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?

True. Like little Arthur's stepmother who murdered him after months of torture.

Blended families can be great but they need work and commitment.

Blaming the evil bastards lets the rest of society off the hook too easily.

The fact is that there are atructures in place which are supposed to keep children safe. There are protocols. There are rubrics which indicate when action should be taken. They are clearly inadequate. We expect victimized children to speak up for themselves to a far greater degree than is realistic. We let adults have the benefit of the doubt far too often.

I cannot bear to read it. That poor child. He must have been so scared. it breaks my heart to think that there are kids out there who suffer abuse and have no love in their lives.

But literally your second sentence was "where was the school in all this?"
So can you see how that implies you believe they are to blame in some way?

No. Only if you think it's a rhetorical question. I was asking a literal question. Schools are children's first line of safeguarding against violence at home, as they are the outsiders that see the child the most. The report I read did not say whether the school had taken any action. It's a reasonable question.

Which seems to prove, or at least emphasize, that male human beings are not far removed from animals when it comes to their own gratification. I thought that humankind had advanced further than that but it seems I was wrong. RIP Sebastian and I'm sorry the world failed you so badly.

He looked such a sweet boy, absolutely heartbreaking and the 'lessons will be learnt' crap makes me sick. Reminds me of the Daniel polka case.

SS do not investigate unless there is reasonable evidence. A vague feeling or impression would not meet any evidence threshold. There are many kids that teachers think are not that well looked after. There will be thousands of reports of kids looking a bit dishevelled or withdrawn. Schools monitor these kids. SS do not intervene in these cases unless there is evidence of harm or a disclosure from the child.

As we see time and time again SS don't even investigate when a child is black and blue with broken bones !! They're hardly going to investigate a 'feeling'.

Stories like this make me go and give my babies an extra cuddle. Poor poor little boy. I used to do a lot of safeguarding for early years and I will never never be able to get my head around why people act the way they do. I’d rather be way way over diligent (even if this is far from the truth - my own child once told his teacher his dad punched me 😳😳 and they rightly followed up on that however wrong that was!) to question a parent and help a child!

So many children loosing their lives which could have been helped. That being said - if the teachers/people involved had done all they could have done to help and raise the alarms then I feel for them too

I do blame the bloody school and nothing ever changes. I was abused and severely neglected by my parents and the school did nothing even when I went in with visible bruises. I wasn't bought a bra, nor period products and went in scruffy and dirty and was obviously seriously disturbed and not one single teacher took a blind bit of notice. In fact they tended to be quite harsh towards me when I wasn't being ignored.
People say oh it was the 70's and we didn't have safeguarding then but absolutely nothing has changed. It makes me so bloody angry, these poor kids.

I'm so sorry this happened to you

What a beautiful child. How could anyone do that.

I couldn't finish reading that.

The life that he endured behind that smile is unthinkable.

Rest in Peace, Sebastian.

I hope that you are safe and loved in the arms of someone, somewhere.

That's awful ,but again this child was in school for less than a year he was fifteen ,a year in which covid playedf a huge disruption to education, if there were no visible signs of abuse what could school do?
What happened to you was awful ,
But schools cannot act on a vague feeling .

They can and they should. Whether there'd be enough there for anything further to happen for a teenager, where IME, Social Care don't usually do much, is another thing, but the school absolutely should report a suspicion of neglect. There are many kinds of abuse, they don't all involve bruises and when there are bruises, they're often not visible. What the school "can't" do is wait for visible bruises before reporting and it doesn't need evidence. That's someone else's job.

What the school "can't" do is wait for visible bruises before reporting and it doesn't need evidence. That's someone else's job.

