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

Lilka its people like you we should be thankful for. Taking on a child from an abused background isn't easy as you will know. I had a very difficult childhood I wasn't really ever a child that chance had been taken from me - my mum used to say I was like a wise old person in a little persons body. I didn't have a single friend growing up, never went to a single birthday party it wasn't exactly a secret that I was in care, and became a very unhappy angry teen. It took me a long time and a lot of help to try to make sense of my world and why those things had happened. There are still a lot of places I won't go, things I don't want to know or even think about because they are simply to awful to think about. My adoptive parents were very strong very special people I guess you are too. Its lovely that your daughter has a family too. I always believe there is hope. No matter how awful the situation there is always a tiny glimmer of hope

The father has been gagged by Haringey Council. Ostensibly to 'protect the children' but realistically to stop him from coming out with more damaging stuff about them. Which means he can't speak about any approaches she makes, access, writing etc.

It has been reported that she saw her elder children (the youngest, Barker's, has been adopted) whilst she was in prison and she was driven from Durham to London and back to see them.

Bearing that in mind I think it's fairly certain she will have some kind of access. I also suspect a few years down the line she will probably be allowed to keep a child too.

Because just like when Baby P was alive it will all be about Tracey and nothing about the children. She will have another set of well meaning handwringers that she can complain about her terrible childhood too who will feels sorry for her and see her as the victim.

But regardless, she will be able to fight for access to the children and the children's father will not be able to do anything about it because he is gagged from speaking about it.

Friday

I am finding your posts incredibly patronising and condescending.

You have no idea who you are talking to on here and what peoples experiences and backgrounds are.

Back on topic.....

You have the desire and lack of moral compass to abuse on one hand, and on the other, no deterrent.

We need a stronger deterrent.

I wonder if put to a vote how many people in this country think the sentencing for baby p was strong enough, or most child abuse/death cases?

Your belitting people on here Friday for being disgusted with Baby ps mother being released, but we are.....the people of the UK, if there were enough of us complaining then, something someday may actually be done to tighten up sentences for child abuse/violence/murder.

no, Florence I haven't done anything that anyone should feel thankful for. I fulfilled my own personal selfish desire to be a mother. I do believe adoption has had an enormous positive impact on the kids lives, as it does for many children, but I went into this primarily to be a parent.

May I ask how old you were when you were adopted, and were you adopted by your foster parents or by 'strangers'? Obviously feel free to tell me to bugger off. One thing I'm always happy to to hear about is successful older child adoptions (my definition of successful being, adoption does not break down, family consider themselves a family)

yonis one big problem though is that I'm not sure if there's any good evidence that much harsher sentencing actually has any deterrant effect. I'm willing to change my mind if i see good strong research and/or statistics demonstrating that it does deter people. But eveverything I've read (although yes I'm certain that I have a definite tendency to confirmation bias) seems to suggest that 'deterrants' don't actually work. They appease the public, but the minds of the people who committ such crimes dont change a bit. They still committ them. Eg. death penalty states in the US pretty much all have higher rates of capital offences than the non-death penalty states do.

I think prison and sentencing should be foremost about protecting the public (including children) and about rehabilitating/trying to rehabilitate those offenders it is possible to rehabilitate (because that will actually reduce crime rates if it works). Obviously there is a role for very long sentences within that aim for those predators (eg. Barker) who represent and will always represent a very serious threat to children. But why pretend that something is a deterrant if it doesn't actually deter anyone else?

If this woman and the monster she had as a partner had kidnapped an adult and treated him/her the same way they did Baby Peter resulting in their death, they would have been sentenced to life in prison.

But because it was a defenceless toddler, they were not.

Why does the British legal system consider killing a toddler less important that killing an adult?

well because not all fairtrade is ethical because the fair trade sticker is only one part of it the farmer may have a product say cocoa beans and once the product has left the farm it still has to be transported made into the final product and some of the workers further up the chain do not have fair working conditions,

Well said aurynne

It's not simply that justice is done, but that justice is seen to be done.

Many many people feel that justice has not been done, and in a very emotive case that is an issue. Not least for TC herself

We need a stronger deterrent.

Do you seriously believe that child abusers would be deterred by stronger sentences? That they think to themselves "I'll burn this child with an iron in exchange for five years' prison, but if it's going to be twenty I think I'll buy some Boden for them instead"?

