Abe & Ella tried to control ‘police’ investigation: Yaohirou audio

Well, here we are on Episode 6 of the seemingly interminable Jean-Clement Yaohirou audio recording. Fear not, as we are approaching the end…but not quite yet.

Yesterday, we learned a great deal about Ella’s stunningly tenuous grasp on infant and child development, and began to wonder about the story Abraham and Ella told about the two children “touching” one another. As well, we learned about the children’s alleged “sign language”, which is so ludicrous that it could only have been invented by Abraham Christie.

Today’s instalment begins right after Ella informs us that although she never actually saw anything untoward happening between the children, she now knows that all those things she didn’t see actually meant that they were being abused by a cult.

‘We’re still scared of Papa’

Child P: Remember we were behaving really strange, remember? I wasn’t listening to you, and then whenever you tell…
J-C: Do you feel better now, telling your mum and Uncle Aby?
Child P: Yes, we’re still scared of Papa.
J-C: Scared of Papa.
Child Q: Unless he comes to us.
Child P: But if he doesn’t…
Child Q: Unless we see him and if he…
Abraham: He will not come to you.
Both children: But if he…gets there…
Abraham: He will not come to you while there is a ugly crazy little black man in here.
Child Q: You’re not crazy, you’re nice.
Abraham: I am crazy…well thank you.
Child Q: You’re nice, extra nice, extra kind…

Here we see Child Q, whom Abraham has already described as more co-operative in contrast to his sister, trying to ingratiate himself with Abe. Contrast this with his statement to the child psychiatrist who examined the children on 5 November, two months after their visit with Jean-Clement:

Q responded immediately to Dr Sturge’s question as to whether he knew why she was seeing him. He said, “cos Abraham said something I never did and he forced me to say it, he was really mean to us.” Abraham had accused him of touching his sister in the private parts which he “never, ever did.” And he forced them to say their Dad touches them. Abraham had also forced them to say they kill babies. Q said he had wanted Abraham to stop hitting him, “I was scared for him to hit me.” At that Q’s face creased up and he began to cry quietly. “He kept asking us questions again, and again and again.” His mother had started to believe him. Q said, “It upsetted me” and he became even more distressed.

Q described how Abraham had been asking them all day. He had even woken them up and hit them. The hitting was if they didn’t wake up and talk. Asked how his mother had reacted, Q said “she didn’t mind.” He was asked about living with his mother and replied that “if she still believes it, (he) wouldn’t want to live with her.” Later he described with great vehemence that he would never live with his Mum while Abraham was still in the British Isles. She would just phone him and he’d come to their house. Q also said, spontaneously, that he hates Abraham, describing him as “the worst person I’ve ever met.”

It seems fair to say that Child Q’s statements about Abe during the Jean-Clement visit arose from something akin to ‘Stockholm syndrome’.

‘In the beginning was these three guys’

J-C: What I’m going to do is, probably we should get the name of the people, you kind of describe them. The very important people, okay? So…yeah? Is that okay?
Ella: Yeah.
J-C: You ask them, and then I’ll write it down.
Ella: Just one thing kind of from what I’ve learned, I think how and when was happening, he was probably doing something to them, behind my back, and then he started to take them to his…friends.
J-C: To the cult.
Ella: No. No, no, I think it was, in the beginning was these three guys.
Abraham: G_____…J_____…
Ella: His family, his mother, his sister, his brother…
Abraham: …were doing it…
Ella: Both married, both have two children, they do it to their children, they live nearby. I had no idea they were living nearby. I knew they all were in Sheffield. But I haven’t been communicating with him, so must have been happen now. This has been happening I think, um, during those year and a half contacts when they had. This kind of like how I…I may be wrong…
J-C: Supervised contact?
Ella: No, they just, was every Saturday, and I think they were coming to the houses of those people. And that time I think they really terrorise children and hitting them hard. They were like waking them up, keep waking, you know like…

Here it seems as though Ella is hedging on the whole ‘cult’ thing. Whereas before she and Abraham claimed that RD was part of a “multigenerational cult” operating out of the schools and church in Hampstead, now it’s “these three guys”, as well as RD’s family.

