London, England - A young mother was today cleared of aiding others to be cruel to a girl accused by her family of being a witch.
The case against Kiwonde Kiese, 21, was discharged after the prosecution at the Old Bailey said it would not proceed against her.
Kiese, of Stoke Newington, north London, had denied aiding and abetting child cruelty against the eight-year-old girl.
When the girl was cross-examined by her solicitor advocate, Hugh Mullen, she withdrew an allegation that Kiese rubbed chilli pepper in her eyes.
The judge told the jury that the allegation had come at the end of a third video interview with police – but that had been the only evidence against her.
The girl today told Mr Mullen: “She does not have anything to do with it really. She never rubbed peppers in my eye. She never really used to hit me.”
The girl was completing her evidence in the case in which Kiese’s partner, Sebastian Pinto, 33, his sister Sita Kisanga, 35, of Hackney, east London, and the girl’s 39-year-old aunt, who cannot be named for legal reasons, deny child cruelty.
The aunt and Kisanga also deny conspiracy to kill after the girl claimed she had been put in a laundry bag and was to be thrown into a river.
The prosecution allege the girl was beaten with a shoe and belt, left without food and had chillies rubbed in her eyes after it was claimed she was a witch.
The orphan was brought to the UK 15 months earlier by her aunt, who claimed she was her mother.
The child was found with swollen eyes and bruises, sitting barefoot on the stairs of flats in the Woodberry Down Estate, Hackney, in November 2003.
The girl said she was saved when Pinto told the women they would go to prison if they “threw her away” into the water from the third floor flat.
She became angry when a barrister suggested she had dreamed the episode.
She said: “I know it happened. In my mind, I will never forget what happened.”