Whenever we hear stories of young girls being forced into sex slavery and prostitution, it always leaves us feeling really sad. The story of a 42 year-old Nigerian Kolawale Idowu who used witchcraft rituals to force terrified teenagers to work as sex slaves in the UK is no different.
was on the surface, a recycling worker living in a terraced house in Kent. But he was in fact the British linchpin of a multi-million pound global child sex trafficking ring that used medieval ‘juju’ black magic to control its victims.
In 2007, he was deported back to Nigeria after police caught him trying to use stolen credit cards. But he simply married a mysterious German woman and returned to the country the following year with a five-year visa. He used his home as a secret staging post for vulnerable teenage orphans as they were smuggled from Africa to several European countries.
Detectives discovered evidence that at least 28 victims were smuggled in and out of Britain by Kolawale Idowu over a 14-month period, earning him up to £1.5million.
In a chilling report by ESABOD, the way the young victims aged 14, 16 and 17 were raped, sexually abused and subjected to voodoo-style rituals once in the clutches of the trafficking ring was highlighted.
One was raped and all three endured juju rituals, including one conducted by Kolawale Idowu himself. One feared she was being taken to another country to be used as a human sacrifice. A jury was told Kolawale Idowu slashed the chest of his youngest victim with a razor and rubbed black powder into her bleeding wounds. She was ordered to take an oath of loyalty to him and believed that if she broke it she would not have children, go mad and die.
Kolawale Idowu groomed her after the death of her parents by visiting her village with presents and saying she would go to school in Europe. But he abducted her and said she should prepare for life as a prostitute in Italy where she would be raped by ‘white men who smoked drugs’.
The other two girls were terrorised by a local witchdoctor in Nigeria shortly before being flown out of the country with promises of an education and modelling work.
The 16-year-old told police she was taken to a ‘place of witchcraft’ where she was told to bathe in a ‘bloody gunk’ and wrap blood-soaked cloth around her. As Kolawale Idowu watched, a man wearing feathers on his head cut hair from her armpits, cut some of her finger and toenails and took blood from her hand with a syringe. She was told that the body parts taken in the ritual would be used to find and kill her if she tried to run away or failed to repay her captor.
The 17-year-old wept as she described how she was tricked into travelling to Britain with the promise that she would go to school. She was made to drink a potion laced with blood.
Kolawale Idowu was convicted of five counts of human trafficking, rape and sexual activity with a child and would be sentenced on Monday.
It is such a huge relief that these girls have been released from the clutch of their captor. After their scary experience, we pray they find healing and restoration and we wish them the very best in life.
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