Heartbreaking. Child abused and then murdered.

[Dilbertian]

Poor Sebastian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-62163849

Where was his school in all of this? How could ongoing months of abuse not have been noticed and flagged him as a child at risk? Or did the school do this, and Sebastian was failed by agencies further along the line?

@resuwen

True - but from the sound and looks of this guy I’m betting his controlling and violent attitude was apparent from the start when she decided to bring him home. He doesn’t exactly seem like the suave on the surface but hiding an abusive side type of man. More just an obviously vicious caveman.

This.

He arrived in October 2020 - just before the second spike. So he would have had 2 months of school when kids and teachers were in and out as classes were constantly being sent home due to a contact.

So the chances of him building meaningful relationships with either another child or a teacher is much lower than it would be normally.

Then Xmas holidays. Then the full lockdown.

Back at school for about 3 weeks. (Although kids being sent home again a lot.)

Then Easter holidays.

Then the summer term where things were relatively normal. So effectively just one term where he was properly in school and the teachers had a chance to build a relationship with him and gain his trust enough for him to tell them what was going on.

Add to that - they were keeping him off school when he was bruised. Normally schools are mad on attendance but that year all you needed to say was “bit of a cough” and schools were happy for you to keep your kids away.

Another benefit to our EU membership.

Where were the neighbours, his friends' parents, his mother's friends?

Please, if you are concerned about a child, report it. Otherwise this will keep happening.

The agencies responsible for safeguarding are Health, the Police and Social Care (not Education - all schools can do is the same as the public, pass on their concerns).

Call 101, the NSPCC or your local council's children's services if you are worried about a child. If the abuse is happening there and then, call 999. If it keeps happening, keep calling. If you, as an adult, are scared of the person causing the abuse, then think how the child must feel and make that call.

Though after reading through a BBC article on the CCTV the murderer had rigged up, it does seem that covid plus the summer break had contributed to Sebastian flying under the radar. He was kept home when he had bruises and covid was blamed. It provided a handy lie.

He was seen as quiet and unassuming in school, which is school speak for 'nobody took any notice of him because he wasn't a trouble maker' .

The teacher saw the step father call Sebastian lazy and a liar at the school gates but still didn't report.

How awful and upsetting. There seems to be so many cases of children being murdered.

COVID lockdown must have played a hand in some of these poor children slipping through the net.

Just awful.

I think that's a bit unfair, he was 15 so he would have joined school in year 10 ,many friendship groups would have been well formed by then
And whilst yes covid was massively disruptive to education, people were still getting sick with it ,there was no alternative but to stay off if you had it ,
The only people to blame are the mother and her partner .

but it has ZERO to do with lockdowns.

How can you be so sure? Lockdowns didn't cause any children to be murdered but they absolutely do not help in safeguarding of children are hidden and not being seen by anyone besides their abusers.

Re. Step parents. Yes there is a link. But children are not being killed because a responsible loving mother had a new boyfriend. In ALL these cases the biological parent is complicit or participating in the abuse. A normal loving parent would never let it get this far.

So the common denominator is useless/abusive/low self esteem bio parent + new abusive/jealous partner.

It makes me sick, the poor boy

OP..The school, agencies and other such groups of people are not to blame. The people who are responsible are the barbaric adults that carried out the abuse.

I'm not blaming the school. The people to blame are the evil people who hurt Sebastian instead of looking after him.

It's just that school is the one place that sees a teenager regularly. Maybe their one hope of being noticed. The poor boy was barely there long enough to be noticed.

I wonder what he came from, and why his mother didn't refuse to receive him if she resented him so much.

Would a teacher normally report a parents for calling a pupil lazy and a liar?he was 15 not five unless they has evidence he was being abused at home what could they do?
It's an awful case but these two animals were abusive regardless of covid .

Somehow this none seems to have hit me even harder than when it happens to a small child 😥

Agree with PP, the wicked step parent fairy tales didn't come out of nowhere. Obviously some step parents are amazing and a very positive thing in a child's life, but a new partner for one of the parents is probably the riskiest thing that can happen to a child.

Teachers sometimes say it themselves...

A teacher isn't going to report a parent for giving a child a reprimand.

Poor Sebastian, this is so awful. I just can't begin to imagine. It says the mum's boyfriend had CCTV to spy on him, was there sexual abuse too or was it all a control tactic?

Chaotic abusive mothers plus abusive stepfathers are a nightmare for any dependent children.

I wish this pair could be put down tbh.

I'm certain that there are a huge amount of caring, kind and wonderful step fathers / partners of mums out there.

However - these cases seem to be happening more and more frequently and almost always are to do with a vile step father / mothers partner.

It sounds like there just wasn’t any real evidence at school of what was going on. He wasn’t presenting in school with bruises, and appeared outwardly well-cared for.
The only concerns were low-level and based on feelings and suspicions. Teachers would report that internally but what that English teacher saw just does not come anywhere close to meeting the threshold for reporting to social services. This academic year almost 1/4 of students in my school had some form of safeguarding concern raised about them by a teacher using our internal reporting system. Only a small fraction of those meet the threshold for a referral to social services.
It’s a horrifically sad case but it sounds like the perpetrators were careful in coving their tracks and hiding what was going on from the outside well. They kept him home if he had bruises and the abuse escalated significantly in the summer holidays.
As a safeguarding lead in a school this sort of case terrifies me. These sorts of cases are the ones that stick in your mind when you have a horrible feeling that something is “off” but there just isn’t enough evidence there. They are what keep you awake the night after social services close a case.

That’s interesting in relation to STEP children as the figures for filicide generally show that men and women kill their children in roughly equal numbers

I wouldn't care how scared I was no-one would put their disgusting hands on my child. I'd stand up a 50ft beast. Its an animal instinct to project your baby, just like a mummy lion Wiill protect her cubs.

IME the bar for getting Social Care to help a teenager is very high (low?), even when it is reported.

That doesn’t really take because a mother lion will allow a rival male to kill her cubs to be mated by him instead.

She may put up a bit of a fight, but in the end, she will still let him mate her and have his cubs

And just to be clear, as a school we are not under-reporting. The majority of the referrals that we make to social services end up being stepped down to early help (which is voluntary for families to engage with and most reject it). I’ve seen cases closed by social services even when there have been more than a dozen referrals to social care made over the course of many years and where the safeguarding file with the concerns raised about the child runs to hundreds of pages. Underfunding of child safeguarding is putting children in danger. They just don’t have the resources to cope with the amount of children that need help.

what the actual fuck is wrong with people!??!?!?!

if you dont want to have the child to look after, there are options, you dont have to fucking hurt or kill them

i hope they get the treatment they deserve

@50mg That is certainly my experience.

I read some earlier news articles about this case and the details were absolutely horrendous. Poor Sebastian. He suffered so much. I agree there wasn't much for the school to go on but one of the articles I read had a comment from school's evidence saying that Sebastian was always the first one into school each morning and the last to leave in the afternoons. With hindsight it's obvious that there was a very serious reason for this but without physical signs or other definite evidence I don't think SS would have taken it seriously