Parts of the US have the death penalty, and enact it. That's a pretty strong "deterrent". Do you think that murder is more or less common in those states? And do you think that the murderers who are executed (usually poor, ill-educated, previously in the care system, often with special needs, almost always with an escalating history of past crimes which mean they are well aware of what prisons are like) thought it out carefully before that mugging for $30 went wrong?

We have prisons for a combination of retribution, rehabilitation, prevention and deterrence. The evidence that prison deters is essentially non-existent, with the exception of very calculating property criminals (white-collar fraud through to "professional" bank robbers) who clearly do factor it into their calculations. Prison prevent by keeping criminals out of circulation, although it's a very expensive way to do it. They should do a lot more rehabilitation (the rates of, say, illiteracy amongst the prison population are astronomical, as are the rates of untreated mental illness).

Too many appear to just want the retribution part, preferably while fantasising luridly about prison rape and stabbings on the corridors. Short of imposing whole-life tariffs for all killings (and I think we might want to think that one through a bit before voting for it) and running some of of junior Hanoi Hilton to provide suitably barbarous conditions, just what would make people happy? And what do they think it would achieve? You'll still have a prison system mostly full of pathetic inadequates, hugely dominated by care leavers, who were pretty much fucked before they started. Would putting some effort into actually making people less likely to commit crime be more productive that attempting to out-do each other over how hard we are? A little Christian compassion wouldn't go amiss.

It is scary what damage can be done to a very young child and some reading on here is very uncomfortable
I was disturbed by the comments about the boys who killed James Bulger because they too were victims
But, we do need to protect children before they too are damaged
My adopted daughter is capable of incredible cruelty and has been from a very young age.
She has an almost clinical coldness and detaches when causing harm and it makes me fear for her future
Much of the damage done to her was pre birth with drugs and alcohol

I would never think forced steralisation was acceptable though. I have read that in the US addicts can be paid to take contraception
Do readers think that is acceptable

I am sure more time for SW to actually spend time with families and smaller case loads would improve things too

Because just like when Baby P was alive it will all be about Tracey and nothing about the children.

So what are you asking for?

Plenty of murderers have children. In some cases, the children are revolted and break all contact. In other cases, they are regular visitors. Either way, it's their choice. Are you proposing that this should be stopped? Isn't that just punishing the children as a means to get at the parent?

It's unimaginable that Connelly would be granted access to her children against their wishes, ie that they would be taken into the prison estate against their will and forced to see her. Or at least, if you have evidence that that is the case, let's see it. So what you're being disgusted about is children, who of all people are the innocent parties here, not being denied access to their mother.

Yes, that denial would further punish the mother. But it would also punish the children. If the children don't want to see her, they won't. But if they do, they should be permitted to. In suitably supervised and supported settings, obviously. But it's the children's decision. It's not clear from the SCR how old they are but reading between the lines in the SCR (paragraph 3.3) one of them is twelve or thirteen, and perfectly old enough to make that decision for themselves.

It is scary what damage can be done to a very young child and some reading on here is very uncomfortable. I was disturbed by the comments about the boys who killed James Bulger because they too were victims. But, we do need to protect children before they too are damaged

"Ms A (ie, Connelly) was born in Leicester in 1981, where she lived until 1984 when her mother and step-father separated. Their relationship was reported to be violent and both she and her brother witnessed domestic violence (...) In 1991, aged 10 years, Ms A was placed on the child protection register, under the category of neglect. There were concerns about her appearance and her hygiene; the parenting she received was inconsistent and there is evidence that it was abusive. She was removed from the child protection register in June 1992. She was referred to Child Guidance and thought to need a special educational setting. She was known to be attending a residential placement in 1993, described by Islington Social Services as a boarding school (...)"

Now obviously, the response to this is "plenty of people had bad childhoods and didn't go on to kill their children". But people who had bad childhoods are massively over-represented on almost any index of exclusion and deprivation you want to mention, and in turn, exclusion and deprivation are massive risk markers for abuse and (particularly) neglect. The days when care leavers were booted out on their sixteenth birthday with their meagre possessions in a binbag (how symbolic of how society viewed them) aren't that long ago, and the foster-care system has been in constant turmoil for the past fifty years. If we spent a bit (oh, OK, a lot) more time and money on providing support and care for young people whose parents aren't able to care for them, and a bit less time on dreaming up lurid punishments for the rare occasions when it all goes horribly wrong, the world would be a substantially better place.

