am IBU to be ablsolutely disgusted that baby Ps mother

[issey6cats]

will be released after serving just 4 years in prison for the murder of baby P shes still young enough to go on to have other children, and its a disgrace that what baby P suffered is thought to only carry 4 years punishment

I didn't say she had a 'life' sentence, I said she had an indeterminate one which she has and she WILL be out on license. Being indeterminate in her case will mean that she will be subjected to the same probation as a 'lifer' until such time as her officer feels that a board meeting would be successful, which may be never. It may be when she is 65 and they feel she wont have children anymore, it really all depends.

Needless to say she will be on license for the rest of her childbearing life. I cannot see what benefit to anyone there would be by keeping her in jail. except perhaps to her because she is probably safer in there.

Mrs D it sounds like you are doing a great job and under what I imagine are very challenging circumstances.
I guess tats why I posted my story. Living in care really doesn't have to end with abuse or with no hope. You can change it, if you like it made me, it mde a strong resourceful person, it made me look beyond my own 4 walls and think about others around me, I went to uni, I have a good career and now now finally my own little family - all things that people over the years told me that 'people like me' couldn't or wouldn't be able to have.
It tok me a long time to decide to hae my own children. I was afraid of being like her, being a bad mum, but I am not, I am a loving nurturing mum, and I will do the best for my little ones as long as I live.
Do i think more children should be removed from abusive homes rather than stay - yes. I am sorry I know that's not a popular opinion but I think children deserve to grow up with people who love and can care and provide for them. In my expierence abusers don't change, my birth mother was given more than one chance with a lot of support and she abused it time and time again.
Do I think the care system can cope - no! it needs a radical overhaul, we need more loving foster carers - I credit mine with changing my life. We need mor support for those who are or want to be come carers, we need to provide mentors and opportunities for those in care, we need to stop judging and labelling children in care or letting them believe they will never be a sucess. We need to treat abusers as such and never give them a second chance to do it again.
I can't ever get back the years that I lost I can't ever have memories of a happy childhood myself but I can look forward. If I can give my children a happy life and any other young person I can help thats a good thing

Florence

I have no words, truly so these will have to do :)

I came out of a similarish childhood - although nothing like as bad. There was no active abuse in our case (me & two younger sibs) just very, very severe neglect on account of my mothers hopeless alcoholism & my couldn't-give-a-shit father.

We were well known to all agencies who tried to support my mother but the upshot was that we were taken into care when I was four. They wanted to keep us all together, but no foster carers could be found for us all so it was children's homes until we were eventually split up and fostered individually.

When I left care at 18 it was with a £5 goodbye and a see ya. I had no one - literally no one & inevitably went off the rails with no safety net of any kind. But I muddled through and came out the other end.

I agree with Friday, for what it's worth. The problem is that when something like this happens, we want revenge....entirely understandably. We want to see that woman and her execrable boyfriend HURT for what they did. But justice and revenge are not the same thing. We cannot punish a crime by committing a state sanctioned crime in return - which is why I'm against capital punishment.

The punishment is prison and they've got that. They are members of our society and are to be judged and sentenced according to the law and it's provisions. They were not found guilty of murder, so cannot be punished for that - the punishment they got was in line with sentencing guidelines and we can't expect anything more.

Boyfriend got life for the rape with a minimum sentence. He won't be allowed anywhere near children ever again - and I cannot believe that if he ever did father anymore a man still serving a life sentence for the rape of a toddler (which he would be if he was out on licence) would be permitted any unsupervised contact at all.

Connelly's children should NOT be forced to see her. No way. But we don't know what's going on with them & how they are feeling. It might be that their social workers & psychologists are willing to support contact for their benefit if that's what they want. It's NOT for us to say that that should not happen under any circumstances because we don't know what the circumstances actually are.

I couldn't give a flying fuck about that woman & her rights - but we should care about the rights of her children.

Having read a lot about this particular case, what shines through are two massive mistakes.....

1. A kind of group think situation where everyone had decided that Connelly was basically a well-meaning but inept mother & all events were viewed that way.