And as we’ve seen from Child Q’s disclosure to the psychiatrist, RD’s friends and family weren’t the ones waking the children up to beat them. That was Abraham himself.

Child Q: No sleep, no, when I was sleeping they were waking me up. And scaring me. And they would put a monster costumes on…
Ella: And what they been doing to you?
Child Q: Okay, well, I remember…
Ella: Oh yeah, ____, _____, and ____?
Child Q: Okay well, remember when we got really late? Once we got really…
Ella: It was only once he retained you for overnight.
Child Q: Once…no, three nights.
Ella: But what I am saying, he went to their house. What they been doing there?
Child P: They were doing sex to us…
Child Q: And scaring us.
Child P: Hitting us, injecting us…a lot of stuff. Lot.
J-C: Who is M_____?
Child Q: He’s a Polish guy.
Ella: There is Polish guy, M_____.
J-C: M____m.
Ella: M_____ yes?
Abraham: Oh, you know this Polish name M____? D’you know a Polish name M_____?Ella: M____, say M____. Then um…
J-C: Who is G_____?
Ella: G_____, he’s German guy…
J-C: German.
Ella: German. And J_____ is?
Child P: German too.
Ella: Also German! We thought that he was English?
Abraham: No, he’s really German, she told us that.
Child Q: I think that he’s German, he talks with a German accent…

This focus on three people whose surnames aren’t even known seems faintly ridiculous, but we include it in the interest of completeness.

Ella: But his family was in-…had been involved at that time, around the same time.
J-C: So all these people, M____, G_____, and J_____, they…
Child Q: Because the problem is that my father’s parents, like _____, his mum, done it to him when he was little.
Child Q: And his sister…
Ella: And the grandmother, from mother’s side. Mother’s mother also been doing it.
Child Q: We call her Great-nan. Great-nan.
Child P: So great grandma, our great-grandma’s daughter, _____, she done it to Papa. And then Papa does it to me and Child Q. So it’s like a pattern, it’s like from the mother, been borned, _____, and after, _____ done it to her son, so that’s Papa, so now Papa has me and Child Q, and when we were going to be older, we will do it to our children, and it will carry on and carry on, carry on.
[Abraham and J-C murmur in background, inaudible]
Child Q: So our children will start doing it to their children and then their children who they have, they will start doing it to their…

Interestingly, while the children seem to have grasped the concept of intergenerational abuse, no one seems to have thought to talk about their father’s father, or his grandfather. Almost as if they only bothered to name people who were alive at the time—whom Ella presumably knew and disliked.

Abraham: …go home and sleep. [To Ella]: Jean-Clement offered, he kindly offered for the children to stay here…
Ella: Mmmhmm.
Abraham: He kindly offered for you to stay here with the children, I reassured him that we’re quite safe in the house for now, we’re going to change the locks tomorrow, and that if we were, we felt the need to take him up on his offer we would let him know immediately.
J-C: How far is home?
Abraham: Hampstead.
Ella: Looks like he’s got…
Abraham: I told him that he (RD) has keys, and we shall be changing the locks tomorrow night. But we don’t feel that he’s brave enough to come to the house while we’re there.
Ella: But if we lock from the inside, he will come…
Abraham: No problem, we’ll change the locks tomorrow. Forgot to ask (Andy?) about that today, but that’s the main thing.
Ella: Now the file is sent to you, it’s quite self-explanatory, although maybe some names you want to probably make connection. But their addresses, for those guys that I just mentioned…
Abraham: [to J-C] Is there anything I can do for you?
J-C: I cannot…can I drive you home?

For people in fear of a horrible murdering Satanist who could appear at any moment and harm them, Ella and Abe seem remarkably nonchalant about their own, and the children’s, safety.