Tracy Connelly is a woman who committed an appalling crime, and stood by while other appalling crimes were committed. She was properly prosecuted, properly convicted and properly punished. As the potential sentence for what she did was life (she could have been charged with murder, although it would have been challenging to secure a conviction) the argument that "deterrence" was involved is hard to sustain: she was herself a victim of abuse, and society had failed her at every turn (let's not get into the issue of Islington-run care homes in the 1990s, but there's a long-running scandal there which will sooner or later see the full light of day). Nothing is served, beyond the mentality of the public hanging, by lurid discussion about how much more people want to see her punished (the usual "let me have ten minutes with her" keyboard warriors). What needs to happen is that we don't fail children in either her's, or her children's, position in the future. What matters that children shouldn't be abused, and worrying about how much punishment we hand out after it's already happened is spectacularly missing the point.

Lilka I was just shy of turning 2 when I was removed. Yes I stayed with the same foster family along with my sibling and was eventually adopted by them when I was a teenager. I had huge problems as a child very nervous of loud noise and very shy. I also refused to eat around others and would go and sit crouched in a corner where no one would see me. I was very angry as a teenager as I really started to understand what had happened to me. I hated being different not having the same surname and being treated differently by teachers. frankly I hated my childhood and was glad to be an adult if that makes sense.

I would also really like to foster myself one day. I promise you there is nothing selfish about what you did. To have the chance to grow up with a loving adult you can trust and who won't judge you is a wonderful thing

oh and yes lilka they are my mum and dad and stood proudly by my side as I got married and they are also rather excellent grandparents I couldn't imagine them not being in my life.

There is a difference from other murderers in that the surviving children were actually victims of her crimes. One directly, the others indirectly through neglect and fear. A least one of these children was very small when all this happened (although not too small to recount to the court how her mother saw and did nothing when she was raped aged 2). The others recounted how they used to sleep with their backs against the door out of fear.

When children are this emotionally damaged and have been through such trauma I don't really think it's appropriate that the choice is left with them. I don't think they have full understanding of how bad what happened to them was because it's normalized to them. They are so emotionally damaged they don't really have the right emotional base to make this choice from. Abused children often think the abuse is their fault and feel guilt their abuser is punished. This is a case where it's appropriate for the authorities outside to judge this person is not fit to be around them and ban contact. They still feel beholden to them and feel they owe them something.

You speak about the terrible childhood Connelley had. Surely this is the time to break the cycle and remove these children from that cycle of abuse. She can still emotionally abuse them even with contact.

We don't even know if the children or their father want contact because they have been gagged.

Regardless - the point I was making is that there have been a lot of promises made in this case. Promises that an indeterminate sentence would be much longer than the minimum tariff, promises that the parole boards would be tough, promises she would not have contact.

All of these have been broken, I have no reason to think that she will not be allowed to keep any further child she gives birth to.

There is no need to sterilise her, she is on an indefinite license,

When someone gets 'life' with 12 years inside, what that means is that after 12 years they get a parole board meeting who decide that (if they have worked their way through the prison system) to release them.

That panel board is judges, psychologists etc.

At that point the 'lifer' will be given a probation officer (or Nom as they are called now) and will have to attend meetings every week with that person and tell them Everything about themselves. Probation officers have power of entry, they can check on you, they can come to your house and watch you tell your new partner why you are on life licence.

After many, many years of this, provided you never miss a meeting, never tell a lie and can show you have changed dramatically, your probation officer can ask for your supervision licence to be lifted.

So you don't have to see a probation officer every week but you are still on life licence.

It's mandatory if you commit murder and a few other crimes as well.

There is absolutely no way that Tracy Connelly would slip through the net. She is watched now indefinitely. That's what her sentence means.

Friday I didn't want to have contact with my birth mother. I was forced to endure supervised visits as a child with the woman who tried to kill me.
I didn't have a choice. My foster mum kept saying that they were not helping that we were upset and unsettled after them.
Can you imagine what it is like to be utterly terrified that you are being taken back to someone like that.
We we never ever going to be given back so we should have been allowed a clean break.
Even after the visits stopped when she had threated to kill my foster mum (shes a real charmer) she continued to blight our lives and was allowed to live just a few miles away. She would appear at our house shouting and ranting, she threatened to abduct us. She came to my school and I was taken somewhere safe.
We had to go to court to take out injunctions to stop her. They never worked for long.
As an adult I met her and him to ask them to explain their behaviour and to ask them to leave me alone. She didn't. Her harresment only ceased when I moved a very long way away and that is only because she can't find me.
She still writes abusive letters to my parents demanding to know why I won't talk to her.
She destroyed so much of my life and still continues to do so. I am constantly looking over my shoulder just in case.
There are times when I have wanted to kill her with my bare hands. I was bought up to have better manners so I won't.

