Mothers Who Murder

by Xanthe Mallett

  On the day of the first accusation, 1 November 1999, when Kouao came in to see Arthurworrey to discuss the allegation against Manning for sexually assaulting Victoria, she brought the child and Manning to the Tottenham office with her. When the social worker first saw them they were sitting as a group in the waiting area, and Kouao and Manning appeared to be having a normal conversation. This shocked the social worker, considering Kouao had been almost hysterical when she had called earlier that morning claiming sexual abuse had taken place. Manning was asked to leave, and Kouao was subsequently interviewed by Arthurworrey and Ms Robertson (another social worker) while Victoria played elsewhere. During the interview Kouao alleged that Manning had sexually abused Victoria on three separate occasions, the first dating back to around 20 July when Kouao claimed she was in hospital and therefore Manning was looking after Victoria. Kouao told Arthurworrey that she now had significant doubts over her ability to ‘protect’ Victoria. They then interviewed Victoria alone, not to obtain a disclosure statement about what had allegedly happened to her but simply to get an idea of how life was for her at home. They had barely got past the greeting stage when the child launched straight into a graphic description of one of the alleged sexual assault incidents described by Kouao. The social workers stopped the interview when Victoria started mimicking Kouao’s gestures when she was describing what had allegedly happened. They made a note in the file that Victoria’s (or ‘Anna’s, as they called her) statement seemed rehearsed. Ms Robertson accepted under oath at Kouao and Manning’s trial that just because the disclosure appeared staged did not mean that Manning had not sexually assaulted Victoria. She also acknowledged that even if the story had been concocted to help them obtain housing, then this in itself was evidence of abuse that should have been investigated.

  Manning was told he would be interviewed by the police, but this interview never happened. Nor did the social workers organise an immediate meeting to determine how they were going to manage the case; that did not take place until 5 November 1999.11 This was the second strategy meeting about Victoria’s case, the first having taken place in July. A comprehensive list of tasks was identified, but many of these replicated those identified four months earlier. This raises questions regarding how far the case had been progressed in the preceding months. Among the fifteen items on the ‘to do’ list were the following: proof should be obtained that Victoria was in fact Kouao’s daughter; a full assessment of child neglect issues should be undertaken; a police statement was required about the allegations of sexual assault; and a complete check of Victoria’s medical status should be performed. Two police officers were also in attendance at this second meeting, PC Jones and PC Ricketts. No review date was set to check on progress from this meeting either, and no home visit took place to check on Victoria’s safety.

  Kouao withdrew the allegations of sexual abuse the next day (2 November 1999), saying that she had fabricated the allegations so that Manning would be arrested and she and Victoria could stay in his flat. Social Services informed her that the accusations would still need to be investigated, which would take about one month, and that Victoria would have to live elsewhere while the process was completed. Kouao lied, saying they had both been staying with friends since the previous day, but in fact they had gone back to Manning’s flat at around 11 pm on 1 November.

  This was the last time Victoria would see anyone official and thus was also the last chance for anyone to intervene and save her, until she was admitted to hospital the night before she died. By this stage, as seen with other abused children, Victoria had developed age-inappropriate bedwetting, and after she soiled her sofa bed at Manning’s flat it was thrown out. Her bed was not replaced, so she then began sleeping in the cold, dark bathroom. She was forced to sleep in the bath and for a while was tied up inside a black plastic sack, like a piece of rubbish. Because the plastic was waterproof and she was in the bag day and night, her skin became very damaged from sitting in her own urine and faeces for hours on end. This practice only ended when Manning became concerned that someone would ask questions about why her skin was so bad. By early 2000 Victoria was being fed like an animal on a piece of plastic in the bathroom. Her hands were tied with masking tape and she was physically forced towards the food to eat like a dog.

  What happened to Victoria during the last four months before her death is more or less a mystery. We do know that apart from the physical abuse detailed, Victoria was also beaten on a regular basis by both Kouao and Manning, using various weapons including a coat hanger, a shoe and even a hammer. Her blood was found spattered on the walls and personal items around the flat. The abuse took its toll and by 19 February 2000 Victoria was very ill. Kouao had taken her to visit their pastor at the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God on Seven Sisters Road in North London. Pastor Lim misdiagnosed Victoria’s incontinence as a sign she was possessed by an evil spirit. A few days later, when the pastor saw Victoria again he must have been scared as he suggested she be taken to hospital. He called them a taxi himself.