2. People not talking to each other when new information emerged because they assumed everyone else knew. An unrelated man coming into the family is a massive, massive red flag - just massive. But when people (and a few did) became aware of his existence, they didn't pass it on to each other so the social workers and police had absolutely no clue that this man was around.

Sorry, that was a bit long .

Oliver
My god that's just so unfair you were just a wee young girl, but so typical of what we hear about so many care leavers, it makes me so angry, most people still need the love and support of an adult at that age to help them with big 'life' decisons they are making. There are I know a few mentoring schemes for people leaving care but nowhere near enough support.
I am really glad you made it through what must have been a truly frightening and awful time
This issue is so big, so complex, Its almost impossible to know where to start. Someone has to start though, someone has to change things now, all children deserve that.
I know deep down, revenge and longer prison sentences won't change the fabric of such evil people - and I do think that some people regardless of their own upbringing are just bad plain and simple.
Someone needs to be there, to act for children, its not just the high profile cases of these poor little souls who have lost their lives but the children who are hidden and suffer abuse daily, the children that escape and still suffer at the hands of the care system or with their own demons.
I don't know how we do this, how make this change but someone has to and they have to do it now.

Files you did give the impression you thought she was on a life licence, but apologies if I misunderstood you.

I think you are incredibly naive to think that just because her licence is indefinite it will be long lasting.

I'm sorry to say I remember when she was sentenced similarly naive posters insisted that an indefinite sentence would be much longer than the tariff and she would face tough parole boards. Neither was true and I would bet my right arm that her licence period will also be as short as they can get away with.

Oliver, very sorry for your awful childhood . But I'm afraid you're wrong about Barker, they knew he was there, they were repeatedly warned, including by his father and barker was there when social workers visited, but they did nothing because Connelley said they were upsetting her and stopping her from enjoying her family life. There is a video of her talking to a social worker about her 'friend' and the same social worker grovels to Connelley for upsetting her by monitoring the children.

Seasick

Unless I've misunderstood but I thought.....

• Dad mentioned it to original social worker (before the new one when they moved to Tottenham) and it wasn't passed on

• Connelly mentioned it when she went to hospital and had him put as her next of kin. Hospital didn't pass that on

• She rabbitted on all over Facebook about her lovely new fella

• She told a social worker (in the dept. but not her own) about him but that wasn't passed on to the caseworker

Worst of all.....

• She announced at her parenting classes that she was pregnant! A pretty big clue that she wasn't single anymore....but they didn't pass it on either

Seems like the only person who didn't know was her case worker/s because all the people who did know didn't think it was that important

No excuse whatsoever, imo. They should have known or at least suspected. Lack of communication failed Peter horrendously. And of course, the other little victim.

But yes - I agree. The "group think" was all about poor Tracey & would she like a seaside holiday to "celebrate" not being charged with assault on her son

I said in my first sentence that she had an indefinite sentence.

The rest of my post was about Tracy Connelly but also about this common misconception that 'life' doesn't mean life or in this case, indeterminate only means the amount of years you do inside. It doesn't. Life is a life license and for Tracy Connelly it may well be! It's unlikely that a parole board will see fit to remove her supervised licence until she is well beyond child bearing age.

Given SeaSickSal's low opinion of the probation and justice system, it's not entirely clearly why she also wants Connolly supervised by that same system. If they will work to discharge her from their supervision as quickly as possible, what faith do you have in that supervision anyway?

It's also worth pointing out that Daniel Pelska's killers got life with a thirty year tariff. Either sentencing is wildly inconsistent, or the courts and pre-sentencing reports saw some qualitative difference between the two cases. The CPS could have appealed Connelly's sentencing, but didn't.

Oliver, didn't the social worker meet him at the home, was introduced as her 'friend' and thought nothing more of it. Also in the videos of her talking to a social worker she talks about him. The information was there if the case worker had bothered to look into the case with an enquiring mind rather than, as another poster said above, prioritizing a seaside trip for Tracey to help her get over the 'stress' of the assault charge.

Filee I still think you're confusing this. If she had a life sentence she would remain on licence for the rest of her life. Even if it fell into abeyance she would remain on licence. Connelly does not have a life licence. She is on licence for an indeterminate length of time. Judging by previous form this is extremely unlikely to be a life licence and far more likely to be one lasting a minimum amount of time or slightly above the minimum. In every single aspect of this case where the justice system has had a choice between taking a tough stance or leniency it's gone for leniency. I don't see why it should be any different in this case.