I have no Christian good will I am afraid. I find it hard to believe that any God allows such horrors to happen.
I can only hope the woman who caused me so much grief dies a horribly slow, painful, lonely death and thats me being charitable.

I was forced to endure supervised visits as a child with the woman who tried to kill me.

And that's entirely wrong, and no-one would support or advocate that. But that's not the same thing as saying that such visits cannot occur if the parties involved want them to.

There aren't easy answers to any of this. What could have been done better in your case? By the sounds of it, a huge amount. And improving that support for the victims of abuse is far more important than speculating about how the perpetrators might be punished (by the sounds of it, the people that abused you weren't prosecuted, so discussion of sentencing policy is somewhat moot).

Most abuse and neglect does not end in murder, and the number of children who are removed from their birth families because of abuse but whose parents are not imprisoned, or even convicted, is huge. Dealing with that problem is hard.

Surely this is the time to break the cycle and remove these children from that cycle of abuse.

Indeed. Tracy Connelly was under social services supervision from an early age, and was moved into (effectively) residential care by the time she was about ten.

Rebecca Shuttleworth (the killer of Keanu Williams) had been in residential care most of her life.

In the case of Kyra Ishak, the male perpetrator (who appears to have been the main abuser) had had a childhood with massive social services involvement ("his brother, aged six months at that time, died as a result of cot death. The post mortem report indicated death occurred as a result of asphyxia due to the inhalation of vomit....[t]wo years later when he was five, his sister who was then aged three died as a result of significant trauma after being hit by their father in the stomach, as a form of “discipline” whilst being toilet trained, for not pulling the chain.")

In all cases, they were taken into care or supervision of various forms because they had been abused. Short of sterilising everyone who is taken into social case (essentially, the vs Bell "three generations" argument writ large) what makes you think that "breaking the cycle" is as simple as "remove[ing] these children?" Where do you want to remove them to?

Botched link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

Filee, she was never sentenced to life. She was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence with a minimum tariff of five years. That's very different from a life sentence and as a result she will not be supervised in the manner you describe and she is NOT on life licence. You're confusing two very different things. After a few years her supervision will be minimal.

Florence that's awful and it illustrates the point about contact sometimes being given for the sake of the abusive parent rather than the child.

In the enquiry that followed Peter it was said again and again that the authorities were so focused on TC and her needs and wants that they ignored those of her children at he expense of what Tracey wanted. And that they were incredibly easily manipulated by her.

Basically they were a crowd of people with attitudes like Friday's. All she had to say was 'Pooor meeeee, I've had a hard life' and they all said 'There, there, Tracey, poor you'. And then stood by and allowed the circumstances where her son was killed to be created.

And now exactly the same behaviour is coming from exactly the same type of people again. She squeezes out a few self serving tears and she's released as early as they could possibly get away with and has access to her children. And everybody in authority has forgotten that the whole damn mess happened in the first place because they were all running to roll out the red carpet for poor put upon Tracey who had a hard childhood and do exactly what she asked while she was in the process of killing her son

I remember the video of a social worker nodding enthusiastically and agreeing that social services were being horrible to her and should leave her alone and shudder.

She was sentenced to an indeterminate sentence with a minimum tariff of five years. That's very different from a life sentence and as a result she will not be supervised in the manner you describe and she is NOT on life licence.

For practical purposes, she is.

She's subject to IPP license for at least ten years after release. After ten years, she can apply for that license to be lifted. If that's rejected (we don't know how likely that is because, aside from anything else, almost no IPPs have as yet reached that ten year milestone) she can reapply annually.

Life licenses, as you point out, aren't lifted. But they go into abeyance to the point that they might as well be. Someone who is on life license but was released twenty years ago might, possibly, have an annual meeting with the probation service, but might not even do that.

Basically they were a crowd of people with attitudes like Friday's. All she had to say was 'Pooor meeeee, I've had a hard life' and they all said 'There, there, Tracey, poor you'. And then stood by and allowed the circumstances where her son was killed to be created.

