A woman accused of torturing eight year-old Anna C
A woman accused of torturing eight year-old Anna Climbie to death sent the girl’s natural mother photos of her with the message ‘Don’t worry’, the Old Bailey heard today.
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Marie Theresa Kouao sent two albums of pictures showing the girl in school uniform to the Ivory Coast through her relatives.
But by the time the last letter arrived, Anna had died after allegedly being tied up and left to sleep in a bath for at least three months.
It is alleged Kouao, who claims to be a former airoplane crash investigator in Paris, and her lover regularly beat Anna with a belt buckle and bicycle chain.
The court was told how her hands and feet were tied up and she was forced to lap food from a plate like a dog.
Anna’s real mother Berthe Ehoura had allowed Kouao, 44, to take Anna from the Ivory Coast to be educated in France.
She told the court: ‘When she took my daughter I didn’t have any second thoughts about it because it was her grandchild.
‘I was very pleased and Anna was very very happy to be leaving with her great aunt.
The success of the child would be an honour to the family.
‘
A year later she was handed some photos by Kouao’s younger sister Antoinette with the message: ‘Marie Therese tells you don’t worry at all.
I’m looking after the child.
Don’t have any regrets.
‘
Anna was pictured with Kouao and in her blue and white checked school uniform aged seven.
Mrs Ehoura, 40, said: ‘I didn’t have any news about her again until the New Year, the year 2000.
That’s when I received some photos of Anna which had been posted by my brother.
‘They had an address on the back and the words “With these you will be happy.
In the name of Christ, God bless you and the child as well.
”
‘I was very happy.
‘
But when she received news of her daughter’s death Mrs Ehoura realised Anna had died before the pictures arrived.
‘I was told my child had died but on the back of the letter it said she was well.
It upset me.
The photos came three weeks after the date.
They waited two weeks to tell me.
‘
She came to England to identify her daughter and saw ‘she was in a terrible state.
‘
But Mrs Ehoura told the court how Anna had left the Ivory Coast around October 1998 ‘safe and sound and in good health.
‘I didn’t have any problems with the child from the moment I became pregnant.
‘She was very small but she was very bright.
She managed to do things in the house that astonished us.
‘Her health was good and she started school at the age of six.
I was very happy with her progress at school, she liked school.
‘
She claimed Anna, born as Victoria, had been potty trained since the age of three.
Kouao was a relative of her husband Francis Climbie and Mrs Ehoura had met her at two family funerals in the Ivory Coast.
‘She wanted to help us.
It was her own idea because she wanted to help the child.
I was pleased because in France the girl can grow up very quickly.
‘She was physically well.
Her skin was good, no rashes.
The hair was good and well dressed.
‘The name of Anna was chosen for the child.
‘
Kouao’s passport bore a photo of a girl the same age called Anna, but which was in fact showed Francis Climbie’s niece Isabella.
She also gave Mrs Ehoura money to plait the girl’s hair.
Mrs Ehoura denied the suggestion of Kouao’s defence barrister Michael Gledhill that Anna stayed for a month in the Ivory Coast with Kouao before leaving for England.
But she admitted she did not give her daughter a send-off from the airport.
Kouao and her busdriver boyfriend Carl Manning, of Somerset Gardens, Tottenham, both deny the murder of eight-year-old Anna.
Manning has admitted manslaughter and child cruelty but Kouao denies both charges.
The trial continues.
ends
addpics.
