrants from the Indian sub-continent, although these do tend to involve close “counsins” or “aunties”.
As well as the murder and fraud, there are obvious dangers of child abuse and neglect that these children are vulnerable to. By co-inidence there is a case of serious child abuse in trial at the moment involving just such an informal arrangement. A girl from Angola had been allegedly been accused of being a witch by the son of the woman looking after her. After enduring beatings she was reportedly put in a sack and only saved from being thrown into a canal when one of the group changed their mind.
Let’s hope that the desire “not to offend the sensibilities of the communities” does not get in the way of putting proper child protection measures in place.
Good lord.
How will this affect public perceptions about immigrants? Or will it?
it is disquieting nonetheless. I wonder how many kids are “missing” in America under the same criteria…
I followed your link, but the case is four years old! It seems the “importation” of children for various purposes, nefarious and otherwise, is common practice among African immigrants. But these kids disappear w/o a trace, so there’s no way of knowing if they’re dead or alive or returned to Africa.
Yet, they’re all boys. Very strange. Or is no one finding the disappearance of girls “worthy” of notice?
Oddly, your story immediately put me in mind of the Helen Miren crime series. It seems so tyoical of a primetime BritCrime program. God help us.
Prime Suspect. Such great dramas … i’ve watched them many times.
Yes the case is four years old and they are still trying to identify the victim. The missing boy parts are presumed to have been kept for ritual purposes.
The reason this information has emerged now I presume is so that they can update people on the difficulties they are having with the case. To try to see if they could narrow the field they asked the education people for the information about a narrow group – boys between 4 and 7 – as the forensic evidence gave them that sort of age of the victim. As the intention to ask about a male murder victim, they obviously did not investigate any missing girls. They freely admit that they do not know what happened to the 498 they could not trace. Details of non-EU citizens entering the country are kept but not of those leaving.
One reason the Metropolitan Police have publicised their work in the case so much it that in the past they have been criticised for not being sufficiently diligent when a victim is black. To be fair, nothing could be further from the case here as the detectives have had to learn in great detail the different potions used in ritual preparations – which is how they could identify the area of Nigeria where the rituals originated. They have also been to Nigeria to try to find if any boys of the right age had disappeared or been sent to Britain during the revelant period and not been heard from.
Parents in Africa can send their children to live with informal fosterers in the UK for very good reasons. The children will get a much better education than they would at home and be more economically succesful when they grow up.
But not in immigrant communities. In Philadelphia there have been several high profile child murders committed by unofficial “foster” families. (No links, I refuse to Google “child murder” as I am in amoderately good mood today.)
IMHO, it borders on being an act of criminal neglect to leave a child (long term) with anyone not the parent or an otherwise qualified guardian such as an official foster family. Children are a total pain in the ass, bless their hearts, and if it weren’t for some bizzare phermones that make one love one’s own offspring (or or the realization that one will be at their tender mercies in old age) I’m sure that we would have killed ourselves off as a species long ago.
I’m sure that some of the parents are criminally neglectful. However, I’m equally sure that others believe they’re helping their kids by sending them to the UK (e.g. because they can’t afford to pay the public school fees in Nigeria), or are literally unable to feed another child at home.
Also, I would guess that many of these children are orphans.