Abraham: No, we’ve got the car, we’ve got the car. Did you explain…if you can tell us, Jean-Clement, is there anything we can do tomorrow during the day before we come and see you?
J-C: Ah, is probably what you can do that make it easy, you know the people?
Abraham: A list of all the people.
J-C: Yeah, and describe who they are.
Abraham: Describe what they look like, who they are.
J-C: Because they’re the people we need to go and speak to.
Abraham: Absolutely, Jean-Clement. As soon as you go to speak to one…
J-C: We’re not going to speak to dad first…
Abraham: As soon as you speak to one, they will warn him, then he will go and close up all his secret rooms. You need to go to the secret rooms and find the evidence—Jean-Clement. You need—
J-C: Okay, so in the secret room is the most important…
Abraham: The most important.
J-C: Then I need to know more about it now…
Abraham: We’re giving you everything now.
J-C: To be close, yeah?
Ella: Yeah. I mean, he’s the head of it.
J-C: If you come and see me tomorrow, I can take this one…[Child P interrupts]…sorry, miss—take this one, take a photocopy…
Ella: I can email it to you.
Abraham: And you can do a search.
J-C: And give it back to you.
Abraham: Can you get a search warrant?
J-C: If you want to…[to Abraham] No, not yet.
Ella: Well you can photograph…
Abraham: Well why not?
J-C: Because you need…
Abraham: Jean-Clement, time is of the essence. Look, I understand, I really…
J-C: Because this…if you can provide it, that’s fine. Name, date of birth, addresses…
Abraham: Not date of birth, but we can give you names, we can give you occupation, we can tell you their place of work, and we can…
J-C: If you have the addresses, it make it a lot easier, because you don’t want to go and get the wrong person.
Abraham: No, we can give you names and addresses.
Ella: No, no, we have a list…
Abraham: No, no, but Jean-Clement, he says we must have the right names and addresses, we don’t want to arrest the wrong people.
J-C: Because if…
Child P: We have the names, yes, yes.
J-C: Because if you do, then it doesn’t give your story credibility. And if it’s not credible, it doesn’t help you, it doesn’t build up your confidence, you see?
Abraham: Yeah. Jean-Clement, if we allow you…sorry to interrupt but, if we allow him to get a sniff, then he will close up his rooms.
J-C: That’s right. So we have to be quick. But…
Abraham: We must be quick.

Finally, Abe and Ella reveal their true agenda: they actually seem to believe that Jean-Clement, a Special Constable, is going to run this investigation on their behalf. Furthermore, they believe that he will do so in the way they want him to.

And what they want is for him to go to RD’s house and make a show of searching for the fictional “secret rooms”, which would constitute evidence that he is the leader of a child-raping, baby-murdering, cannibalistic cult.

Ella: Tell you why as well. Because one day when he apply for prohibit order, court order needs to submit children’s passports, and birth certificates, which I did. Now, the arrangement is, when I go out of the country for those holidays, I have to…I’m taking passports, I can take up to three days before travel, I have to submit it three days after travel.
J-C: You have to return them.
Ella: Yes. I already stretched this time, I told them I was supposed to be back last week, now I told them I’m ill, I couldn’t make a flight, we’re coming this week, so they will get suspicious pretty soon…
J-C: Okay.
Ella: …solicitors. Who are connected to him.
J-C: Okay. How long…
Abraham: Solicitors who are connected to him.
J-C: Now, have you got some photos.
Abraham: Of who?
J-C: Any of these people.
Abraham: I’ve got a few.
Ella: Yes, I’ve got some good photos.
J-C: If you can provide them that’s fine.
Ella: Yes, I’ve got a few.

Ella admits that she’s been playing fast and loose with the rules about taking the children abroad. She and Abe also claim to have photos of the people they are about to accuse—most likely gleaned from their social media profiles.