Friday you might well ask. I suspect Connelley's supervision will probably be little more than a weekly tea and sympathy session and a chance for her to complain about how difficult her life is and get a pat on the head for not abusing any more children. However I can't help thinking any sort of supervision is better than none at all in a case like this. Particularly when no supervision at all would massively increase her chances of gaining unsupervised access to children.

The difference with Daniel Pelka was not the horror of what happened and the final outcome. It was the evidence. In the Pelka case there was a wealth of evidence documenting what had happened to Daniel, particularly text messages between the mother and her partner which made it clear both of them were involved with the abuse. Hence the murder charge.

In the Connelley case there was very little evidence as to who inflicted the fatal blows. Tracey refused to testify against Barker and they all blamed each other so it was impossible to prove who delivered the fatal blows despite it being fairly likely it was Barker. Owen and Connelley were cleared of murder on the grounds of insufficient evidence and Barker by a jury.

This is why they got lighter sentences and were only convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child: because they all blamed each other and there was no corroborating evidence to prove who did what to Baby P.

So a technicality rather than actual justice.

I don't think a weekly probation meeting is 'a cup of tea and a pat on the back' and what is the alternative? Keep someone in prison who is no real threat to anyone? She was a neglectful mother and beyond the pail in many respects but all of that is negated by supervision.

It costs a lot to keep people in the prison system, I don't know why we would want to do that when probation keeps a bloody good eye on people like this.

Oliver, didn't the social worker meet him at the home, was introduced as her 'friend' and thought nothing more of it. Also in the videos of her talking to a social worker she talks about him. The information was there if the case worker had bothered to look into the case with an enquiring mind rather than, as another poster said above, prioritizing a seaside trip for Tracey to help her get over the 'stress' of the assault charge

No, that wasn't a social worker. It was either an HV or FWA (?) worker or something. I can't remember exactly but the reports were clear that, while there was multi-agency involvement, they just weren't speaking to each other.

Oh - and Connelly also mentioned him to the HT at her children's school, plus he turned up to collect one of them when they were sick. School considered it none of their business.

And like I said, she did tell A social worker on the video, but it was not HER social worker.

The most important people who needed to know were the police, as they were actively investigating who assaulted Peter and their investigation would have gone in a whole other direction if they'd known about Barker.

It was me who said about the seaside trip. I am not trying to excuse anyone, just pointing out that it was a major failure that all these people were not talking to each other as they should have been.

So a technicality rather than actual justice

Well, probably only in one of those cases. Obviously none of us were there, but it does seem very likely that it was Barker. In which case, Owens & Connelly in fact were correctly charged and sentenced for allowing a death & neglect.

And since, as you say there was not enough evidence, then it would have been wrong to charge Barker with murder as it would have been a worryingly high prospect that he'd have been found not guilty and walked.

Justice WAS done. No one got off on a technicality. They were charged with what they could be charged with given the particular set of circumstances and evidence available.

And Connelly won't just be given cups of tea and pats on the back - she won't experience freedom as we understand it for many years to come....if ever. Every aspect of her life will be scrutinised and checked. Where she lives/works/has friendships & relationships with. I wouldn't like to live like that - but she'll have to.

I think people misunderstand the scrutiny and power a probation officer has over a person life.
My tutor was a probation officer for many years and he would go to a persons home and watch them tell their new partner in person that they had committed a crime, if they were found to be lying the police would be round and they would be back inside, same with jobs. There is no getting away.

I think its glaringly obvious why The Daniel case produced 30 year tariffs, there was a wealth of solid "text" evidence.

In poor Baby P's case the buck was passed between the three of them. If they had all been texting each other about the abuse, the out come would have un undoubtedly been very different.

Anyway, there is no deterrent currently for people committing these crimes, its easy to run rings round all the agencies and health care proffs....children are dying each week at the hands of their parents, its only a few that make it to the news.

There is no dettarrant and if your caught, we as a society in law and attitude seem more worried about the perpetrator than the victim.

