...so screams the headline in the 'This Is Staffordshire' online newspaper. Let's see, shall we?
Feckless mother? Check!
...a serious case review into Ashley's death on January 27 last year has been published by Stoke-on-Trent Safeguarding Children Board.
It has revealed how Ms Knox had fled from Sandwell back to her native Stoke-on-Trent to escape an abusive relationship.
Ashley had been 'born into a household where 'escalating domestic abuse' had taken place and he witnessed some of the violence firsthand.Complacent authorities? Check!
But Jackie Carnell, independent chairman of the safeguarding board, said: "After moving back to Stoke-on-Trent, everyone assumed that the risk was removed.
"The father had a court order not to contact the family."Casual partner? Check!
Months later, Ms Knox started another relationship after getting in touch with Hepburn, of Fenpark Road, Fenton, who she knew from school, through Facebook.With a criminal record? Check!
Hepburn, who was jailed for 30 months in 2002 for an arson attack...Use of casual partner as free babysitting service? Check!
Scott Hepburn had been left alone with little Ashley Johnson when he 'flipped' because the 18-month-old youngster would not stop crying.Yeah. No-one could have predicted this.
9 comments:
But....but....will lessons be learned?
Jackie Carnell, independent chairman of the safeguarding board, said: "There was no way the actual incident could have been predicted or prevented. I'm absolutely 100 per cent sure of that."
And how sure are you that the £millions spent on politburo organisations like yours isn't in actual fact a complete waste of time and money? Care to put a percentage on your usefulness to society?
This insanity will continue while we plough ever great resources into the growing wedge between personal responsibility and the State will provide. The child died at the hands of a thug and a monster. But blame should also lay with the mother. Freed from the necessity of finding a reliable partner able to provide; she could instead selfishly indulge herself with any passing fantasy dream boy.
I don't even blame the authorities. Lets be honest, they're useless and we shouldn't pretend they could ever be anything but.
Ultimately, I'm not sure what the answers are... but surely it cannot be what we currently have?
Hepburn, who was jailed for 30 months in 2002 for an arson attack...
I keep looking at the current edition of the story and that sentence has mysteriously disappeared from the copy. It makes all the difference, because the Social Services say they could not predict the risk. However, since the police permit queries about criminal records in precisely these situations they could have discovered the risk.
Ms Carnell said: "There was no way the actual incident could have been predicted or prevented. I'm absolutely 100 per cent sure of that.
But it could have been predicted and hence prevented if they had raised a basic CRB query. How 'sure' they feel is not an objective measure of how the risks in the situation quantifiably were. However, John Pickworth is right in that if the mother wasn't guarding the child it was bound to go wrong. It is possible that she may be facing separate charges, but these are not reported.
You should re-publish your check-list of risk factors in big type so they can be printed out and pinned up.
Surnames all over the shop? Check.
Sandwell? Check.
"When his partner" Check
"Samantha Knox came home from a night out" Check.
Boy's name is Kayden? Bzzt!
But I disagree that the authorities should be held accountable for what happened. The dramatis personae here were the devoted mother and her interesting cohabitant.
What these so-called authorities should be accountable for is their claim that they can prevent this sort of thing happening. They can't, they shouldn't be paid.
Much in the same way that I view the self-extermination of some enriched cultures (that is really the wrong word to use) in East and South - oh - and West and North London, it is with little or no sympathy that I see Gin Lane perpetuated still now.
It is one mouth fewer that I must feed. And his mother can have all the nights out she wants now.
Ms Carnell said: "There was no way the actual incident could have been predicted or prevented. I'm absolutely 100 per cent sure of that.
Someone clearly thinks that using the "actual" word is absolution. After all, politicians use it over and over again. They can think again.
It's not Cluedo, love. You don't get extra points for who did it with: latest fuckbuddy/in the living room/with own fists. A near-as-dammit guess will do.
Y'know...since that's what we spend millions on training and paying the likes of you to do.
We need to take a long hard look at their actual responsibilities for the protection of children actually are 'cos far far too often they don't appear to actually HAVE any.
"But....but....will lessons be learned?"
It's the only thing missing, isn't it?
"Ultimately, I'm not sure what the answers are... but surely it cannot be what we currently have?"
No indeed. And yet, 'more of the same' looks like all we are ever promised.
"I keep looking at the current edition of the story and that sentence has mysteriously disappeared from the copy."
Oh, I forgot to link - that's from another story in the same newspaper.
"But I disagree that the authorities should be held accountable for what happened. The dramatis personae here were the devoted mother and her interesting cohabitant."
They were directly accountable, yes.
But as John Pickworth and Tatty point out, these people are paid eye-watering sums to prevent these creatures from killing the innocents in their care.
And they fail time and again, and keep telling us it's a complete mystery why.
"Someone clearly thinks that using the "actual" word is absolution."
They've learned from the politicians that they would long to be..
Last three stories all got the same reaction from me..... why do no large unsympathetic men in balaclavas turn up and just nail these fuckers to a tree!
Honestly Julia, I'm starting to feel like offering the service myself; I remain convinced that filling the obituary columns sends the clear message to the hordes of loons who seem to be infesting the place of late.
..."these people are paid eye-watering sums to prevent these creatures from killing the innocents in their care.
And they fail time and again, and keep telling us it's a complete mystery why.
However, if what Christopher Booker writes about is true (and I'm inclined to think it is), they are very good, nay excel, at taking kids away from families with no, or almost no justification at all.
One does tend to wonder if there is some sinister motive or if it's that they are quite breathtakingly inept. I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but I find it so difficult to conceive of such a degree of incompetence that I have to move to the conspiracy theory by default.
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