Child B

For the safeguarding homework i have looked into a case of a little girl aged 4 who has cerebral palsy and was abused by her mother Harte aged 23 and her boyfriend Duncan aged 27 from West London. Its was said to be "one of the worst cases seen".

The girl known as Child B was tortured by Duncan & Harte repeatedly  which included them pouring boiling hot water over her hands, ripping out clumps of hair, kicking her in her groin which caused appalling bruising,internal bleeding and permanent liver damage. She was locked in the toilet every single night and sometimes forced to eat her own faeces.

She was removed from their home and put into foster care but then returned home last january despite the fosters carers concerns.

Within 4 wks of being home her arm was broken by Duncan along with further attacks. She was in constant systematic violence until the grandmother began to suspect the abuse and was finally removed. By now she had suffered horrendous injuries and would have died if not been given treatment and had to be given general anaesthetic so they could examine her injuries as she was in so much pain.

What is so disheartening is that social services and other professionals visited the family 20 times and no abuse was suspected. The couple manipulated these people into thinking that nothing was wrong and that the little girl was out with her biological father even though the father had a poor relationship with her anyway so it was highly unlikely she would have been out with him but hidden away somewhere. So why didn't the care authorities do more of a rigorous assessment? They were said to be too focussed on the adults when assessing Harte and Duncan's abilities to look after their daughter and inappropriately optimistic. Surely a bit of common sense from one of these people on one of the 20 visits would suspect something or see something??

The couple Kimberley Harte and Samuel Duncan were sentenced to a total of 22 years in jail on 09th Feb 2007. Not long enough in my opinion.
There is nothing to say in the article about any further investigation into the neglect given by the care workers but just that the staff who saw the child could not have foreseen the injuries. So because of a very poor decision made the child was handed back to the parents when she could have been safe in the arms of foster carers who didn't want her to go back...just doesn't make sense?