Five witchcraft inquiries

Britain's leading expert on witchcraft, Dr Richard Hoskins, is working with social services on allegations about fundamentalist churches in Haringey and Hackney.

They involve two boys aged 11 and 14 and three girls aged 10, 12 and 13. They were all allegedly abused after being accused by their family of being "witches".

A Metropolitan Police report, leaked yesterday, unmasked a "trade" in young African boys brought to London to be murdered as human sacrifices.

An inquiry in which members of the African community in Newham and Hackney were questioned found a number of sects that believe in powerful spells requiring the ritual killing of male children.

It also identified cases of children abused and killed after family members accused them of being possessed by "evil spirits".

Dr Hoskins, a chief adviser to the Met, said almost all the cases he is investigating have similar features. The children have been accused of being "possessed" and allegedly abused and tortured.

Social services took them into their care after parents called for the children to be exorcised in fundamentalist churches.

Dr Hoskins said: "We are dealing with real cases here. I have got seven cases on my books of children nationwide who have been abused in the name of witchcraft. When you actually talk to them, these are hard and fast facts. But the issue as a whole has to be dealt with very sensitively."

Dr Hoskins worked with police on the inquiry into "Adam", the torso found in the Thames, which he is convinced was a ritual sacrifice.

In the Adam case, detectives also spoke to Tussan le Mante, a voodoo priest or hougan, who carries out rituals in his west London flat.

Le Mante was able to tell them accounts of child abuse of which he was aware through his connection with voodoo.

Police also found children are being sold to traffickers on the streets of African cities such as Lagos, Nigeria, for under ?10 then smuggled into the UK.

They arrive in London with false documents and accompanied by adults who believe they will bolster their asylum claims.

Dr Hoskins said: "We know this through work we have been doing on the Adam inquiry. It's the same in Kinshasa. These children are ripe for people to abuse. They are easy prey."

The 10-month study was commissioned by the Met following the death of Victoria Climbi鬠who was starved and beaten to death after relatives said she was possessed.

Its aim was to create an "open dialogue" with the African and Asian community in Newham and Hackney. In discussions with African community leaders, officers were told of examples of children being murdered because their parents or carers believed them to be evil.

Earlier this month, Sita Kisanga, 35, was convicted at the Old Bailey of torturing an eight-year-old girl from Angola whom she accused of being a witch. Kisanga was a member of the Combat Spirituel church in Dalston.

Many such churches, supported mainly by people from West Africa, sanction aggressive forms of exorcism.

The caretaker of the building used by the church said its leader was "an extraordinary man".

"The pastor would come down after preaching with froth coming out of his mouth," he said.

"The congregation made massive noise and generally caused so much disturbance that the neighbours here kicked up a fuss and got the council to evict them."

There are believed to be 300 similar churches in the UK, mostly in London. Last month, Scotland Yard revealed it had traced only two of 300 black boys reported missing from London schools in a three-month period. The true figure for missing children is feared to be several thousand a year.