Child's hellish death sears a nation's conscience

BRONWYN SELL sees parallels between a horrific UK case and two New Zealand tragedies.

LONDON - On the day James Whakaruru was beaten to death in Hastings, the hell was just beginning for a bright, happy seven-year-old on the other side of the world.

In April 1999, as James' battered body was buried, Ivory Coast girl Victoria Climbie was brought to England by her great-aunt for a better life in a golden city.

Less than a year later she died, miserable and lonely. The pathologist counted 128 injuries on her tiny, malnourished body.

She had been burned by cigarettes and beaten with bicycle chains, football boots, coathangers and a belt. Boiling water had been poured over her and her toes had been smashed with a hammer. She had been bound hand and foot and left naked in a bathtub in a dark, windowless bathroom, sitting in rubbish bags, in the middle of winter. She was fed cold food on a piece of plastic, which she could eat only by pushing her face into it. She lay in her own faeces and urine, sometimes for more than 24 hours.

Finally, she froze to death.

This is a girl hospital nurses remember loved cuddles and "twirling up and down the ward" in a white dress and pink wellingtons they gave her.

"To say she was treated like a dog would be wholly unfair," said lawyer Neil Garnham last week as a public inquiry began into her death. "She was treated far worse than any dog."

What is equally disturbing is the number of times Victoria's case was brought to the attention of the authorities - local councils, social workers, police and health workers - and local churches.

Many of the dozens of people who saw her suspected abuse, but each time she was sent back to her tormentors, her great-aunt, 44-year-old Marie Therese Kouao, and the woman's 27-year-old boyfriend, Carl Manning. They were jailed for life in January.

Just hours before she died, in February 2000, social services inexplicably closed her case, satisfied there was no longer any concern for her safety.

Now her name, like James', has been inscribed into a country's conscience. It has been called the most horrific case of child abuse in Britain's legal history. The chairman of the inquiry, Lord Herbert Laming, said it had sent shockwaves through the nation and a wake-up call to social and health services.

"I hope something will come out of this which, in respect of at least the memory of Victoria, will ensure that the safeguards for children in this country will be strengthened so that tragedies of this kind do not occur again," he said.

Like James, Victoria was failed on three levels - by her abusers, by those who failed to intervene and by a system that allowed her to fall through the gaps.

"Victoria's death was not an isolated act of madness by two sick individuals," said Garnham. "The signs were on display time and time again. But they went unheeded. This little girl, already abused and malnourished, was sent back into the hands of her abusers. Frankly, that was unforgivable."

The inquiry has identified at least 12 occasions on which Victoria could have been saved. They included:

* June 1999. A friend of Kouao phones a social services helpline saying Victoria has unexplained injuries. The call centre worker faxes the social workers, but nothing is done, perhaps because it is 4.30 pm on a Friday.

* July 1999. Victoria is twice admitted to hospital. The first time her lesions are diagnosed as scabies and she is sent home the following day. At the second admission, a fortnight later, her head and face are scalded. Kouao says Victoria poured hot water over her own head for relief from itching from the scabies. Staff are suspicious. Victoria's caseworker, Lisa Arthurworrey, and a policewoman, Constable Karen Jones, speak to Kouao and decide there is no evidence of a crime. Victoria is discharged.

* August 1999. Hospital doctor Dr Mary Rossiter writes to social services saying she has enormous concerns for the child. The letter is mailed four days later, and it is a further seven days before it is read, and apparently ignored.

* October/November 1999. Arthurworrey tells Kouao her application for state housing has been declined. She says the council houses only children at risk. Kouao claims Manning has sexually abused Victoria, but withdraws the claim a day later. Constable Jones is told to investigate. She writes to Kouao to ask her to come to the police station, but because Kouao speaks better French than English, decides to have the letter translated. This takes more than two months.

* January 2000. Kouao doesn't turn up at the police station. Authorities are told she has left the country. Arthurworrey visits the family home and finds no one there. "What hardly bears thinking about is that there probably was someone at home: Victoria, alone, trussed up in a plastic bag in a freezing cold bathroom," said Garnham. The police and social services files are subsequently closed.

* February 2000. Kouao tells a church pastor, Pascal Orome, she has grown tired of Victoria's incontinence and locked her in the bathroom for two or three days. He does nothing but pray. Kouao and Manning finally took a barely conscious Victoria to hospital on February 24. She died the following day.

Victoria's mother, Berthe Climbie, who thought she had done her best for her child by sending her away from the poverty of the Ivory Coast, says the authorities should have prevented the murder.

"It is as though they were complicit somehow because, if they had done their job, my daughter would not be dead," said. "Today this has happened to me but tomorrow it could happen to somebody else."

Two days before Victoria died, far away in Carterton, New Zealand, Rachaelle Namana admitted to a local kuia she had been hitting her niece, Lillybing.

Lillybing was taken away from Namana, only to be brought back a few months later. She died in July 2000, miserable and lonely.