In the Connelley case there was very little evidence as to who inflicted the fatal blows. Tracey refused to testify against Barker and they all blamed each other so it was impossible to prove who delivered the fatal blows despite it being fairly likely it was Barker. Owen and Connelley were cleared of murder on the grounds of insufficient evidence and Barker by a jury.

In which case, all the grandstanding is just that. Unless we want a legal system that will lock people up on life sentences on general principles, or for being a bad sort, the sometimes there just isn't going to be the evidence. It's terrible, but there's a long way from a "technicality" and there being no evidence of who committed the crime. We know what "obviously they did it, stands to reason, doesn't it?" evidence looks like: Sally Clark. Or, more to the current point, Kimberley Hainey. Sometimes legal systems are messy, and give the results they can, rather than the results they perhaps should.

I'd like social workers to have well-calibrated crystal balls, so that they can distinguish between inadequate mothers who might be OK with help, and inadequate mothers who are going to get worse and are dangerous. I think we'd all like that. Maria Ward, who was the lead social worker for Tracy Connelly, appears to have assumed that all women who are inadequate mothers can be made better by being loved a bit more. But some people here appear to either want social services to assume that no (or at least far fewer) inadequate parents will get better, or that social workers can with some mysterious alchemy as yet undefined do a better job of distinguishing the sad from the bad (or, alternatively, the so hopelessly sad that they may as well be bad, cf. Amanda Hutton).

There's no possible bar we can set such that children will not be taken into care who needn't have been (and I think we realise more today than we did in the past that taking into care is not necessarily going to improve matters). And we can't set the bar such that no child slips through the net and is left at risk. We can balance those two errors, and maybe the balance is wrong today (but even in the gung-ho seventies when there were lots of residential homes, lot of prospective adopters and no pesky human rights, Maria Colwell still died). But it is a balance, and hindsight is a wonderful thing. Tracy Connelly was a wrong 'un, and her son died because social workers were naive. I think we're all agreed on that. What's important is that we identify children similarly at risk, without taking large numbers of children into the care system unnecessarily. Unfortunately, doing that without error requires crystal balls.

NSPCC statement on Baby Peter sentencing
Press Releases - 22 May 2009

The minimum sentences imposed on two of the three people convicted for the death of Baby Peter are disappointing, the NSPCC said today.

While the indeterminate sentences passed on these two and the life sentence passed on the third for the rape of a two year old girl are welcome, the minimum sentences means they could be free in a few short years.

The sentences mean that Baby Peter’s 27 year old mother and her lodger, 37 year old Jason Owen would still be young enough to start new lives and new families when released.

NSPCC chief executive Andrew Flanagan said: “We are disappointed that the minimum tariff was so low. It raises the question of how bad the abuse has to be before offenders get a longer minimum time in prison.

“Baby Peter suffered sustained abuse leaving him with horrendous injuries. Two of his abusers could walk free at a time when Peter should be a schoolboy with a new world in front of him. Despicable cruelty has denied him that opportunity.

“These three caused or allowed the torture and death of a defenceless baby. They may be behind bars now but when released from prison they must be put under the most stringent monitoring so they can never harm another child.

“The authorities must use every measure at their disposal to manage these individuals when they are freed.

Although most offenders are managed safely in the community, every week at least one kills, rapes or commits another serious offence.1 Every ten days in England and Wales a child is killed at the hands of their parent or carer. Many more children are left disabled or suffer life-threatening injuries.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/baby-p-council-apologises-for-new-abuse-case-8872523.html

Baby P council apologises for new abuse case

Haringey Council criticised for failing to learn lessons as toddler - identified as Child T - is twice released from hospital into the care of his mother and heroin addict stepfather to suffer yet more violence

The problems are all as you describe Friday, we do not have crystal balls, so what can we as a society do?

We can increase and create more " deterrent" we can add that little more danger factor to the abusers...increase the risk, make them think twice. Seeing as we lack crystal balls.....

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/baby-p-council-apologises-for-new-abuse-case-8872523.html

Friday those examples are irrelevant. Sally Clark didn't commit a crime and it cannot be proven that Kimberley Hainey did.

Tracey Connelley manifestly did commit a crime.

