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19/02/02 - Parents of killed
UK child blame ignorance
Astrid Zweynert
Reuters
The parents of murdered child abuse victim Victoria Climbie
on Tuesday accused a key agency involved in their daughter's
care of not understanding black traditions.
Berthe and Francis Climbie, who sat through almost five
months of the public inquiry into her death, said they
had been deeply upset by a suggestion by Haringey Council
that they had given away Victoria "without so much
as a forwarding address.''
"Such comments...suggest a lack of knowledge of a
practice which they understand to be common in the black
community,'' the Climbies told the inquiry through their
lawyer, Margot Boye.
The Climbies had sent Victoria, whom they described
as "their precious daughter,'' to Europe in the care
of her great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao in the hope of
a better life for the girl.
When Victoria died in February 2000 she had 128 injuries
from being beaten, burnt with cigarettes and scalded
by Kouao and her lover, Carl Manning, in one of Britain's
worst cases of child cruelty. Both serve life sentences
for her murder.
The Climbies said Victoria's needs were totally overlooked
despite, in the words of one social worker, her looking
like "an Action Aid poster.''
They spoke as the first phase of the inquiry, set up
by the government to find out how the child protection
system failed Victoria despite ongoing contact with
social services, police and doctors, drew to a close.
CATALOGUE OF FAILURES
Throughout the inquiry the Climbies heard how social
workers returned Victoria to Kouao, who along with Manning
forced the girl to sleep in a cold bathroom in her own
excrement.
Neil Garnham the inquiry's counsel, said the girl could
have been saved if police, health and social services
had acted.
"It is simply not open to agencies involved in an
inquiry like this to contend that they could never be
expected to anticipate the possibility Victoria would
be abused,'' he said.
But Haringey, the north London local authority accused
of having failed in its duty to protect Victoria, attacked
the inquiry in its closing statement for its "apparent
determination to blame everyone from top to bottom.''
The council's lawyer insisted that the tragedy could
have happened in many other parts of the country.
Victoria's social worker, Lisa Arthurworry, said she
was being used as a "sacrificial lamb'' by the council,
which was desperate to shift blame for the eight-year-old's
death.
The second phase of the inquiry will consider what
recommendations should be made to the government as
to how to prevent such cases. It is due to run from
March 16 to April 26.
Inquiry chairman Lord Laming, a former chief inspector
of social services, will then write a final report and
submit it to the government. |
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