AN undercover reporter from the Sunday Times investigating a “shaman” from Hampstead was followed by her “powerful” police chief partner, a court has heard.

Tim Rayment described how he travelled to Suriname in South America in 2008 as part of a nine-month investigation into claims that Juliette D’Souza had conned more than £1million out of vulnerable people as a “faith healer” with supernatural powers which could cure cancer.

The freelance journalist told Blackfriars Crown Court that he had tracked Ms D’Souza, 59, down to a luxurious house in the former Dutch colony and was standing outside with his photographer when they were approached in a car by Tjin-a-Ton, the head of immigration.

“When he emerged (from the house he shared with Ms D’Souza) in a small to medium-size white car and drove past us, I felt he was having a good look,” Mr Rayment said on Friday.

“In a very calm fashion we went back to our car and I started to drive it back to our hotel. I drove deliberately slowly. This had the effect of forcing Mr Tjin-a-Ton to demonstrate that he was following us. There was then no doubt in my mind that we were being followed.”

Juliette D'Souza leaving court earlier in the trial

He added: “I had a very difficult task because I understood [Mr D’Souza’s partner] to be a powerful senior police officer. He was described to me as the head of immigration. They shared a home and there was a possibility that he would have been aware of what she was alleged to have done. I was trying to work out a way to approach her when she was on her own, when she was not with him. Because of his position in immigration as a senior police officer, I believe that he had the power to stop me leaving. We decided that I should leave Suriname the next day.”

As their hotel was patrolled by several undercover police officers, the reporter of 30 years’ experience spent the night tearing up documents and flushing them down the hotel toilet with his photographer, sending as many photographs as possible over a “poor internet connection”, fearful that they could be detained, the court heard. 

Mr Rayment told the jury how he was pulled out of the airport queue the next day, marched into a tiny cabin and interrogated by a group of officials who looked like they were “consulting” someone higher up down the phone.

He was eventually released and the article “The evil career of Vanessa Campbell, the bad Samaritan” appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine in 2008.

Mr Rayment said he had been contacted by the magazine to carry out the investigation after the publication had been approached by two of Ms D’Souza’s alleged victims. 

He told the jury how he talked to Keith Bender, an osteopath who had been under the defendant’s “spell”, and another woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, for close to 14 hours over a weekend, during which time they all broke down in tears from the “intensity”.

Stephen Fidler, for the defence, accused him of being motivated by money and “making a few bob” out of helping the alleged victims carry out a “revenge” attack on Ms D’Souza. 

Mr Rayment refuted the statement and said: “I’m motivated by old-fashioned motivations of journalism, which is whether a story is interesting or whether it is in the public interest. It is a pompous thing to claim but it is true. If a story is worth telling, it should have several components and one of those components, I believe, is the public interest. This story met that test. The whole reason I went to Suriname and I remember the memo I wrote to my editor – [Ms D’Souza] had a right in my mind, as well as a legal right in my mind, to answer the allegations against her. That was why I went.”

Ms D’Souza, of Perrins Lane, denies 23 counts of obtaining property by deception and fraud between 1998 and 2010 from 11 victims. 

The trial continues.