Hundreds of black children 'disappeared' in London

Police have been unable to trace hundreds of young African boys who have disappeared from schools in London, it emerged today.

The figures arose from a Metropolitan Police murder investigation sparked by the discovery of the torso of a young boy in the River Thames following a suspected ritualistic killing.

In an attempt to identify the body, police asked every education authority in London how many black boys aged between four and seven had gone missing.

In one three-month period between July and September 2001, some 300 children were found to have disappeared.

There was nothing to suggest that they had been murdered, but a lack of immigration records made it impossible to trace them.

Child welfare experts fear that many African children are brought into the country for the purposes of benefit fraud, passed between adults and, in the worst cases, physically and sexually abused.

Detective Chief Inspector Will O’Reilly told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “We were really looking at black children, black male children, aged between four and seven. And we found 300 of those that couldn’t be accounted for. It was one of the lines of inquiry we had to follow up.

“In the main these were African children. I think there were one or two from the Caribbean.”

The children’s so-called carers often told police that the youngsters had returned to Africa.

Police managed to trace only two of the 300 missing children.