Honestly, that's not what I'm saying. It's the usual "anyone attempting to understand is making excuses" straw man. I have absolutely no problem with children at risk being removed from abusive circumstances, and the behaviour of social services in the Connelly case was absolutely crazy. The social workers switched their focus from the child they were supposed to be protecting to the abuser, and the results were catastrophic. While the children are alive, the main focus of social services should be keeping them alive (and, hopefully, alive and well), not pandering to their parents.

But there are thousands and thousands of women living lives like Connolly. Often abused themselves, lacking sound models of family life, usually pregnant young and repeatedly, lacking the confidence and skills to deal with the violent, unstable men they can't control, often victims of domestic violence, often with low-level (or not so low-level) mental health or addiction issues. They are inadequate parents who lack the capacity or ability to get much better.

The ones that end up in SCRs after the death of a child are just the tip of the iceberg. For every one that kills (or allows the killing of) their child, there are hundreds who showed all the same signs but didn't kill their children. Those hundreds are just as manipulative, just as troubled, just as plausible.

So what do you want to do? Take all the children into care? And do what with them? How many extra children would social services need to take into care in order to prevent each death: ten, a hundred, a thousand? You tell me. And what would the consequences be for the children taken into care who wouldn't have died?

And in any event, this started out as a debate on sentencing. Suppose for the sake of argument you got your wish and Tracy Connolly were given a whole-life tariff. How many children do you think that would protect?

I've not even brought up the argument for sterilisation which for the record I don't agree with.

Not everybody who goes into social care is a bad parent. Not everyone who goes into social care is an abusive parent. And a tiny amount of people who come out of care commit crimes with this level of evil.

Actually it's interesting you mention Rebecca Shuttleworth, all of her other children had been taken off her due to abuse but she was still allowed to keep Keanu which apparently Shuttleworth herself couldn't believe. She expected him to be taken too.

It's not a matter of sterilising people. It's a matter of taking children away from situations where they are in danger and prioritising the needs of children above those of their parents.

In the Connelley and the Shuttleworth case children died because people in authority ignored the children's needs in favour of their parents. And in both cases it's because people with attitudes like yours gave them too many chances because they made too many excuses.

I'm just astounded that after all the warnings that these cases happened because the needs of the parent were prioritized over those of the child people can still argue that the parents needs and wants are still the priority here and we should yet again make excuses for them. How clearly can I say it THIS IS WHAT CAUSED THESE DEATHS IN THE FIRST PLACE. There was more than enough evidence these children were in danger but they ignored it because their priority was sympathizing with the mother over what a hard life she'd had.

Okay, so Lord Laming's enquiry was just a white wash creating straw men was it?

The serious case review?

These official inquiries said that the reason that social services failed was that they were only concerned with Tracey Connelley's needs, were preoccupied with dealing with her and what she wanted and were easily manipulated and sidelined the needs of her children in favour of her. There's video evidence of them doing it FFS.

And it's not a straw man when you're trotting out the same old tired arguments about poor old Tracey, didn't she have an awful life, we should be lenient to her and let her see her kids. These are exactly the type of arguments that lead to his death in the first place.

And you do like putting words in my mouth. Nowhere have I said I wanted a whole life tariff. I think she should have had a proper fixed term sentence rather than the cop out of giving her an indeterminate sentence which was a sop to look tough at the time whilst the justice system knew all along she would be freed as soon as they could decently get away with it.

What I do have a problem with is the fact that despite the problems that this 'Poor Tracey' attitude had in the first place she seems to have been handed over to a justice system which has taken exactly the same attitude.

And it's not so long since it happened that I have forgotten people like you arguing that of course it was a tough sentence, and she wouldn't be released anywhere near her tariff, poo, pooing the idea of anybody who said they would be surprised if she was turned down more than once for appearances sake. So please forgive me if I'm cynical about your claim that she might as well be on life licence. Because you know as well as I do that she'll have her licence lifted as soon as the probation service can get away with it. Because of course the probation service will be full of people like you who will be saying 'Oh poor Tracey, she's had a hard life'.

As will social services be next time she has a baby it's so predictable it's depressing.

And I don't know why you are bringing all the other children in care into this, or the children of people in care. It's absolutely irrelevant. This is about a case where a woman has been tried and convicted yet is still being treated as the victim and given access to her children.

Florence. I feel really for you.