Star Hobson: Shocking failure of social workers to spot horrific abuse of TWO murdered toddlers revealed
THE shocking failure of social workers to stop the horrific abuse of two murdered toddlers was revealed yesterday. Concerned relatives of toddler Star Hobson contacted the authorities five times before she was murdered by her mum’s girlfriend Savannah Brockhill. In the days leading up to the 16-month-old’s death, her great-grandad had alerted social workers of […]
THE shocking failure of social workers to stop the horrific abuse of two murdered toddlers was revealed yesterday.
Concerned relatives of toddler Star Hobson contacted the authorities five times before she was murdered by her mum’s girlfriend Savannah Brockhill.
In the days leading up to the 16-month-old’s death, her great-grandad had alerted social workers of ongoing abuse.
Frank Smith, 68, sent a video of Star with a black eye and bruising around her ear a week before she was murdered.
However, social workers dismissed his complaint as malicious due to the alleged disapproval of Frankie’s same-sex relationship and they closed the case.
“I sent that video to social services and they didn’t want to know,” Mr Smith told The Sun.
“They said I was being malicious. How can that be malicious? Social services shouldn’t be allowed to get away with saying ‘we’ll learn lessons’.
“They’re supposed to be trained to spot this kind of thing. It’s broken me. You put your trust in the authorities to do something and they let you down.”
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Meanwhile, Star’s other great-grandfather David Fawcett said his concerns were dismissed by Bradford City Council authorities despite warning them that Star could be the “next Baby P“.
And in another appalling case, little Ella-Rose Clover also became a victim of social work and medical blunders.
The 22-month-old was murdered by 30-year-old Michael Wild, her godmother’s boyfriend, on January 21, 2018.
The monster is now serving a life sentence.
An inquest at Manchester’s Coroners’ Court yesterday heard the “failings of a health trust could have caused the toddler’s death”.
And had the suspected abuse been referred to Manchester’s Children Services or the cops “her life could have been saved”.
During the inquest, Manchester Foundation Trust, which was responsible for Ella-Rose’s care, admitted it failed to raise its suspicions to the authorities after the tot was taken to Manchester Royal Children’s Hospital, where docs had to remove part of her bowel.
They also admitted that they should have alerted Greater Manchester Police and Manchester Children’s Services to this, when “her life was in fact at significant risk”.
Ella-Rose was taken to hospital nine times in the seven months before her death with bruising and internal injuries, in one case having emergency surgery to her bowel.
Six doctors and surgeons apologised or admitted they should have acted differently.
In a statement read by solicitor Diane Rostron, Ella-Rose’s mother Miss Clover told yesterday’s inquest: “Doctors failed to see what was staring them in the face.
“They chose to ignore the obvious and test for increasingly rarer diseases. As each test proved negative, they searched for another one.
“Two junior doctors raised concerns about possible abuse but they were ignored and a consultant couldn’t even recognise a black eye when [a photograph] was presented to him in the inquest.
“If they had done what they should have done, Ella would be alive today. There were so many opportunities to save Ella.”
Assistant coroner Nick Stanage said: “In the months prior to the unlawful killing of Ella-Rose there was a failure to diagnose (either definitively or differentially) that she was exposed to serious, repeated and injurious physical abuse, thus resulting in a failure to report the same to Manchester Children’s Services and/or Greater Manchester Police.
“Such reporting which would have initiated an investigation into the suspected abuse.”
A joint statement from local social services, health and police chiefs in Bradford told The Daily Mail: “We all deeply regret that not all the warning signs were seen that could have led to firmer statutory enforcement action.”
The cases come after the death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes who was murdered by his step-mum Emma Tustin.
The little boy had been poisoned by his dad and partner as they subjected him to a “campaign of cruelty” that matched the “medical definition of child torture.”
Tustin was convicted of murder with a minimum term of 29 years and Thomas Hughes was caged 21 years after being found guilty of manslaughter.
