There is something about faith that makes people lose their minds. In the name of some god or other, children have been ill-treated, terrified, traumatised across the world. Sometimes terror has been spread in the name of the religion; sometimes, in the absence of official sanction, children's terror has been shielded by the churches' awesome power to keep their secrets and control their congregations.
At least those circumstances did not give rise to the double whammy of abuse within and racial muddle without.
That is the barricade for those trying to confront child abuse in African religious sects. Their problem is the way that British institutions tolerate abuse by hiding behind the screen of 'culture'. It's their culture, they say, as if only black people have something called 'culture', much as it is only black people who have a 'race' and a 'colour'.
But it cannot be that black people are any more disposed to terrify their children through religious cults. White western Christianity has had a talent for that - look no further than Ireland's national commission into the abuse of children in institutions run by the church.
Nor can it be that black people are any more disposed to beat their children than white people. The subordination of women and children through patriarchy is sanctioned by the world's great religions, no less in an African evangelical sect than in the Vatican.
And this Government's endorsement of faith and of faith schools hampers efforts to make sense of this great issue. The promotion of faith compounds the malign muddle over political correctness that has left people paralysed.
Just as self-help systems are generated by need, so unaccountable sects flourish in communities living with trauma, poverty, racism and isolation.
It is not 'political correctness' so much as lazy respect for religion and 'culture' that has left people too anxious and afraid of their own, inevitable racism to challenge rituals that abuse children, too disoriented to do their job and empathise with children enduring abuse.
In that context we do what we always do - be parent-centred, rather than identifying with a seven-year-old child being made to believe that they are trouble, rather than troubled, that they are possessed by evil and thus deserve to be subject to rituals of purgation.
The racism lies not in confronting this stuff as cruelty to children, but in seeing the 'race' in it rather than the cruelty in it.