J-C: Aby. You need to get rid of the videos on your phone. Because if you have any photos on your phone, mate, you need to give them to me, I’ll come burn them…
Abraham: Of who? Of who?
J-C: Just a moment. Like, videos of the young lady talking now.
Abraham: I must get rid of it?
J-C: Just…put it away.
Abraham: Why?
J-C: I’ll explain.
Abraham: I’m asking you.
J-C: If you have any photo and it does work, you can send them to me, I can burn them on CD and give it to you, if you have video, send them to me, I’ll burn them on DVD and give it to you. This is what happens. If you have this, for instance you showed me the…
Abraham: You were finding.
J-C: The…you gave me the phone with the video on it when she was talking. If you were to give that to the police, they would take your phone away. And you do not have access to your phone, until the investigation is finished. So if the investigation takes two years, your phone will be there for two years. If it takes five years, your phone will be there for five years.
Ella: So we can email to you…
J-C: So it’s important that you remove all this information from your devices. You can burn them, put them on the key—
Abraham: Thank you, Jean-Clement. Put them on a—
J-C: On a key.
Abraham: On a memory stick.

Yes, Jean-Clement is really advising Abraham to destroy evidence which ought to go to the police. Granted, he does tell him to transfer the videos of the children to a memory stick, but had the police been aware of this at the time, it’s likely they would have taken a very dim view.

J-C: And then give it to the police.
Abraham: You mean give it to you.
J-C: Me, or give it to whoever want them…
Abraham: What police? You are the police!

Yes. Incredible as it seems, Abraham actually believed this. We are still shaking our heads.

J-C: Okay, give it to me. If you email, I have to take the whole, I say, ‘There you go’. So if email, I put them on CD anyway.
Ella: Okay, we’ll email from the phone and then delete it. And I’ll do the same thing.
J-C: No…so…
Abraham: He’s saying don’t email them, Ella. You don’t want us to email it…
J-C: No, if you email I can burn it. If you have ways of transferring, because I don’t…
Ella: Yeah, yeah, we can send it.
J-C: You can transfer it from your…
Ella: Mobile.
J-C: To your laptop, if you got one.
Abraham: Yeah, a Mac. Not messing about, you.
Ella: I can do that, I can, um…
J-C: You can transfer?
Abraham: Ella’s very good on that.
J-C: So you can transfer from your phone onto the CD.
[all four start speaking over one another here]
Ella: This, I can photocopy for you. All those…the plan.

Well, at least that’s settled, then.

J-C: Now, while Aby’s getting ready, what’s the main address we need to go to?
Ella: (very firmly) His address.
J-C: Where is that?
Ella: He’s moving around all the time. He’s moving…
Abraham: And you’ll find…
J-C: You’re talking about secret rooms? So that specific room must be at a specific address.
Ella: Yeah, yeah, we have address, we have…
J-C: So I remember how she described it, she knows exactly what it looked like.
Abraham: She knows exactly what it looked like.
J-C: Okay. If someone was to take her there and say ‘show me’, she will be able to say, ‘this is it’?
Ella: Yeah.
J-C: So I need the address for that place.
Ella: We have…I’ll send it to you, in the, in the email. Yeah. His address, and here the plan of three floors. He’s got like four, five secret escapes from his house…
J-C: Okay. So that’s his address, until 2013? Or 2012?
Ella: No. His address he keeps secret. He—when the proceedings started again, uh…
J-C: So nobody really knows about it?
Ella: No.
J-C: So legally, nobody knows about it. That’s a private home.
Ella: That’s exactly right.

All right, let’s see if we have this now: the main address which Jean-Clement should visit (wearing his Special Constable uniform so RD knows he means business) is RD’s. However, RD moves around all the time, even though the children have stated that he has both a “secret room” accessible via a wardrobe in his bedroom that’s full of coats, and four or five secret exits.

One of the complaints we heard from Abe, which has been echoed by various hoax pushers since then, is that this audio was ignored by the police during their investigation.

Frankly, Abe and Ella should have been bloody grateful that this piece-of-shit recording was tucked away in Chingford instead of being listened to by the police, because if they’d heard it first, Abe, Ella, and even possibly Jean-Clement would have been arrested.

