| Flowers in Gods Garden
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26/11/01
- Social worker spent just 30 minutes with Victoria
The social worker responsible for the safety of Victoria
Climbie saw her for just 30 minutes in the seven months
before her death, an inquiry has heard. Lisa Arthurworrey
was working for Haringey Council in north London when
she closed the case a week before Victoria died of horrendous
injuries.
Victoria was found in February last year with 128 separate
injuries to her body in one of Britain's worse child abuse
cases. Miss Arthurworrey, 32, said that during four meetings
with the eight-year-old she never got beyond saying much
more than "Hello, how are you?"
From the meetings she concluded she did not have evidence
to suspect that the youngster was at risk of "significant
harm", the hearing was told. Asked by the inquiry's
chairman Lord Laming if the meetings ever got beyond her
saying to Victoria: "Hello, how are you", Miss
Arthurworrey said: "It did not."
She added: "Looking back ... it was appalling."
Miss Arthurworrey, who had only been a social worker for
18 months when she took charge of Victoria's well-being,
also said the atmosphere in her office was one of conflict.
"There was always something happening. There was
never peace. Management would be falling out with somebody
almost every day." Her great aunt, Marie Therese
Kouau, 44, and her boyfriend Carl Manning, 28, of Tottenham,
north London, were jailed for life for Victoria's murder
in January this year. |
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