Sunday 16 January 2011

A Question Of Belief

Not believed:
A social worker did not act on concerns about a toddler a week before she was murdered because she believed it was 'tittle-tattle', a conduct hearing heard today.
Wha..?
Judyth Kenworthy, a former family placement officer at Kirklees Council, admitted she failed to pass on warnings on May 1, 2008, from Jacqueline Peel, who ran a home for vulnerable people, that Sanam had a bruise on her head.
I’m rather encouraged by the news that she’s a former family placement officer, but wouldn’t be all that surprised if that merely meant they’d promoted her to another role…
Mrs Peel was alerted to the toddler's injury when the girl's aunt brought her to stay at the home.

Mrs Peel told the General Social Care Council conduct hearing in central London that the aunt said Sanam was often injured after being left with her sister's partner, Anwar.
At which point, all kinds of alarms should have been sounding.

But no:
Presenting officer Marios Lambis said: 'With that rather startling and worrying information brought to her, the registrant [Mrs Kenworthy] simply told Mrs Peel that Ms C [the aunt] should talk to someone if she had concerns about the child. '
She did talk to someone. She talked to Mrs Peel, who had a duty of care, and discharged it by talking to you.
As Mrs Peel was giving evidence, Mr Lambis said: 'Mrs Kenworthy suggested that you often passed information about others to her and the possible effect was she couldn't take it seriously because you tittle-tattled about other people constantly to her.'
Eh? ‘Tittle-tattle’..?

This, from a public sector worker for a state that urges everyone to report everything all the time?
When asked if this was a fair criticism, Mrs Peel replied: 'I don't really know. I only told her about people in the home if something was happening that shouldn't have been happening.'
Well, quite!

It seems Mrs Kenworthy was a true believer when it came to ‘tittle-tattle’ and showed the same reticence to pass on information when she was in the nick too:
Mrs Kenworthy agrees that as a result of her actions no measures were taken to safeguard Sanam, and she also admits withholding information when she gave a statement to police.
Believed:
Her harrowing account of being brutally gang-raped by armed militiamen in Somalia won Amina Muse refuge in Britain.

The mother-of-six, whose asylum application graphically described her brothers being shot dead in front of her, was later given UK citizenship because of the ‘appalling atrocities’.

But the terrifying ordeal, like her identity, was completely bogus – it was merely a front for an elaborate benefit fraud that cost taxpayers more than £400,000.
*sigh*
In Britain, she applied for every welfare benefit possible under her false name and claimed further UK handouts using the bogus identity she had adopted to secure a Swedish passport.
And no one turned a hair. No one thought ‘Hang on…’
Yesterday she was jailed for four and a half years after a jury convicted her of a string of fraud charges.

The judge said the sentence would have been harsher but for consideration of the welfare of Muse’s children, the ‘real victims in this case’.
Ummm, no, actually, judge.

That’d be us, the British taxpayer, who are the real victims….

5 comments:

Gullible's Travels said...

I have arrived in your lovely country from (fill in name of hellhole, or check atlas for names) where I saw my family/brother/sister/ grandparents/ family cat raped/killed/squashed/abused /insulted (please delete any not applicable) and demand everything you give free. I promise/probably promise/cannot agree as it is my religion, you see (delete as appropriate) to be a good member of your society. I do not have/cannot provide any details/ have no idea where I got the idea from (delete, etc) of this atrocity/horror/hurt/ embarrassment (you know what to do by now) and will be happy/ content/ not much trouble/ hardly a pain at all if you give me loadsacash.

Signed/ My mark/ My smuggler's account number:

Woman on a Raft said...

The Sanam Navsarka case was considerably complicated (IIRC) by the family background.

Sanam's grandmother, Zahbeena's mother, was herself a schizophrenic and the mental health team were afraid that the danger to Sanam came from the negligence and unpredictability of the grandparent(s) who had a history of volatility, if not violence.
Source: Yorkshire Evening Post

Working from memory (sorry, not got the reference to hand) there was also a dispute over Zahbeena leaving her husband for Anwar. This raised the flag of a possible 'honour' offence in the offing so everyone was tip-toeing round. At that point it looked like Zahbeena was the potential victim.

Unfortunately, Zahbeena was a rotten judge of character and had disastrous taste in boyfriends. This is far from unusual but if you factor in Zahbeena's disturbed family background and the fact that the social workers were walking on eggshells because they could be called racist at any moment, you can see that everybody might want the other person to be coming out and saying "this isn't right".

The accusations were flying in all directions, too. Obo carried an article several months ago which referred to an academic study of an ethnic group in California. What happened there was that the group wished to enforce customary behaviour to bind the clan together, but their clan codes have no legal standing (good thing too).

However, by making false accusations often hinging around child abuse, the clan heads temporarily used the state law enforcement agencies punish anyone who stepped out of line.

If you have a dysfunctional family with a schizophrenic grandmother making accusations about a daughter who is seen as having violated a social code, how much credibility do you put on their complaints? How many marks and bruises are a normal part of growing up - toddlers fall over a lot.

I think I might have got this one wrong if I had been standing there.

Woman on a Raft said...

The Sanam Navsarka case was considerably complicated (IIRC) by the family background.

Sanam's grandmother, Zahbeena's mother, was herself a schizophrenic and the mental health team were afraid that the danger to Sanam came from the negligence and unpredictability of the grandparent(s) who had a history of volatility, if not violence.
Source: Yorkshire Evening Post

Working from memory (sorry, not got the reference to hand) there was also a dispute over Zahbeena leaving her husband for Anwar. This raised the flag of a possible 'honour' offence in the offing so everyone was tip-toeing round. At that point it looked like Zahbeena was the potential victim.

Unfortunately, Zahbeena was a rotten judge of character and had disastrous taste in boyfriends. This is far from unusual but if you factor in Zahbeena's disturbed family background and the fact that the social workers were walking on eggshells because they could be called racist at any moment, you can see that everybody might want the other person to be coming out and saying "this isn't right".

The accusations were flying in all directions, too. Obo carried an article several months ago which referred to an academic study of an ethnic group in California. What happened there was that they wished to enforce customary behaviour but their clan codes have no legal standing (good thing too).

However, by making false accusation often hinging around child abuse, the clan heads temporarily used the state law enforcement agencies punish anyone who stepped out of line.

If you have a dysfunctional family with a schizophrenic grandmother making accusations about a daughter who is seen as having violated a social code, how much credibility do you put on their complaints? How many marks and bruises are a normal part of growing up - toddlers fall over a lot.

I think, had I been standing there, I might have got it all wrong and misidentified where the danger to Sanam really lay.

Dr Evil said...

The queer thing in this country is that if you take your child to a GP with such a bruise then there is every chance you will be grilled about the injury and reported to social services as a suspected physical abuser. But someone who knows about abuse raises a specific point about a child at risk and is ignored.

Greencoat said...

Yes Chalcedon, but that applies to white people, not chiselling savages.