The mother of a teenage boy who drowned in a river while playing with friends has told an inquest her family suffered racial abuse before her son’s death.
Christopher Kapessa, 13, died in the River Cynon near Fernhill, South Wales, in July 2019.
Another boy, then aged 14, was seen pushing Christopher from a ledge into the water, South Wales Central Coroner’s Court in Pontypridd heard.
Christopher, who could not swim, immediately got into difficulty and boys, including the one who allegedly pushed him, jumped in to help.
However, he could not be saved.
The boy who pushed Christopher was not prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which said at the time it was not in the public interest to do so, having ruled the incident a “foolish prank”.
Christopher’s family later accused the CPS and South Wales Police of institutional racism for not prosecuting the suspect, though the decision was upheld by the High Court in 2022.
At an inquest into Christopher’s death on Monday, his mother, Alina Joseph, told the hearing of the abuse her family suffered while living in the village of Hirwaun between 2012 and 2018.
She and her seven children had moved to South Wales from London in 2011, first living in Pontypridd before settling in Hirwaun.
“While living in Hirwaun the children especially experienced so much negative and horrific treatment from other members of the community and at times we all felt very isolated because of such treatments,” she said in a written statement read to the court.
“Nevertheless, it was very difficult because the children wanted to play outside of the house and most of the time it ended up bad for my children.”
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She told the inquest that Christopher’s older brother, Glody, had been assaulted, that the family had received racial hate letters through the post and had “stuff written on the outside walls which was racist”.
Ms Joseph said another of her sons, Daniel, was also involved in an incident in which he was allegedly driven at by a motorist who had previously “knocked the house door to tell me that Daniel needs to stop talking to her daughter”.
“The police said there was not much they could do for me,” she told the inquest.
The inquest heard that in another alleged incident a boy urinated on Christopher and his younger sister.
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She also told the court Christopher had allegedly been assaulted in the local Co-Op store and required hospital treatment.
“Obviously by this time, and due to previous encounters with the police, I did not bother calling them or reporting the incident to the police because I had given up on calling them,” she said.
“The family ceased to make complaints to the police regarding their experience with racist abuse because they were dissatisfied with their response on every prior occasion.”
The family moved out after a house fire in May 2018, and Ms Joseph alleged that, on the day of the fire, police officers spoke with the children without the presence of her or a guardian.
“The police officer turned around and told me that it was Christopher who started the fire. The family were dissatisfied with how the police treated Christopher on this occasion,” she said.
Ms Joseph also claimed Christopher was racially abused at secondary school by another child who was excluded for a day.
One teenager told the inquest he saw another boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, push Christopher into the water with his hands.
“I had a clear view of what happened,” the 17-year-old said.
“Everybody for a few seconds didn’t know if he could swim or not and there wasn’t a panic, and when people realised he couldn’t swim people jumped in to try and help him.
“I think he was flailing and trying to keep himself above the water.”
The hearing continues.
