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….