The Torture Murder of Baby P

By AM Monday, November 17, 2008

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"This boy was given a death sentence and Haringey cannot be allowed to get away with it.” Mor Dioum, of the Victoria Climbie Foundation

Few things send molten hatred coursing through the veins like the murder of a child and in particular where that murder has been preceded by prolonged physical and mental torture stretching over months or years. Reason temporarily departs and with it opposition to the death penalty as well as resistance to all demands for the perps to be tortured in a thousand different ways. Water boarding seems humane juxtaposed to the actions of child torture-killers. Burning suddenly seems too good for them. The thirst for retribution on behalf of the infant innocent is hard to slake. Anger subverts reason in its hope that fellow prisoners of those who inflict torture-infanticide will deliver a rough justice that will cause them to suffer for eternity and a day.

But it is always a temporary state of mind, although a state of permanence might well kick in to any parent if the victim were their own child. Humanity can never triumph if it is dragged down to the level of the most bestial in its midst. Even when it is impossible to haul those who by some biological quirk inhabit human form the human imperative must be to avoid slippage down an evolutionary rung or two. Unfortunate as it may well seem, our rights are theirs. There is no other way.

I recall many years ago, as a young apprentice tiler working on a building site, reading in one of the English tabloids about the brutal death in Brighton of Maria Colwell. She was killed by a hateful stepfather whose name I have never forgotten, William Kepple. Shortly after her death a book was published. Authored by John Howells, its title was Remember Maria. To the extent that it remembered her at all British society seems to have learned little. As much as she was a victim of the brutal Kepple Maria was also a victim of the catastrophic failure of the social services.

Since Maria Colwell’s death in 1973 other cases every bit as harrowing have come to light. Dominic Lawson points out in today’s Sunday Times that:

The Wave Trust charity recently produced a grim list of the most disturbing cases that have followed over the intervening 35 years. Jasmine Lorrington, battered to death at the age of four in 1984; 20-month-old Martin Nicoll, who died of 68 injuries in 1991; Lauren Wright, 6, starved and beaten to death in 2000; two-year-old Ainlee Labonte, ditto, in January 2002; and 21 month old John Gray, who died as a result of 200 injuries, including a ruptured liver, in 2003.

The torture murder of eight year old Victoria Climbié in 2000 at the hand of her aunt and the aunt’s boyfriend in Haringey was supposed to be the never again case. That Baby P was also subjected to a similar fate in Haringey only streets away from where Victoria died underlines the failure in child protection policy. There were enough warnings. After the death of Victoria Climbié word association alone “child in danger + Haringey” should have sent the authorities racing, blue lights flashing, alarms blaring to the torture chamber where Baby P lived and died. Inexplicably, it never happened. All sorts of excuses, better described as evasions, have been proffered. The arrogance of senior social workers beggars belief. Despite Haringey being a by word for ‘blinding incompetence’ when it came to the protection of vulnerable children, pass the problem seems have been an institutionalised facet of child policy at government level. As Children Secretary Ed Balls comments ‘people are asking how these despicable acts of evil can happen in this day and age and in Haringey of all places.’ Indeed Ed, but at least have the balls to do something about it.

Since reading about the fiendish torture murder inflicted on this 17 month old child who we are allowed to refer to only as Baby P, I have found my emotions on a rollercoaster, being pulled from blinding seething anger to a more calm and detached reflection. Trying to stay within the parameters of the latter is a hard fought battle which is lost each time I read another account of what Baby P suffered and how his death could so easily have been prevented through the application of a modicum of competence. But it was not to be. The wee man never made it because of serious systemic failure at the heart of the agencies tasked with protecting him. He was so badly let down.

Children are, as I am often reminded by an elderly friend, the only true innocents in the world. The rest of us to varying degrees are not. They need the protection of society. Statistics show that they are more likely to be killed by people who share their homes than by strangers. All the more reason for society to have in place measures which recognise children as full but vulnerable citizens entitled to every measure it can provide to ensure their safety.

Three people have been convicted of causing the death of Baby P or having allowed it to occur. One happened to have a human body out of whose birth canal Baby P entered what for him was a valley of tears, torment and torture. Dignifying that beast with the term mother even if for technical reasons is something currently beyond me. Two Nazi thugs were also convicted of similar charges.

It seems unfair that two of the three killers of this child for now remain anonymous. The thing that brought him into the world and her Nazi mating partner should be publicly identified so that they may walk the face of this earth forever carrying the mark of Cain.

Baby P. Nobody loved him, nobody helped him, nobody saved him. Disgraceful.