To be incredulous that this little boy wasn't protected (warning - distressing news coverage)

[LEMisdisappointed]

news article

I am so angry - yet another child tortured and murdered by his "parents". The school had written comments in the "concerns" book, yet still this poor little mite was starved and beaten systematically over a period of time. Do professionals become numb to childrens needs? Does no one check FFS????

My DD is a healthy child (thankfully) and never taken to the GP as she hardly ever gets sick, the only times she has been in the past few years are for injuries - nothing serious apart from biting through her tongue (ouchie), another time she burnt her hand and more recently a horse trod on her toe. The nurse commented that she was "accident prone" and asked if we had a social worker Fair enough actually, although DP was offended, although no follow up action taken. It looks worse i guess because they are the only notes on her medical record since she was a baby (shes 8 now). Everyone talks about "safeguarding" but it appears that they are just paying lip service to it and children are suffering either through unintentional neglect or willful cruelty.

I don't understand, after the whole Baby P thing that this can still slip through the net

[wannaBe]

At the end of the day, the people responsible for this child's death were his mother and stepfather. And in truth, if you had a previously healthy happy child who appeared to deteriorate would you automatically assume abuse? esp given there was another sibling who was in good health? It's very easy to sit on the sidelines and look at the evidence, evidence gathered after the murder and the criminal investigation, and say that someone should have seen/noticed something and done something.

The first time Daniel presented with a broken arm he was apparently a happy chubby child, no-one could have predicted at that point that he would be starved. And in truth he wasn't starved to death, yes he was emaciated and this should not be discounted, but starvation was not the cause of his death, so while it's easy to sit here and say that a child was being starved to death, in fact it's the wider abuse that was the issue here.

The people responsible here are the parents. On the whole I am not an advocate of the death penalty, but I think there are some exceptions...