Elsie Scully-Hicks

[Elephantgrey]

How can you understand how someone can harm such a tiny baby. My husband knew Matthew Scully-Hicks and said you would never imagine he would be the sort of person to do something like this. When we first heard about it we imagined that he had just snapped but seeing the news report he inflicted so many injuries on her since the day she arrived. It's just heartbreaking.

[clairethewitch70]

I am really upset by this case. I grew up with the husband, Craig Scully. I used to babysit for him and his sisters. He will be devastated.

[Nazdarovye]

Bring back the death penalty....

[Awwlookatmybabyspider]

What's the wicked evil specimen going to get? Life aka as 15 years with half knocked off for "good behavior".

[Awwlookatmybabyspider]

I wonder if Elsie's biological family will or have been told

[clairethewitch70]

Awwlook I read that the grandmother from biological family wrote a victim impact statement that was read out in Court.

[mustbemad17]

Just goes to show you don't ever know what happens behind closed doors. Am disgusted that the social workers involved in 'supervising' the adoption never clocked her injuries; I had social services involved after another child bit my daughter & bruised her leg. Yet this poor baby had a catalogue of injuries & nobody thought to investigate?

I hope he gets a beating every day he is inside for what he did to Elsie. She must have been terrified 💔

[Butterymuffin]

Don't understand how this can have been happening while the adoption was in process, when surely the parents' behaviour and the child's wellbeing is under serious scrutiny.

[clairethewitch70]

What is playing on my mind is that there is another adopted sibling - were they injured too?

That poor little girl, she must have been in such pain. To think that she was removed from her birth mother (a drug user) and placed in an abusive environment.

I hope he rots in Jail.

[PurpleStarInCashmereSky]

One of the only consolations to a birth family losing their baby to adoption is that the baby is going somewhere safe to be loved. I cannot even imagine the pain of having a child removed only to be murdered by her new 'parent'. Then to read the news reports still calling her his daughter that he killed rather than yours. Not sure mindfuck even covers it.

I assume the older child will stay with Craig but he will have to leave or change his job as he works away 3 times a week. Also deal with a whole new layer of trauma laid on an already likely traumatised child. The whole situation is just awful. And it's all that fuckers fault.

[Kpo58]

If Craig didn't notice the injuries, what chance did SS have, especially as they wouldn't have been visiting all day everyday.

[CauliflowerSqueeze]

I thought the previous injuries were broken ribs / leg / bleeds on the brain -I’m not sure if these would necessarily be visible - I wouldn’t think SS would examine her all over would they?
Horrific that she would have been so frightened and in such terrible pain. It’s really sickening.

[CauliflowerSqueeze]

How long has been given for this?

[Jamiek80]

I find these stories heartbreaking really believe the death penalty would be too good in these cases.

[UrsulaPandress]

I spent Sunday with a 14 month old adopted child and I was thinking how lucky her parents were.

Truly heartbreaking for that poor child v

[mustbemad17]

She had a 'catalogue' of injuries & he had been texting different people that she was 'satan in a babygro' - surely alarm bells should have rung somewhere?!

When we had SS in they took my daughter into hospital for a full medical examination. Similar happened with a friend of mine whose son actually did fall down the stairs (despite several witnesses SS didn't believe the story yet it was their first encounter with my friend). Aeems that lately SS are digging more & more at people who have nothing to hide & letting genuinely vulnerable kids down 😔

[Cherry321]

Sentencing is tomorrow.

RIP little Elsie

[toffeepumpkins]

Time to throw away the key.

[SleightOfMind]

I’ve also found this hard to hear.
Do you think he might have been more isolated being a sahd? Reports claim he’d given up work to care for both children and harp on about how they were seen as a ‘perfect family’.
No justification for his horrific treatment of that poor baby but, seeking to understand, it sounds like a huge amount of pressure with not enough support.

[ElizabethShaw]

government sets out targets that a certain %age of children have to be adopted/fostered by single people/ gay people/ disabled people
Is that true?

[OccasionalNachos]

No, that isn’t true at all.

[SleightOfMind]

I braced myself for a flaming for my post, then YorkshireYummy arrived!

Back to reality though, this is not a typical male child murderer.

He is the main carer and had recently given up work to be a sahd to settle in his newly adopted daughter - something his text msgs to friends/family indicated he was struggling with.

His husband woh, often overnight or more.

They were seen as a perfect family, something it was even more important to maintain in the early stages of the adoption process.

The (obviously shocked and devastated - not casting aspersions) Woh father’s insistence that his home was ‘filled with happiness’ was a bit odd. Sounds an awful lot to live up to.
I don’t have any easy answers to how this little girl could have been saved from enduring such a terrible end but I don’t feel this is the typical ‘brute murders child’ scenario.

What do you lot think?

[DontDrinkDontSmoke]

Erm, that a brute did murder a child.

What an odd post.