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19/02/02 - Inquiry examines
social service's missed chances
AUDREY WOODS, Associated Press Writer
AP Worldstream
A 8-year-old girl who died of starvation and
hypothermia after months of mistreatment could have been
saved by social services in London, lawyers and witnesses
told an inquiry that finished taking testimony on Tuesday.
In 59 days of testimony by 155 witnesses the panel heard
how Victoria Climbie died despite regular contact with
four local authorities, two police child protection teams,
two hospitals and social workers.
Victoria was brought to Britain from the Ivory Coast
by an aunt, supposedly for a better life. The aunt and
boyfriend claimed welfare payments on the child's behalf,
but starved and beat her.
Marie Therese Kouao and her boyfriend Carl Manning
were jailed last year for life for the murder of the
child, who died in February 2000, her body disfigured
by 128 bruises.
She had been tied in a plastic garbage bag and forced
to sleep in a bath; she was beaten with a bicycle chain
and a wire coat hanger, and fed on scraps.
It was one of the worst cases of child abuse in Britain,
and the government- appointed inquiry is expected to
report in September with radical recommendations to
reform the system that missed so many chances to save
Victoria's life.
One of them was in June 1999, when Esther Ackah, a
distant relative of Kouao through marriage, said she
twice phoned a London borough' s social services department,
warning them that the girl's life was in danger. The
call was not acted upon immediately.
A month later, Victoria's babysitter Priscilla Cameron
took the girl to a hospital after spotting injuries
covering her body. The sores were diagnosed as the skin
ailment scabies.
Nurses' concerns that Victoria was being abused were
not relayed to social services or recorded in medical
notes.
Lawyer Neil Garnham, counsel for the inquiry, said
it would be wrong to avoid criticizing the public services
who failed Victoria just because she was killed by "two
sick individuals."
And Garnham said there was an "astonishing reluctance"
on the part of members from all the agencies to speak
to Victoria while assessing whether she was being abused.
On the final 59th day of the hearing, the lawyer for
Haringey borough council, Elizabeth Lawson, accused
the inquiry of disregarding the realities of front-line
social work in the deprived north London borough.
Kouao convinced everyone that she was a loving mother
to Victoria, and no-one can legislate for such a killer
in the family, Lawson said.
"Some children tragically will die at the hands
of such members of their own families," she said.
"Their deaths are part of the price which our society
pays for their freedom.
"It is an uncomfortable truth looking at the case
as appalling as Victoria's but it is a truth nonetheless,"
Lawson said.
Victoria's parents, Francis and Berthe Climbie, said
they had been "taken in" by Kouao when they
sent the girl to London for a better life.
After hearing 155 witnesses testify, they said Tuesday
they were considering taking legal action against those
who allowed their daughter to be abused, neglected and
tortured. |
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