Horrific death of the little girl betrayed by fear and blunders
By PETER ALLEN, Daily Mail
Social workers 'paralysed by fear' and the police were yesterday blamed for failing to protect a two-year-old girl from being tortured and killed by her parents.
Dennis Henry, 39, and Leanne Labonte, 20, subjected Ainlee Walker to horrific abuse and she died resembling 'an African famine victim'.
Her body - discovered in a filthy council flat in January - had 64 separate injuries, including cigarette burns and scalding.
The couple were jailed for a total of 22 years in September. But a catalogue of blunders by the authorities contributed to the girl's death, a damning report revealed yesterday.
Social workers failed to make a scheduled visit to Ainlee's home in Plaistow, East London, the week before her death, and had not seen her for five months before she died.
Many were said to be 'paralysed' with fear of the girl's violent parents.
Launching the independent report, Helen Kenward, an independent consultant and expert on child protection issues, said: 'Ainlee would have been a very lonely, sad and distressed child.
'She almost didn't exist; she didn't exist for her parents, she almost didn't exist for the agencies.
'She would have died the kind of death none of us could contemplate. When you look at the photographs that are available, she was a beautiful child. It was such a waste.
'There must have been a point at which she just gave up. If you cry and no one comes, you must give up.'
The report follows the Victoria Climbie scandal in Haringey, North London, in which incompetent social workers and police were blamed for her death.
In Ainlee's case, there were 'tensions' between different departments and vital facts about her condition were not made freely available.
The report, by the Newham Area Child Protection Committee, said: 'It is particularly remarkable that for almost a year - between July 2000 and June 2001 - health agencies, the police and housing all had serious concerns, but none of this information was passed to social services.'
The report is especially critical of the authorities' inability to deal with anti-social families.
It says: 'This was a violent and intimidating family who treated all agencies with suspicion and mistrust and did all that they could to prevent their involvement.
'There was a lack of understanding and a lack of skills in working with dangerous families and a failure to recognise what was happening.'
Despite repeated warnings that she was at risk, Ainlee was removed from the child protection register by social services seven months before she died.
After an Old Bailey jury found the couple guilty of manslaughter and child cruelty, Mr Justice Leveson called for an urgent inquiry.
The report reveals that Henry, an alcoholic and crack cocaine user who sometimes used the surname Walker, was 'threatening and confrontational'. He was sentenced to 12 years.
It also reveals that Labonte, given ten years, had an earlier abortion and called that child Ainlee. Described as 'manipulative and aggressive', she had given birth to three children by the age of 18.
Her oldest child, a son conceived when she was 14 by a man she met in a pub, was taken into care as a baby after she left him alone in her bedsit.
One woman who attempted to intervene for the children's protection was branded a 'white slag' and had faeces posted through her letterbox. Others were robbed and physically attacked.
Ainlee weighed only 21lb when she died - 1lb less than she had weighed six months previously and half the average for a child of that age.
Diary entries written by Labonte revealed that she harboured a deep resentment towards the 'strange girl'.
After a raid, police found a photograph of Ainlee in a drawer with the word 'S**t' scrawled across her face.
Eight-year-old Victoria Climbie died in February 2000 after being beaten, starved and tortured by her greataunt, Marie Therese Kouao, and her lover, Carl Manning. Both are serving life sentences for murder.
NSPCC director Mary Marsh said the level of child killing in the UK was a 'national outrage'.
She added: 'The Government needs to reform the child protection system to make it fit for the 21st century.
'It must ensure that professionals with responsibility for looking after children work together effectively.'
Other agencies renewed calls for a children's commissioner.
David Behan, who represents social services chiefs, said: 'A champion for children at a national level who is promoting children's interests is something we would support.'
And Alan Levy QC, chairman of the 1991 Pindown Inquiry into Staffordshire children's homes, said: 'There is a great swell amongst over 200 organisations - including all the famous ones -that we need an independent children's commissioner who can overview what is happening, who can evaluate, who can see that the Government is doing things.'
Social Services Minister Jacqui Smith promised the system would be reformed if necessary to protect children like Ainlee. She said: 'There is a question about the quality and the number of social workers available to work with children.
'That's why we have already put in place a recruitment campaign, that is why we are improving the training for social workers and why we have begun to fund post-qualification training for social workers.'
No comments:
Post a Comment