In Sweden this time, not in London.
The couple, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, “think their daughter is a witch and reject the accusation” of abuse, Daniel Larson, a prosecutor in the western Swedish town of Boraas, said on Friday.
Which is the problem with thinking people are “witches” – then abuse isn’t abuse, because witches have to be cleaned out, kind of like a sewer. It gets a little rough, but that’s not abuse.
The girl, who claims she is not the couple’s biological daughter though the parents say otherwise, was allegedly beaten unconscious and forced to drink a concoction made up of a cleaning product and her own urine, according to the charge sheet.
Social services removed the girl, born in 1997, from her parents’ custody in 2008 and she has since been living with a foster family. The girl only recently opened up about the alleged abuse “once she felt safe,” the prosecutor said.
She was 9 when she was rescued.