J-C: Now. And the most thing, for these children, took place in Christ Church Primary School.
Abraham: Yes, Christ Church school and church.
Ella: And…and, yeah. 
Abraham: School and church. And McDonalds and [inaud.] and…
J-C: So Christ Church…
Ella: Christ Church School in Hampstead.
Abraham: School in Hampstead.
Ella: Primary school in Hampstead.
J-C: Is it Hampstead or Hampstead Heath?
Ella: Just Hampstead. And the…
J-C: NW…
Ella: Three.
J-C: And next one is the church. What is the church called?
Ella: Just next door to the school. It’s actually like…
J-C: What is it called? Church?
Ella: Er, Christ Church. And located on Christ Church Hill.
J-C: Next to the school.
[Sound of scraping food off plates]
Abraham: No backchat. And just do the job.
J-C: Yeah? And that’s still NW3.
Ella: NW3. Exactly.
J-C: Okay. And after that [inaudible]

For pity’s sake, if we write it down for you, will you shut up?

Ella: Child P!
Child P: Yeah?
Ella: What his address, um, what’s his address?
Child P: Who, Papa’s?
Abraham: 15 Angel Road.
Child P: … 15, no, 16 Angel Road.
Abraham: 16? You told me it’s 15.
Child P: No, 16, 16.
Ella: They were changing this.
Abraham: (menacingly) You told me it was 15.
Child P: No, it’s 16.
Abraham: You told me—
Ella: The reason I’m asking because I’ve got different, even, um …
Abraham: 15. What’s his real address?
J-C: That Angel Road in Hampstead?
Ella: No, this is in Islington.
Abraham: (angrily) What’s his real address? What is it?
Child P: 15 Angel Road.
Abraham: You just told them 16. Jean-Clement.
J-C: Yes?
Abraham: Jean-Clement, this one has to be watched.
J-C: No, no…
Abraham: No, no, no, don’t tell me anything. His address is 15 Angel Road, and she just told you it was 16 Angel Place, Angel Road, and she just told you it was 16. Pay close attention to this one.
J-C: Does this one or two building?
Abraham: Jean-Clement … no, no, Jean-Clement, I lived with her, you’re not listening to me.
J-C: Okay.
Abraham: She lies. Instinctively. She lies.
J-C: So if you think she lies … why would you believe her story?
Abraham: Because I questioned her ten times, and then I will question him. And if what he says corresponds…we question them separately…
J-C: Oh, right.
Abraham: …like the police do.
J-C: Okay.
Abraham: And anything that corresponds perfectly we, we, okay.
J-C: Okay, that’s good.
Abraham: The reason we know that the house, it doesn’t matter the number, we know the road and we know that it’s right on the corner, corner house. So if she tell us 15, 16, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter she tell us 15, 16, 17, we know it’s the corner house. Don’t we?
Child P: Yes.
Abraham: What’s the real address?
Child P: Angel, Angel Road.
Abraham: What is the number, darling?
Child P: It’s on the corner.
Abraham: What is the number? Don’t try to evade the question. What’s the number?
Child P: It’s number 15.
Abraham: Why did you tell us 16 just now? Go and wash your plate, please.

This exchange illustrates Abraham’s badgering, antagonistic style toward both children, though he seems to have developed a particular dislike of Child P. We’ve noted in the past that as the older and more mature of the two children, she was more able to resist Abe and Ella’s psychological and physical torture during their trip to Morocco, but here we can see some of the techniques which Abraham used to grind her down.

