A TEN-YEAR-OLD girl denounced as a witch described how she was tortured, starved and threatened with death in video evidence played to a court yesterday.

The child, who was eight at the time of the attacks, said that she was told “Today you die” by the woman she called Auntie, who laughed and danced around after hitting her with a high-heeled shoe.

“They were really doing bad things to me and torturing me,” the girl told police during two hour-long interviews, shown at the Old Bailey.

Clutching a doll in the first tape and a teddy bear in the second, she appeared shy and occasionally stuttered as she spoke quietly through a translator, but remained calm.

The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, watched the videos in an adjoining courtroom and will be cross-examined on them today.

In the first interview she blamed the abuse on Sita Kisanga, 35, whom she called her aunt. In the second she said that she had also been assaulted by her real aunt, whom she knew as her mother, and Sebastian Pinto, whom she called uncle. Describing one incident, she said that all three surrounded her, pushing, kicking and slapping her. “I was bleeding. I sat down in the corner . . .

I was thinking, ‘What have I done?’ “They were shouting at me. Neighbours came and knocked on the door. They [her relatives] told me to go into the room. The neighbours said, ‘Why are you making so much noise, because the people have gone to bed, and why is the child crying?’ My uncle said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing, no one’s crying, we’re just laughing.’”

The girl’s aunt and Ms Kisanga are on trial for child cruelty and conspiracy to murder. Mr Pinto, 33, and his girlfriend, Kiwonde Kiese, 21, are charged with child cruelty. All four deny the charges. The girl is said to have been assaulted almost every day for 15 months. She was beaten with a belt, cut with a knife, had chilli rubbed in her eyes and was stuffed into a laundry bag and almost thrown into a river, the court was told.

She was brought from Angola in 2002 by her 38-year-old aunt, who claimed asylum. She cannot be named, to protect the girl’s identity. They moved into a flat in Hackney, East London, with Ms Kisanga. The child was asked in the first interview why Ms Kisanga had hit her. She replied: “She said that my Mum and me have got witchcraft.” Ms Kisanga had woken her repeatedly at night to hit her and accuse her of being a witch.

Questioned about whether she wanted to return to live with her aunt, she left a long pause before replying: “If you say so . . .”

In the second interview, in January 2004, the girl said she was scared about talking to police, because “my Mum [the aunt] told me not to say”. The trial continues.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be