Another child killed due to mother's abusive partner

[JoanThursday1972]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12037929/Boy-nine-died-beaten-belts-held-cold-bathwater-court-hears.html

Not another one. Will we ever see the end of this type of story? I doubt it. Don't let the press DARE label this thug Alfie's "stepfather".

@AmeliaEarhart thank you and love your user name! For those who have the EOW arrangement I reckon dating but not moving them in would be manageable.

I think that's as much to do with male strength.

Mothers can torture children in other ways than physical.

As a child I had no idea my life wasn't normal, I think as I got older I did but it was only when I mentioned something when I was at uni, in my 30s and another mature student started crying that something I thought of as a funny story was actually something the other student could not imagine doing to her child.

💐For your experiences. I think some men are used to using their brute strength to get their way unfortunately and this translates when they become fathers or step fathers.

You can't just blame lockdown abusive men/women are abusive ,there have sadly always been children that were killed at he hands of their, parents,parents partners
It's 'the, perpetrator,s fault no one else

I can 100% blame the fact no outside agencies were able to monitor these kids during lockdown.

There were a lot more cases missed during lockdown.

I had a "lockdown baby" and that baby still has never seen a health visitor or similar.

Completely. The extra eyes and ears of teachers, spotting marks and bruises. A meal every day. Hearing the comments made. The fact social services couldn’t visit in homes
the fact loads of kids fell off the radar and teachers were left with phonecalls to parents checking in. At my children’s school lots of parents just did nothing, didn’t answer school phonecalls they literally dropped off the radar. Teachers couldn’t do anything to check in.

thats before you look at vulnerable social workers who had to be furloughed and the shit show of care homes they were also dealing with

@VegetablesFightingToReclaimTheAubergieneEmoji

Love your name 🤭

There's a TV presenter who does true crime YouTube videos named Emma Kenny and she's done so many recent cases of lockdown child death it's actually too crushing to watch them.
Sometimes she tells of stats etc of how much things like child head injury etc went off the chart.

These poor wee things, it's just the worst systemic failure I've known in my lifetime.

I love Emma Kenny but I don't think she's objective in her views as she was as very anti lockdown in any form ,I'm not sayng lockdown didn't contribute btw 'but these perpetrators were always abusive scrum lockdown didn't make them that way.

They are sub human and deserve to rot. I don't care what excuse the 'mother' comes up with, she is worse than pond scum.
As a mother every fibre of your being pulls you to protect the children you have, most of us worry constantly (even in the background of our minds) about whether our children are safe, happy and healthy.
These people are not worth the oxygen they breathe, I hope prison is brutal for them and they suffer as much as they inflicted on that poor boy.

I have a role in health with safeguarding responsibilities. It’s utterly soul destroying. Some people just won’t put their children first but the threshold for compulsory involvement by social services is so high now that they aren’t monitored and concerns aren’t followed up. Families who 5 years ago would be under a child protection plan are now under lower categories because there isn’t the manpower to manage all the work involved in a child protection plan, but if they have been assessed as being at this lower level then a family can choose not to engage and there’s no comeback. Every time i attend safeguarding training it’s all about professional curiosity, building a bigger picture with smaller incidents like neighbour reports, lack of school attendance, children not being taken to health appointments etc but regularly try to get someone interested in families where behaviours are indicating real risk and nothing happens. I have no doubt it’s because the services just can’t cope but it’s absolutely awful and it’s terrifying. Health visitors in lots of areas are basically social workers now, that’s why they aren’t there to help with standard, basic parenting stuff, it’s because half of them have left a job that feels risky and unsafe and the other half are trying to manage a massive caseload of chaotic families and trying to prevent tragedies happening (I’m not a HV)

I’m not saying all of the above was pertinent in this case, I, like others haven’t read it, it’s too distressing and I come across too much of it anyway, but it gives you an idea of the environment in safeguarding at the moment. It’s not pretty.

It’s not really about staying single. It’s about adults making safe decisions and understanding safe, positive relationships. Not all men are dangerous and not all step parents kill their children and not all mums would follow a partner in abuse or fail to keep their child safe. There are so many complex reasons behind it. Often mums (and the men involved) who do this have had negative childhood relationships, a lack of attachment to a primary carer, witnessed domestic abuse growing up, have drug or alcohol problems, may have undiagnosed issues such as fasd where they are more easily manipulated, lack a supportive social circle and had lots of issues before having children. Although the media portrays parents as doing well before the partner comes, very often this is ‘good enough’ parenting and the negative relationship with the new partner pushes it into a dangerous situation. You can’t really think in black and white terms about child abuse and murder resulting from it. It’s not that parents who can have loving relationships suddenly morph into someone who lacks empath and doesn’t mean single parents should never have a relationship. It’s terribly sad and often abuse/neglect carries on when children in that family grow up, unless there is positive intervention. Poor little Alfie doesn’t have the chance for positive intervention now, which is devastating, but blanket statements about staying single won’t help Alfie or any of the other children going through abuse. I’m not saying that women shouldn’t be supported in staying single if they want to, but just that the fact they have a partner isn’t the issue as such, it’s the type of partner and the type of relationship as well as the mother themselves.

I do agree! She definitely doesn't seem objective, but the more I think about what she says, I can't disagree.
(And I was very strict with my old lockdown rules.)

I agree with what you're saying about how it's the fault of perpetrators not a lockdown. But locking people and worse children in with their abusers was so catastrophic that I believe their safety should have been prioritised over adhering to lockdown rules.

When many of us were in school, we remember the names of little Victoria or baby Peter, who's deaths were so unheard of (not saying 100s more didn't slip by without media attention, I'm sure they did!) But no we have a generation of people who couldn't pick one isolated name out from Arthur, star, Teddy, logan, and I'm not sure that any lockdown would be worth seeing another plethora of cruel child deaths.

I know MN love to call strong views on child murder grief tourism, but when baby Peter or little Daniel died at hands of their parents and caregivers, I believe society mourned them. We all felt that heavy grief, outrage and I don't know a single person who wouldn't have done anything to give these children different outcomes in life.

With the amount of children that are now dead during this period of time, we can't possibly have the same element of grief.
It's not personal anymore, we can't grieve lola, we can't grieve little Leyland and the others mentioned, in the same way and that to me is very dangerous, when we become indifferent towards child death.

It's almost like how we in the UK hear of a school shooting and struggle to see each one as harrowing as we found sandy hook, we almost have become acclimatised and that's scary.

Sorry for long post and not including the children's surnames, I wasn't sure on some of them and I would have lost my train of thought if I'd have googled.

I agree with lots of what you’ve said, but personally I don’t feel acclimatised. I know when Arthur Labinjo-Hughes died I cried several times. His own words being quoted in the press just struck home so much and we’re so horrifically sad it was unbearable, “No one loves me.” My own son was a similar age, which I’m sure had an effect too. I think it is possible to grieve every child, but equally I do think there is a danger that people can feel removed from it and not have the same level of shock.

I also think there is a danger people do not support those children who are removed from it. How many times do other parents have little patience or empathy for children in foster care or children who’ve been adopted and are still dealing with trauma? I do agree with lockdown exacerbating issues hugely and I absolutely agree that their safety should have been prioritised.

The way looked after children and adopted children riddled with trauma are viewed is very close to my heart and I agree.

It does feel to me that I'm just not shocked anymore like I'm almost expecting to hear some grim story.