| Flowers in Gods Garden
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09/01/02 - No regrets. No remorse.
No respect.
Steve Boggan
Independent
WITH ALL the male volence of the "evil
spirits" she claimed had possessed her "daughter",
Marie Therese Kouao swept into the Victoria Climbie inquiry
yesterday without remorse, regret or explanation for what
has come to be known as Britain's worst case ofchild abuse.
During a ranting, almost hysterical, appearance characterised
by arrogance and disdain for the hearing, the woman who
starved, burnt, beat and terrorised eight-year-old Victoria
to death made fanciful claims that she was the innocent
victim of aconspiracy to cover up medical incompetence
by switching the child's body.
Not once did she address Victoria's parents, sitting
only feet away. Instead, she insulted them, wrongly
claiming they were not married and shouting that they
had not loved the girl as much as she had.
Kouao, 45, had come to the inquiry from the cell in
Durham jail where she is serving life for Victoria's
killing. It was the first time a murderer had been brought
before such a hearing, but it was to bear little fruit.
Handcuffed to a female prisonofficer, she walked in,
head held high, wearing a floral dress and a plum-coloured
woollen shawl. Within minutes, as she refused to answer
questions, it was clear there was to be no apology and
precious little new information about Victoria's death
inFebruary 1999.
No light was shed on how the child's head and face
had been scalded, how she had been beaten with a bicycle
chain, starved, kept for days wrapped in a bin liner,
lying in her own excrement in a freezing cold bathroom.
And the question of why there were128 separate bruises,
burns and belt marks on her dead body was dealt with
only by the creation of a crass conspiracy theory: The
corpse had been switched and pictures of the injuries
faked, she alleged.
Raising her voice, she oscillated between poor English
and, through an interpreter, her native French. "I'm
no monster," she yelled. " I am innocent.
I love children. J'adore les enfants!"
Kouao, Victoria's great aunt, had been entrusted with
the youngster in 1997 by the parents, Berthe Amoissi
and Francis Climbie, who hoped that sending their daughter
from their home in the Ivory Coast to Europe might lead
to a good education. But Kouaonever sent Victoria to
school. Instead, she used her as a "daughter"
to claim benefits. Within two years, the child was taken
to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, west London, cold,
battered, emaciated and unconscious. Police, social
workers and medicalstaff had all failed to heed apparently
obvious warning signs.
When, last year, Kouao and her boyfriend, Carl Manning,
27, were jailed for her murder, she insisted she was
innocent, claiming Victoria had inflicted marks on herself
while scratching a scabies infection. Manning has admitted
his culpability and plansto give evidence tomorrow by
videolink. But yesterday, Kouao's insistence on her
innocence continued. The inquiry's counsel, Neil Garnham
QC, tried repeatedly to make her answer questions, but
she shouted him down and refused to co-operate.
Asked by him to confirm she was serving a life sentence,
she replied: "Unfortunately, yes, and I should
not be. I have not done anything to be in prison. Contrary
to what everybody believes, I did not do what I have
been accused of doing ... I am treatedas a monster,
as guilty, and this is most unfair I am a respectable
person. I never did wrong in my life. I never put my
feet inside a police station before this case ... I
am a lady."
After continuing to ignore direct questions, she was
told by Mr Garnham that the inquiry had the power to
order her to answer. But she was unfazed. "I don't
care if you give me 100 years more. I am a lifer for
something I never did. I am very upset butif I came
here, I said I would come if I can help some little
boys or girls ..."
In spite of the fact that the inquiry has heard evidence
to show that social workers missed or ignored warning
signs and did not follow up reports that Victoria was
being mistreated, Kouao insisted that the social workers
found nothing wrong becauseeverything at the tiny flat
she shared with Manning in Tottenham, north London,
had been fine.
Instead, she said doctors at St Mary's had killed Victoria
when she took her there after becoming concerned the
girl had not eaten for three days. Members of her church,
she said, told her that, as well as incontinence, there
were signs Victoria waspossessed by evil spirits.
"They [the doctors] made her have an injection
and she gets epilepsy there on the bed," she shouted.
"The bed was making bump, bump, bump. The doctor
asked if she'd got epilepsy and I said no, she did not
get epilepsy ... It is the medication ... themedication
was too high for her small heart and people are there
to [blame] me to make me become a monster.
"I am a very good mum. I have children and grandchildren.
I know how to care for children. I have proof I was
loving that small girl. Why do they put her burn pictures
in the newspaper. I am the one burning her? So now the
people when they look at thenewspaper, they say look
what she did to that little girl."
She then went on to suggest the body with the 128 wounds
might not have been Victoria's. It might, she argued,
have been swapped by the doctors who killed her. "When
I saw her pictures, I felt, I thought to myself, this
is not my little girl's body," shesaid. "They
change everything when she enter the hospital."
It was a display of rank self-justification and self-pity.
All the while, sitting only a few feet away, Victoria's
parents listened to an instant translation by a court-appointed
interpreter, sometimes nodding gently but maintaining
their composure, evenwhen Kouao turned her hatred on
them.
Claiming, wrongly, that she had adopted Victoria, she
questioned the need for the police to have gone to the
Ivory Coast during their investigations. "The police
know they are the natural parents. It is not necessary
to pay their ticket to make them go,pay their ticket
here. There are a lot of English children here need
money to save their life and you spoil that money to
pay their ticket to go to Africa and stay in expensive
hotel. All this to show they are the natural parents.
Why? They did not lovetheir little girl like I did.
I was loving her more than her parents."
Afterwards, the parents' lawyer, Imran Khan, said Kouao's
demeanour made it even more difficult to understand
how social workers had failed to identify her as a danger
to Victoria.
Mr Climbie said: "We had hoped to learn a lot
from her but, unfortunately, she has not come with something
that can assist the inquiry. She has not apologised
at all or even shown any kind of sensitivity towards
us."
Displaying a degree of dignity that contrasted starkly
with Kouao' s behaviour, Victoria's mother nevertheless
appeared exasperated. "It has been extremely difficult,"
she said. "I have not much remorse for Marie Therese,
not so much because of the crimeshe has committed as
for the lies she has told and continues to tell.
"She keeps arguing that she did not kill my child.
If that is true, I have a question for her: `Where is
my daughter?'" |
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