Eight-year-old Victoria Climbié died in February 2000 after months of being starved, beaten, burnt and tied up by her great aunt and guardian, who thought the little girl was possessed by evil spirits.
It was, said doctors at the time, the most horrific case of child abuse they had seen. And it included an exorcism after her "evil guardian" convinced a preacher that the girl's injuries meant she was "possessed by demons", said The Mirror.
Twenty-five years on, new figures reveal that the accusations that triggered Climbié's murder were no one-off: over the past decade, 14,000 social work assessments in England have been "linked to witchcraft accusations", according to The Guardian. And a new film, "Kindoki Witch Boy", now seeks to expose the chilling abuse behind such cases through the experience of one survivor.
The "Kindoki" of the film's title is a word used to describe witchcraft that is linked to "acts of child abandonment and ritual abuse" in both the UK and overseas, said The Mirror. The film tells the story of Mardoche Yembi, now 33, who was accused of witchcraft as a boy.
Climbié's murder catapulted faith-based abuse into the national spotlight, but it wasn't an isolated incident. In the past year alone, witchcraft – also known as "juju" or "djin" or "jin" – has been linked to 2,180 social services cases.
Social services "sometimes misinterpret the warning signs" of this kind of child abuse, the film's director, Penny Woolcock, told The Mirror. She hopes the film will "encourage discussion" around witchcraft accusations and prevent "other children from suffering". | 
