It took a murder trial to occur before the wider public had any inkling of what was going on in its midst. Today after a brief hiatus the story is headline grabbing once again consequent to the joint report into the child’s death delivered by Ofsted, the Healthcare Commission and the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. A child victim of a killing as cruel as anything from the Hindley-Brady era and few for a full year knew anything about it. The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the bungling that abandoned the baby to his fate were given the precious time to get their stories in order, behind the backs of an unsuspecting public and free from any pressure that the public would certainly have brought to bear. That they may have messed up as badly on this as they did on the provision of adequate protection for the child at risk merely accentuates their general incompetence.
It was my wife who first pointed out to me a quirk afflicting the role of the British media. On the one hand they are able to bombard their audiences with raging rivers of detail pertaining to heinous abuse including murder perpetrated by the Austrian Josef Fritzl in the cellar where he imprisoned his daughter and the children he had raped into existence. On the other it has been much more circumspect in what it is prepared to say about the torture murder of Baby P in Haringey.
Although the father of the child victim would claim that ‘those who systematically tortured P and killed him kept it a secret’ their behaviour was reinforced by a much wider culture of secrecy governing discussion of the case. Newsweek in a piece covering the issue may not have filled in the silences that pepper the Baby P case but it can hardly stand accused of leaving its readers uninformed about the degree of secrecy surrounding it.
It is against the law for us to tell you who killed Baby P, although we know, and even though they have now been convicted of the crime in the British courts. One of them is his own mother, a 27-year-old from north London, but we cannot legally identify her any further. Another is his mother's boyfriend, a 32-year-old who lived with her in their publicly provided house in the Haringey Council area, but we cannot identify him any further, either. The third, like the others convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child, is another man, age 36. He at least can legally be identified as Jason Owen, but we cannot disclose why he lived in the house or what exactly his relationship was to the other people in the house, or even whether Jason Owen is his real or only name, although we know. We cannot even disclose Baby P's real name, even his first name, although we know that too. Baby P's sister was also subjected to abuse in the house, serious abuse, although no further details are allowed about that whatsoever. Nor can we tell you how many other children Mother of Baby P had, although it is known that she gave birth to one in jail after her arrest, and authorities took it away from her. Finally, we can't even legally tell you why we can't tell you any of this information, because to do any of this would be to violate a contempt-of-court order issued by the judge in the case, Stephen Kramer QC at the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court.
It is clear that today’s ‘devastating’ report commissioned on November 12 came as a result of the mushrooming public outcry in response to the convictions of those responsible for baby P’s death a day earlier. It would most certainly never have happened had the proponents of monumental secrecy succeeded in keeping things as they were.
Even now despite the trial having concluded, the culture of secrecy is at play. Who or what is being protected? There seems no good reason for it. It is hardly for the welfare of any remaining children. Anybody wishing to know the identities of both Baby P and his group of killers is merely a couple of computer clicks from accessing that information.
Secrecy helped kill this child. Six months before Baby P died former social worker Nevres Kemal persuaded her lawyer Lawrence Davies to write to the then Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and three other government ministers complaining that children in Haringey were being left with their abusers. The council took out an injunction against her ‘banning her from speaking about child care in Haringey.’ Sadly now we know the result of that imposed secrecy, with Lawrence Davies convincingly arguing that it seriously diminished the chances of intervening to save the life of Baby P.
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