And he immediately follows this interrogation with an accusation:

Ella: Now, but Child Q…
J-C: Aby, Aby…
Abraham: (to Child Q) Did she touch you?
Child Q: No, she didn’t.
J-C: That’s probably because the information I was provided is meant to confusicate.
Abraham: What information was provided by who?
Ella: They confusing us.
Abraham: No, no, you are being naïve.
J-C: The way it was provided to them may have been confusing…
Abraham: Can you stop being naïve? And can you just listen to us, who have the experience of dealing with them? She purposely, and expertly…
Ella: Was misleading.
J-C: That’s what she says. That’s what she was trained to do.
Abraham: No. Yes, she was trained.
J-C: That’s what she said.
Ella: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
J-C: So you have to understand that. That’s what she was…
Abraham: No, we do understand that. But we’re letting you know.
J-C: It’s not purposely done. It’s done so that the story, when it goes out, nobody follows it. That how it’s made.
Ella: They’re mixing, they’re mixing some truthful facts with some lies. Mixing and mixing, mixing, so it took us four weeks to get to the…
Abraham: She actually attempts to mislead…
J-C: That’s right…

Jean-Clement appears to believe in the existence of the cult, which he says taught the children to “confusicate” their answers; he tries to convince Abraham that Child P should not be blamed, as she is a victim, but Abraham isn’t having any of it.

Abraham: She actually attempts. But because we know that when we are sometimes, this is another one of her, this is what she does…Ella and I, we will begin to discuss certain aspects of the situation…
J-C: Okay.
Abraham: … and by discussing it…
J-C: Yeah.
Abraham: We brainstorm, and together we come up, or we work out, we work things out.
J-C: Okay.
Abraham: What she will do when we are talking, she will interrupt us…
J-C: Yeah.
Abraham: …and distract us with something. And send us, try to, attempt to send us in another complete … we say to her: Be quiet, don’t distract us any more. He does it…
Ella: And she would listen to our conversations.
Abraham: Oh, she eavesdrops on your conversations, and he does it as well.
Ella: And she would use the information she heard…
Abraham: And he does it.
Ella: …creating whatever, some kind of confusion between us.

Here, Abraham as much as admits that he and Ella concocted the story, brainstorming together and working out details. He seems to think of Child P as something akin to an agent, sent to disrupt and confuse the stories he and Ella are creating.

Abruptly, Abraham turns on Child P:

Abraham: What you looking at him for? What you just, what was that look you just did to him? What was that look she just did to you?
Child Q: It’s a sign to me.
Abraham: What was the sign?
Child Q: The eye one.
Abraham: What does that mean?
Child Q: That means I’m ready to…
Abraham: You’re ready to touch? Excuse me!
J-C: Yeah.
Abraham: Pay close attention. Because you think you know, but you don’t. Once you are talking, and once we are distracted explaining to you, because you don’t, you don’t know them.
J-C: Hmmm…
Abraham: So once we are distracted. Umm, how can I say? Um, once we are distracted explaining to you the situation, the enormousness of the situation, and how expertly they are able to distract, once we are doing this, she knows and she made an eye sign to him that “I am ready to touch.” Because they regularly touch, because the father questions them as to whether or not they have touched each other.
Ella: And if they haven’t, he would hurt them.
Abraham: Punish them.
Child P: And sometime he accuses us.
Abraham: He accuses you of not doing it, even when you touch.
Child Q: We touch it. And then he says: No, you haven’t, stop lying.
Ella: How many times? They supposed to do it five times at least. Yeah, five times a day?
Child P: Every day. Every single day.
Abraham: Ahh…now you’re getting some idea of the case, Jean-Clement. Alright, what we’re up against.
Ella: And even they’re saying he did, he will still hurt, hurt them.
Child P: Anyway, he’ll hurt us anyway. Anyway.
Child Q: Anyway, he will slap us.
Abraham: Because he takes, he takes sadistic pleasure in hurting you.
Ella: Also he would scream into the, Child Q…
Abraham: He screams into his ear, he’s deaf in one ear. He screams into their ear. When are there – excuse me – when he is holding them to kill the baby with a knife, he’s screaming into their ear. What happens, who screams into your ear?

We know from the medical report that Child Q’s claim of deafness in one ear are actually because of Abraham having hit him on the head, not his father screaming in his ear: 

Kill! Kill!Kill!

