Thousands of children have been accused of witchcraft in the United Kingdom over the past decade, according to new figures that come as a new film on the subject is released.
While faith-based abuse is a global phenomenon, experts have discovered 14,000 social work assessments connected to witchcraft accusations since 2015, with 2,180 of them in the year running up to March 2024 alone.
These statistics, released by the National FGM Center, come as the film Kindoki Witch Boy is released. It tells the story of Mardoche Yembi, now 33, who was accused of witchcraft as a child growing up in north London and was subjected to exorcism.
The film’s release also marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Victoria Climbié, an eight-year-old Ivorian girl who was tortured and killed in 2000 after accusations of witchcraft were leveled against her.
Yembi hopes that the new film will encourage more children suffering behind closed doors to come forward.
“If a story like Kindoki Witch Boy had been out there when I was a child going through those experiences, I would have felt less alone. I want this film to transform something that was bad into something good, to help other children going through the same thing. I hope children who are being accused will see that there is help out there and they can survive it,“ Yembi said.
Kindoki is one of several words used to describe the kind of witchcraft Yembi and Victoria were accused of, along with the terms djin, juju, and voodoo.
Victoria, who died on February 25, 2000, was brought to the UK by her great-aunt Marie-Thérèse Kouao, who offered her parents a European education. But she was killed by Kouao and her partner, Carl John Manning, after suffering from prolonged and extreme abuse.
They said evil spirits reportedly possessed her, and she was exorcised by a pastor and forced to sleep in a bin bag in a freezing cold bathroom. At the time of her death, 128 separate injuries were found on her burned and malnourished body.
Yembi and Victoria were born just weeks apart and lived a few miles from each other in north London. Yembi was sent to the UK at the age of eight from his home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after his mother died to be looked after by relatives.
Like many other children facing witchcraft accusations, Yembi was scapegoated for causing health and financial misfortunes in his relatives’ lives. Social services became concerned for his life and safety because they reportedly wanted to send him back to the DRC for exorcism.
Unlike Victoria, Yembi did not experience physical abuse, but social services placed him under the care of a foster mother, who supported him for the next decade. He thrived in her care and now works to help young care leavers.
The film, directed by Penny Woolcock, was shot over a period overng a mix of professional and non-professional actors. Jeriah Kebusi plays Yembi, and Fatmata B Jalloh plays herself as her foster mother.
While Yembi and Victoria never met, he said she had been very much in his mind while he had been working on the film.
“Part of this film is for her. She didn’t have a chance to make it. I want to keep her name alive,“ he said.