  Surprisingly, Kouao took the child to hospital even though the signs of abuse must have been overwhelmingly obvious by this time; Victoria could hardly walk and was stooped over like an elderly woman. Victoria was again admitted to North Middlesex Hospital where her temperature was very low at 27°C12 – so low that the hospital’s standard thermometer couldn’t record it. The hospital staff tried to warm her up but were unsuccessful and she was transferred to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington for specialist care. There she was diagnosed with severe hypothermia, which can be fatal if not treated quickly. Hypothermia can be caused by a number of things, including being exposed to cold conditions for prolonged periods, spending a long time in wet clothes, and lying immobile on a cold surface or in a cold draught. This would fit Victoria’s ‘living’ conditions in the bathroom of Manning’s flat. She then went into multi-system failure, where her cardiac, respiratory and renal systems all shut down, sending Victoria into cardiac arrest. Dr Lesley Alsford, the attending physician, said she had never seen anything like it before, that it was ‘the worst case of child abuse and neglect that I have ever seen’.13

  Victoria was declared dead at 3.15 pm in the intensive care unit at St Mary’s Hospital Paddington, London, on 25 February 2000; she was just eight years and three months old. Paradoxically, this was the same day Haringey Social Services closed her case. Dr Nathaniel Carey, a highly experienced Home Office Forensic Pathologist, performed the post-mortem on Victoria. He also described the injuries as evidence of the worst case of child abuse he had ever seen.14 That two experienced medical professionals, one of them a forensic specialist, had never witnessed abuse on this scale indicates how extensive Victoria’s suffering was.

  Victoria’s cause of death was given at post-mortem as hypothermia, brought on by the damp environment, restricted movement and malnourishment – the culmination of months of abuse and neglect at the hands of Marie-Therese Kouao and Carl Manning. What stood out from the pathologist’s report was the extent of the trauma as well as the deliberate way in which it had been inflicted on the victim. Dr Carey identified a total of 128 separate injuries, caused by both sharp and blunt objects. No part of Victoria’s body had been spared; there was scarring all over her body. This was abuse of the worst kind.

  Kouao and Manning were arrested and charged with Victoria’s murder. At trial, Manning gave evidence of the abuse, admitting that he witnessed Kouao physically assault Victoria on a daily basis. The child’s blood was found on his football boots, suggesting he may have kicked her, and he admitted striking her with a bicycle chain. On 12 January 2001, at the Central Criminal Court in London, Marie-Therese Kouao and Carl Manning were convicted of Victoria’s murder. Both received life imprisonment for their crimes.

  Sadly reminiscent of Dean Shillingsworth’s suffering (detailed in Chapter 4), following Victoria’s death many people asked if anything could have been done to save her. On 20 April 2000, this question was the centre of an independent
public inquiry chaired by Lord Laming. He was tasked with investigating the surroundings that led to Victoria’s death and making any recommendations he felt would help prevent a tragedy of this nature happening again. Laming’s inquiry was unique among the seventy public inquiries that predated it (many of which just ended up on shelves, having had little lingering impact), all focusing on the same highly emotive and complex subject of protecting vulnerable children from harm, in that it was established under three different Acts of the UK Parliament.15 This meant that he had a very wide brief, which wasn’t limited to looking at just one agency’s response to Victoria’s circumstances, but instead reviewed the actions of all the agencies involved. This included four different social services departments, two specialist child protection teams in the Metropolitan Police Service,16 two hospitals – St Mary’s in Paddington and North Middlesex Hospital – and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).17 Three of these agencies have legal child protection powers in the United Kingdom: the police, Children’s Social Care and the NSPCC. Laming handed down his report of the inquiry on 28 January 2003. Laming was very damning in his criticism of various agencies. However, rather than go through all of the details, you can read his report18 and make up your own mind as to who failed Victoria. Suffice to say, there were chances to save her – chances that were tragically missed. There were at least twelve occasions when the relevant social service could have intervened.

  As Laming said, in just eleven short months Victoria was transformed through violence and torture from a healthy, happy, vibrant young girl to ‘a broken wreck of a human being’. Lord Laming’s report concluded that perhaps the saddest and most painful aspect of Victoria’s circumstance is that, even at the very end, she may have been saved. He highlighted that in the weeks leading up to her death, a social worker visited Victoria at home on a number of occasions, but when no one answered the door she assumed Kouao and Victoria had moved away. As Laming distressingly points out, at that very moment Victoria could have been just a few feet away, tied in a black bag and lying in her own waste in the ‘prison of the bath’, as Laming calls it, desperately hoping someone would rescue her.

  Perhaps one of the most pertinent things to come out of Lord Laming’s report is that he believes that Victoria Climbié’s case was not unique, but rather it highlighted systemic failures and apathy, as well as widespread and significant deficiencies in implementing the legislation in place to protect children, namely the Children Act 1989.19 As part of the police investigation into her death it was discovered that Kouao was not Victoria’s mother, and that the child had been known under the pseudonym of ‘Anna’ since arriving in the United Kingdom. The investigators set about trying to find Victoria’s actual parents. We can only imagine the grief Victoria’s parents, Berthe and Francis, suffered in March 2000 when they learnt what had happened to their happy and healthy daughter. She had been taken away for a better life, only to die at the hands of two very dangerous and frightening people.

  Anyone who hears the details of Victoria’s suffering at the hands of her abusers cannot help but be moved. But within all of the documents I’ve read I haven’t seen anything that comes close to comprising a motive for the abuse. Why would two adults torture and abuse a young girl for so long? Kouao’s friends and family back in Africa thought her a wealthy and successful woman, but this was far from the truth. It later transpired that following her divorce she had got herself into debt, to the tune of thousands of pounds. This is where Victoria came in. It is thought that Kouao originally agreed to take Victoria as a means to access state benefits, as her own children were too old, making her ineligible for child allowance. The lies were falling away, but this does not explain the killers’ actions. Nothing I’ve seen does.