Child Q: Child P and Papa. Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
Abraham: And what about the rest of the people, what do they say?
Child Q: Kill! They say, they say…
Abraham: Tell me how they say it.
Child P & Child Q: They say: Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Like cheers.
Abraham: Say it. Say it how they say it.
Child P & Child Q: Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
Child P: Like that. But then after, when it’s my turn to kill the baby, the others and Child Q say Kill.
Abraham: And when it’s his turn to say it, you say it.
Child P: Yes.
Abraham: What’s the word that you say?
Child P: Kill.
Abraham: (softly) Say it more for me, I want to hear it.
Child P: Kill, kill, kill, kill.
Abraham: I like the sound of it. Can you say it together? Say it together? Let’s all say it together.
Abraham & Child P & Child Q: Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
Abraham: That’s what they say.
Child Q: They really loudly, in my ear.
Abraham: You getting the picture now? You’re getting the picture.
Child Q: And they also, um, sometimes they say: Kill the baby! Kill the baby!
Ella: It’s incredible.
Abraham: What do they say?
Child Q: Kill the baby! Kill the baby! Kill the baby! Kill the baby!
Abraham: Let’s say it together, let’s say it together.
Abraham & Child P & Child Q: Kill the baby! Kill the baby! Kill the baby! Kill the baby!
Abraham: Thank-you.
Child Q: Like that.
Ella: He was doing to Child P’s ears, while she’s not hearing very well in the other ear.
Child Q: I’m deaf in this one, completely deaf.
Ella: The thing is…
Child P: Sometimes we do not listen to Mum. But usually is the, the reason is, because we can’t, we don’t listen to them is because we can’t hear them. That’s usually the point. But usually we sometimes do not listen to them. Usually.
Abraham: I love that honesty, I love that honesty, beautiful honesty that is.
Child P: I told you about that, kill the baby.
Abraham: No, it’s the first time you told me.
Ella: On Wednesdays they had a special day in school…
Abraham: First time you tell them you killed baby…
Child Q: And I told you about the showers of course.
Ella: …for example…up to 60 people could be abusing them in one day.
Abraham: Each.
Ella: They were putting broomsticks in their bottoms…
Abraham: Mama, mama, mama, let’s get the children to bed, please. It’s quarter past one. Please, can we get the children to bed? We are all so tired. I am tired.
J-C: Can I do the reverse? Come to you, so that they will have time to sleep in?
Abraham: Yes. You should come to us.
J-C: Is that better?
Abraham: Yes, yes, you should come to us. Yes, please, Jean-Clement. “S’il vous plâit. S’il vous plâit.” Can we go now please?
Child Q: And, um, they, um…
Abraham: No. Can we go now, please? Thank-you. I’ve been patiently asking since quarter-to-one. Thank-you.

This segment is still hard to listen to, after nearly four years. The children’s obvious need to please Abe (or suffer the consequences), and Abe’s own evident pleasure in chanting “Kill the baby!” are stomach-curdling stuff.

But it’s also shocking to see how Abraham controls the situation: one minute he is chanting with the children and telling them how much he loves their honesty, but within seconds he is telling them to stop talking, as it’s time to leave.

He is tired, you see.

J-C: Want me to copy this one? I, uh, keep all you got, make copies.
Ella: I’ll, I’ll…
Abraham: Can we do this tomorrow? Can we finish? Can we terminate now? Can we go now, please? I’m tired. Thank-you. Thank-you. Some of us have been working on this for a month, full-time, some of us haven’t slept for a month. Let’s go.
Ella: Thank-you very much. Nice, nice to meet you. Thank-you very much for your time.
Abraham: I told you he’d, I told you he’d be perfect, perfect man for the job. Patient, patient. He’s kind, he’s thorough.

Does it sound as though Abe and Ella are just about to leave Jean-Clement’s house with the children?

Don’t get your hopes up. They’ll be there for a while yet.

To be continued…