Schools don’t need to wait for bruising but there does need to be some evidence of something. I can tell you that if the teacher had made a referral to social services based on what she saw, the school would have been given quite a stern reminder to read the threshold document before making further reports. Social services would be totally overwhelmed if schools reported every vague feeling to them in the way that you suggest. That just isn’t how the system works.
There are 190 school days this year. In my school of around 1000 students, teachers reported almost 500 safeguarding concerns this year about almost 250 different students. And whilst our levels of deprivation are above national average, they are lower than in most other schools in our borough. If we reported them all
to social services the system would just break down and overall, more children would come to harm. We keep records of them all and build up a picture over time, but a referral to social care only happens in cases that meet the threshold defined by the local authority in their threshold guidelines. Even then, most referrals are “stepped down” to Early Help and then closed when the parents decline intervention.

this bought me near to tears.
just so awful
at 15 you just wish he had been able to Run away, somewhere, anywhere, to safety

and this is roughly the first day of the long summer holidays.
i am sure some professionals are dreading the next 6 weeks for instances of child cruelty

Power. They are literally power crazed.

You have to remember that cases like this are very rare ,I realise there have been a few cases well publicised cases over the past couple of years but most parents are not abusive ,this case was particularly unusual that he had only been in the country for ten months, in a year where education was massively disrupted by covid and he was 15 so in year 10 i don't know how well he spoke English, but I imagine it would have been a hindrance in making new friends ,in long established friendship groups particularly with bubbles bursting left, right and centre the kids and teachers were in and out of school ,it's utterly tragic .

They lived in a terrace house! We hear so often on mn how people can hear every noise from next door surely a 15yr old getting regularly assaulted would have made some kind of noise. Why don't people ring the police and why do school need to see bruises before doing anything.

If I was a teacher and was worried about a student but didn't have any evidence (who does, i think abusers tend to avoid giving black eyes) I'd use my initiative. If you ask an abused person if they are ok I would guess they always say yes. You need to gain their trust and encourage them to open up, get the pastoral team involved. To say there wasn’t any bruises so what could they do seems so very inadequate.

Again he was in the country for less than a year ,a year in which education was massively disrupted by covid ,how much time would teachers have had to build up a rapport with him ?
Bubbles were being burst all the time teachers and kids were going off with covid or as someone who had been in contact with a person with covid all the time and particularly if his English wasn't very good
It's all very well saying if you were a teacher you would do this ,that and the other but it was a very unusual time in education ,and sadly he probably Wasn't well known by anyone .

'Again he was in the country for less than a year ,a year in which education was massively disrupted by covid ,how much time would teachers have had to build up a rapport with him ?'

The teacher had concerns but no evidence. At the very least they should have got their wellbeing/pastoral team involved. Ours in secondary school had the same teachers, the same timetable, yes of course lots of kids and teachers off sick there wasnt that much disruption.

To say they had concerns but no evidence so couldn’t do anything is not good enough.

Even if they had got their pastoral head involved i really don't think it would have made much of a difference
It's a really tragic case ,if he had been in the UK longer, had we not been in a pandemic ,maybe the outcome would have been differen,but it seems the unusual set of circumstances probably didn't help .

The unwillingness of social services is irrelevant. Those concerns should have been reported to the DSL in the first place so that they were alerted to the possibility of an issue. As then it's possible to increase interest/awareness and maybe sometimes, just be there at the right time for a disclosure. I'm certain that this case will be used in training by our DSL to show that it's not acceptable to say 'well, he's not actually told me anything and social services wouldn't be interested anyway, so I'll just keep quiet along with every other member of staff who suspects something isn't right'.

Made me ill reading about this yesterday....

Poor boy, he was gorgeous.

Apparently teaching staff said he was polite but often looked sad....that really got to me 😔

I keep wondering WHY didn't he reach out, I know they're originally from Poland, so maybe language was a barrier, although fear is probably the most likely cause.

His whole life must have been awful with a thing like that for a mother....the thing even looks evil.

Why can't evil people like that be infertile?

Some of the stuff I read just turns my stomach.

Kids are abused every day, they will be being abused right now and there's nothing we can do about it because we usually only find out when it's too late.