At the moment we have a system where if one of a group of adults kills a child and others stand by and watch or possibly contribute to the murder at a lower level they can all escape culpability by refusing to disclose how the fatal blows were struck and by whom. So they all get a slap on the wrist. There is a middle way which doesn't mean locking them up and throwing away the key which would be tougher sentences which reflected the fact they refused to cooperate with uncovering who the murderer was. As far as I know this isn't taken into account.

Social workers do a difficult job. They can and do make mistakes which in any other job would be a box not ticked but in their job leads to a death. That's a huge responsibility. There were mistakes made in this case, particularly their susceptibility to manipulation and over optimism.

But there is a big difference between the social workers and the justice system. The social worker were working with someone who appeared to be cooperative and had whilst in her previous relationship coped well. You can see how they had the wool pulled over their eyes.

The justice system however are dealing with someone who has been convicted of awful crimes against her children. Somebody who it's well documented is a manipulator who knows what people in authority want to hear and is adept at provoking sympathy whilst actually being an extremely different prospect to the one she is presenting to them.

One can understand social workers who had no knowledge of anything prior to this which would indicate the tragic turn of events being manipulated by her and falling for the poor little Tracey act.

A justice system which is in full possession of the facts about what she is capable of - no, they should not be bending over backwards to make her life easy and give her the gentlest ride possible.

There is a middle way which doesn't mean locking them up and throwing away the key which would be tougher sentences which reflected the fact they refused to cooperate with uncovering who the murderer was

Problem is, what evidence is there that any one of them individually knew who the murderer was? Obviously, our common sense tells us they must have done but in court it's all about the evidence. And if there was evidence that Connelly (for example) knew who killed Peter, then there would be evidence of who the murderer was....and they'd have been charged.

It's all about the evidence. For very, very good reasons.

Yoni Do you honestly think murderers are deterred by tougher sentences? You can't get tougher than life imprisonment, but that doesn't seem to deter them.

Seriously - do you think Barker, at any time, thought..."Oh, what the hell. I'll do this terrible thing because life doesn't really mean life in this country. If it did, I'd think twice".

It doesn't work like that. Never has.

Look at America. In some States they have the death penalty - and the murder rate in those states is higher than in the ones without it.

I have never hurt my son - and it has nothing whatsoever to do with how long I'd get in prison if I did. And we'd all say the same thing. People don't commit crimes like this with one eye on their possible sentence.

Sally Clark didn't commit a crime

Odd, then, that she was convicted of two of them. And those convictions were upheld on the first appeal, too. And then overturned on what, in other contexts, you'd probably say was just a technicality.

It doesn't matter if she was convicted a hundred times. Sally Clark's convictions were quashed. They were based on dodgy evidence and supressing of evidence which indicated both of her sons died of natural causes.

And Oliver, they were all charged with murder. The murder charges didn't stick because they wouldn't testify against each other because they knew they would get more lenient sentences.

Anyway, she should have had a proper fixed term tough jail sentence. The NSPCC said the sentences were woeful and they were. The 'indefinite' sentencing was just a sop to public anger so they could pretend that she was going to be in jail for longer than she was. It was a trojan horse for a light sentence.

And these sentences shouldn't be used for child abusers anyway, they ask if someone is a danger to the public. Child abusers by the definition of their cowardly crimes aren't as soon as their children are removed from them. Most of them don't have the guts to attack an adult or even a child who is protected by another adult.

There is an element of punishment in any prison sentence and it just wasn't enough. It sent a very bad message out about how we value small children in society.

"It doesn't matter if she was convicted a hundred times. Sally Clark's convictions were quashed. They were based on dodgy evidence and supressing of evidence which indicated both of her sons died of natural causes."

So when another poster of a similar mien to yours said "Billy Jo Jenkins also another case in point, Mrsdevere" (of someone being killed within the household), whatever can they have meant?

That post doesn't make any sense Friday. I'm not responsible for what other posters say and you're just muddying the water with irrelevant issues and waffling.

The fact remains that Connelley is not innocent. That's established beyond all doubt.

The only issue is whether those who collude to stay silent in order to obscure what happened and gain lighter sentences should have time added to their sentences which reflects that, rather than a cut which rewards it. I think they should.