  Laming’s report is as damning a condemnation as it gets on social services and society as whole for not stopping this child’s suffering. Laming said, in the end, Victoria died a slow, lonely death – abandoned, unheard and unnoticed.20 If you are interested in reading more about this case and those who campaign to prevent this type of tragedy happening again, there is a charity dedicated to this little girl, the Victoria Climbié Foundation.21 This was established by Victoria’s parents to campaign for enhancements in child protection policies in the hope that they can help prevent another child suffering the way Victoria did in her final months.

  As someone who does not normally believe people can be truly and solely evil, my final thought on this case is that Kouao and Manning are among the closest I think anyone can come to being just that.

  TRACEY CONNELLY 2007, UNITED KINGDOM

  The second heartbreaking UK case is that of Peter Connelly. His story is infamous in the United Kingdom for the same reasons that Dean Shillingsworth’s case will remain in the collective consciousness of Australians for years to come. He was initially known to the world simply as ‘Baby P’ as a result of the fact that a court order had prevented the publication of Peter’s full name until the conclusion of all the criminal proceedings. This order was lifted on 1 May 2009 by Mr Justice Coleridge, at the request of Peter’s family. However, Peter’s killers’ names would remain a secret until 11 August 2009, when the country would be rocked by the details of what Connelly and Barker did to Baby P.

  Peter was a seventeen-month-old boy who died tragically in Haringey, North London, after suffering over fifty injuries in just an eight-month period. During those eight violent months, Baby P was seen by health care or social workers sixty times. Everyone knew he was in danger but no one stepped in to help. The situation of abuse and neglect is familiar, but no less shocking for that.

  Peter was born on 1 March 2006 in North London to Tracey Connelly. Within three months his biological father had left and Connelly had started a new relationship with a man she met in a pub, Steven Barker. In November, Barker moved in with Tracey and her new son. Hindsight now gives us a timeline for Peter’s death, as this was the first step in the fateful series of events. The abuse started early, and in December a general practitioner noticed bruises on Peter’s face, chest and right shoulder. Children often hurt themselves in the normal course of play, but these injuries were not consistent with common childhood traumas and Connelly could not explain the injuries to the GP’s satisfaction. Taken together, this caused the doctor concern that the child was being physically abused, only one month after the boyfriend moved in. The GP sent the mother and child to the hospital to have the injuries assessed. Connelly complied, and Peter was examined at Whittington Hospital in North London by a consultant pediatrician, Dr Heather Mackinnon. Connelly now offered the excuse that Peter had sustained the injuries by falling off the couch; however, Mackinnon agreed with the GP’s diagnosis that the bruises were not accidental and wrote in her notes that the child should not be allowed home and that it might be necessary to make him the subject of a police protection order. Peter remained in hospital for four days, after which he was discharged to the care of a family friend while social workers and the police investigated how he got his injuries. As part of that investigation, social workers visited Connelly’s home and found it to be dirty, messy and unsanitary in that it smelt of urine. Three dogs also lived in the flat, and Connelly was said to be more devoted to the dogs’ care than to her child.

  Connelly was subsequently arrested for the assault on Peter and on 19 December 2006 placed on the Child Protection Register, but for some reason that is not clear from the records, Peter was returned home to his mother’s care on 26 January 2007. Part of the reason Connelly may have been able to get away with the abuse was that she appeared to be cooperating with professionals: seeking medical attention for the little boy when he needed it; giving the impression she cared about his welfare. She also promised to get rid of her dogs and cooperate with the health worker assigned to the case, Maria Ward.

  On three separate occasions Peter was taken away from Connelly for his safety, and on three occasions returned – the last, just two months before his death. Pet
er was admitted to hospital twice more, once in April to North Middlesex Hospital with two black eyes, bruises and swelling to the side of his head, and again in May when a social worker noticed marks on his face that caused concern. The doctors who examined him were unconvinced by his mother’s explanation for how his injuries occurred. On this occasion twelve areas of bruises and scratches were found. A witness who gave evidence at the trial said in April she had seen a bruised and emotionally withdrawn Peter playing in the garden eating dirt. In a comment eerily reminiscent of Dean Shillingsworth, the witness said ‘he wanted picking up and cuddles all the time’. Had she known what this meant – that it could have been further evidence of psychological and physical abuse – I wonder if this woman would have called the police or other authorities.

  Focus remained on the mother at this stage, but as the investigation continued, Barker also became of significant interest to the police. At this time, there was no evidence to indicate that he harmed other children – although that was set to change – but the police described him as sadistic and fascinated with pain. In line with Connelly’s deceitful nature, neither the police nor social services knew that Barker was living with the family. Barker was almost a hidden presence in the house and Peter’s life. He was said to have intentionally evaded welfare staff at every opportunity, assisted by Connelly as she feared losing her £450 (approximately $840) a week in various benefits had the local authority known another adult was living with them. Connelly was also concerned about Peter’s biological father’s reaction had he known another man was living with his child. Detectives later said had they known Barker was there they may have had the information they needed to save Peter.