Please note this blog may contain words that may be upsetting
Every few years, a case of child abuse creates headlines so horrific that it is tempting to turn the page, shut our eyes and block our ears. And yet over the past 50 years we have witnessed a catalogue of horror; a child under five, according to the NSPCC, is killed every 10 days by a parent or carer. Jasmine Beckford, Heidi Koseda, Kimberley Carlile, Tyra Henry, Tommy Lee Bannister, so many more. The list of names should be read out once a year to keep the memories alive. At the time each one is reported, it seems uniquely awful, we react with disbelief, and then do our best to forget it.
Baby Peter's death, in spite of 60 visits by social workers and health visitors who should have saved his life, caused outrage when it was reported last year. For a time, it appeared that we would be spared the full horror of his torture and murder while Haringey Council argued against naming his killers in order to protect the identity of other children in the family. But yesterday the details were at last published after a High Court judge said that "the boil must be lanced."
He was right. We cannot pretend that this avoidable tragedy happened a world away, in a concentration camp, slum or distant shanty town. Baby Peter was tormented and killed in our own back yard by ordinary-looking young people. His murderers lived in an unremarkable house in a north London suburb, in one of the richest nations on earth. Now that the murderers' faces peer out of our newspapers and television screens, we can see that these are not obvious monsters with tentacles and horns. Peter's mother, 28-year- old Tracey Connelly, has a pleasant enough face, plump cheeks, smiling mouth. Steven Barker, her boyfriend, blonde and impassive, could be one of a million young men staring at the camera without expression. Jason Owen, Barker's brother, looks respectable enough in his pin-striped suit.
Did their ordinariness deceive all the professionals who missed the clues that should have been obvious: the baby's broken back, eight fractured ribs, torn-out fingernails and toenails. Did it cause them to excuse the disgusting scene behind the front door of that "unremarkable" house, described by the police as being filled with human and dog faeces, a litter of dead rats and chickens alongside a dismembered rabbit?
Certainly, Connelly's manipulative way of giving her social workers the story they wanted to hear, the description of a day spent "playing" with her children, deceived them so successfully that they failed to notice that the chocolate on Baby Peter's face had been smeared there to disguise the bruises, or that he had been punched in the face so violently that, after his death, one of his teeth was found inside his stomach. We cannot excuse it, but can we explain the fact that these details were missed or ignored until his death?
The truth is that ordinary-looking people can conceal crimes so hideous that they are impossible to imagine. Only by assimilating that fact can we take lessons from it. Some of what we learn may be difficult to accept. For instance, we now know that Steven Barker,
6ft 4in and 18 stone, has an IQ of about 60. Many child abusers have IQs of less than 70. In an age when we rightly try to protect people with mental disabilities against stigma and discrimination, it has become fashionable also to protect their parental rights.
6ft 4in and 18 stone, has an IQ of about 60. Many child abusers have IQs of less than 70. In an age when we rightly try to protect people with mental disabilities against stigma and discrimination, it has become fashionable also to protect their parental rights.
But we must, if we are to save lives like Baby Peter's, recognise the fact that their children are at risk. Add to it Barker's known record – that, as a child, he enjoyed torturing animals, skinning frogs and breaking their legs, and was prosecuted by the RSPCA – and a very disturbing picture emerges. Serial killers often begin their career by torturing animals. Ten years ago Barker and Owen were arrested when their grandmother, aged 82, accused them of torturing her in a bid to get her to change her will – accusations that
never reached a trial because she died a few months later.
never reached a trial because she died a few months later.
Connelly managed to convince her social workers of a crucial lie – that these two sadistic torturers were not living with her and her children. Clearly, she was in their thrall. Why? We now know that she was not the brave, struggling single mother she tried to appear to be.
Her own childhood could hardly have been worse. Her father was a convicted paedophile; her mother, rumoured to be a prostitute, has been described as a "park-bench drunk". Her childhood home was as filthy and chaotic as the home she was to create for her own children. With dog faeces on the floor and no sheets on the beds, she went to school dressed in torn, dirty clothes. So badly at risk was the young Tracey considered to be that she was sent by social services to a boarding school for children with severe problems. It failed to stop the spiral of abuse.
But if Tracey learned nothing else there, she discovered how to front up to social workers. One senior professional now working in the voluntary sector told me, "You must remember that most clients are not torturers and murderers. They are genuinely trying to solve their problems, and to help them, a social worker must develop a relationship of trust."
A police officer who knew Connelly told me she had enormous skill in providing the image social workers wanted to see. Yes, she may have been an incompetent mother, but she appeared to be valiantly doing her best, putting her children first, loving and trying to care for them.
My social work colleague told me, "Child abusers are often very skilled at holding the lie. Look at Karen Matthews, who drugged, kidnapped and tied up her own daughter while she convinced the police and media that she was desperately concerned to find her. She held that lie right up until the moment Shannon was discovered. That's why social workers have such a difficult task, to maintain a relationship of trust with their clients while recognising that they may be conspiring to conceal a terrible crime."
I have fallen for a similar deception. I regularly used to visit a care home in Camden, north London, to befriend some of the children there. Only 30 years later did I discover that the man in charge was systematically sexually abusing 10 of the children. He deceived me and the local authority that employed him. Child abusers are ruthless, sadistic criminals, who will go to any lengths to avoid discovery.
But obviously we must do better, uncover the truth far earlier if we are ever to stop this appalling catalogue, this spiral of abuse down the generations.
In 1986 I was persuaded by the murder of toddler Kimberley Carlile, who was starved to death in a locked bedroom, to launch the children's helpline, ChildLine. Then the founder of an incest survivor's group told me, "The only evidence the experts will accept is the dead body of a child." His own father had so brutally abused him and his brothers and sisters that the Director of Public Prosecutions decided that a prosecution "would not be in the public interest, because the details of the crimes were so horrific".
The DPP was wrong. The High Court Judge who allowed the details of Baby Peter's case to be published was right. No matter how much it hurts, we have to be told the truth about his brutal murderers. Only then will we recognise that abusers look as ordinary as the rest of us; that fecklessness and incompetence may conceal sadism and cruelty; that wickedness comes in many forms.
All of us, neighbours, relatives, professionals, have a duty to stay vigilant and report what we see. It is too late, alas, for Baby Peter. But it may not be too late for the baby who may be killed next week, or the week after, until we recognise the truth.
The NSPCC Child Protection Helpline can be rung in confidence: 0808 800 5000; ChildLine: 0800 1111