Nine years for starving a baby to death

[PropertyFlipper]

I’m struggling to see the justice here. This sorry specimen will be out in five years no doubt. Devastating.
Teen mother, 19, bursts into tears as she is jailed for nine years

[quote Lockdownbear]@Conkergame
More money and SWers are needed.
Care support should continue to 23, allowing kids to actually access uni, it's one suggestion they could stay in halls but where are they meant to be over summer?

Closing care homes just isn't the answer. Too few Foster Carers and even less who would want to have troubled teens in their house. It's a different task taking on young children and babies to looking after 6ft tall 14 year old troubled boys.

Ensuring that abusers aren't allowed near kids is easier said than done.

Not sure why you think boarding schools are the answer, putting 100s of "looked after" children together would be a disaster. It would be no different to the massive children's homes of the past. Full of abuse and a magnet for abusers.

Small units max 5 kids , siblings kept together, staff who genuinely care, stop accepting that 14 year olds can go off with older men. Better laws to protect young kids in care from grooming.[/quote]
Also- bring back Sure Start, preventive support services and reinstate the drug/alcohol/m.h.services decimated by ‘austerity’
I read this child was placed , at birth, on whatever the safeguarding register is called now. Despite this, she didn’t have a social worker at the time of her death.
This country had a good and improving child protection system. Totally destroyed by successive Tory governments.

I’m not excusing or defending this mother

I gave birth to my first child at 18.

I had been a teenage runaway, on a child protection order from the age of 13, sexually exploited and neglected.

I would have never left my baby, or anybody elses, alone anywhere for one hour let alone six days. I used to worry about my fucking cat being home alone for too long.

Having a traumatic upbringing does not excuse what this nasty piece of work has done.

This country had a good and improving child protection system.

I can’t describe any child protection system as “good” when I think of poor Baby P. Found to have bruises and other injuries in October and removed from his mother; handed back to her just three months later; dead about seven months after that. That is just one example, there are doubtless many more.

Well said @Itsnotmeisit, and so sorry to hear what you went through

@Itsnotmeisit

I gave birth to my first child at 18.

I had been a teenage runaway, on a child protection order from the age of 13, sexually exploited and neglected.

I would have never left my baby, or anybody elses, alone anywhere for one hour let alone six days. I used to worry about my fucking cat being home alone for too long.

Having a traumatic upbringing does not excuse what this nasty piece of work has done.

Well said I'm sure most people would struggle to comprehend leaving a cat or dog at home with no food or water for 6 days. But a child little more than a baby, it's just unthinkable. I can't stop thinking about what she must have went through

Bleeding heart excuses continue to flood in on this thread. Dressed up as humanitarian empathy of course. But but but…..but nothing, the woman killed her child.

I doubt her (roughly) £80 per week child benefit and child tax credit would have been stretched to nightclub/ eat/ drink/ travel round the country on trains for 6 days. @Maddison12*
*

I got £500 UC per month as an undergrad with a child living at home, in addition to child benefit. What makes you think that she's only getting £80 a month to live on? Are you implying she wasn't out partying, because yes... she was.

Whilst this thread continues to run, news of another child death has broken in the media. This time in NI.

She was an attractive girl I could party on very little money when I was that age as well... especially considering it was her birthday and friends may have been buying her drinks/food. And considering what she did to her daughter I doubt she was spending her money as she should to provide for her child. Probably got her monthly payment and decided to just blow the lot

Are you implying she wasn't out partying, because yes... she was

No one is implying that. We know she was. We're wondering how it was being funded

Why are some people continuing to make excuses for her? She's scum and frankly she deserved more than nine years.

What does it matter how it was funded? The issue is that it happened.

@VestaTilley

It’s despicable. Regardless of her background she should have got a longer sentence.

What the hell was going on with Brighton and Hove Social Services? Where were they? Are Ofsted investigating? They have totally failed and that woman should never have been allowed to keep charge of her daughter.

That poor little girl; I can barely begin to imagine what she must have gone through. I can’t bear it.

They are too busy with their green, woke agenda

And yet both Baby p and Victoria Climbie were killed under the Brown /Blair years @lotsofdogshere, not to mention, the whole fiasco of Shannon Matthews "kidnapping" "the good and improving child protection system" didnt help them

Wondering how the partying was being funded?! Well she had a boyfriend for one and when I was young and attractive I didn’t worry much about paying for my drinks when I was clubbing. Funny how some people are quick to make the ridiculous leap to sex slavery but can’t understand normality for many young women when they’re out.

In my view lots of views on this thread are perfectly possible to happen at the same

• Verphy has had a very difficult adolescence and has been failed by a "care" system that, in my experience of them, don't really seem to out much care into it. She may be being used by county lines gangs and potentially exploited by her boyfriend. It's very common with looked after teenagers. They look as if they are exercising free will but really they are just doing what those controlling them want them to do.
• Verphy is a rubbish mum who is more interested in her own life and to whom her daughter is a massive inconvenience when she wants to party. And goes off either not giving a shit about what happens to her/doesn't intend to be gone so long but thinks every day she stays longer that she will have been found by staff and looked after/doesn't have the ability to think through the consequences
• SS have let down the mother and daughter very badly as their whole raison d'etre is to protect children from crap parenting and on the face of it they have failed to do this.

All those things can exist at the same time, it's not an either/or scenario.

@spittycup
Who said she was living on £80 per month? These two comments were before mine:

How on earth could she afford to party for six days?

With the money the government give her to have a child

I said roughly £80 child tax credit and child benefit per week that the government gave her TO HAVE A CHILD (overall benefit amount wasn't mentioned) wasn't enough to nightclub/ eat/ drink/ train for 6 days. I implied she was getting money from other sources. Why would I imply she wasn't partying when there was pictures of her in nightclubs? what an odd thing to say.
DON'T imply that I'm making excuses for this vile individual, there are no excuses.

Baby P. Found to have bruises and other injuries in October and removed from his mother; handed back to her just three months later; dead about seven months after that. That is just one example, there are doubtless many more.

About 62 a year - and that is the ones that are proven to be parents abuse or lack of care. No doubt other children go missing or die from something that cannot be proved.
I wish people wouldn't harp back one thing that made the headlines many years ago and extrapolate to a present day issue. Especially when dozens of other babies have died in that time that they didn't happen to hear about and /or were not interested enough in to research.

I think she would getting more than £80 /week i remember a friend getting about £90 /week about 20 years ago,as a single parent with one child, and that after housing costs had been paid somebody upthread said she would be getting around £150/week.

You can get extra money on benefits, to those who say you only get such and such amount. If I had one of my kids birthdays coming up when I was young and hadn’t saved a lot, I would apply for what I think was called a budgeting loan at the time. You had to say it was for household necessities such as a washing machine and you were basically guaranteed to get about £300, which is then taken off your benefits a small amount each month.

Plenty of ways she could have had money to party and have fun. Least of all is that she was saving money in childcare and food & milk for her baby.

Yes she would have been getting more overall. I was only stating the money the government gave her to have a child (hence me saying child benefit + child tax credit) it's all different now with UC but it's still broken into basic amount + child element.

@SuperstoreFan

Why are some people continuing to make excuses for her? She's scum and frankly she deserved more than nine years.

No one is making excuses. Surely you realise that there's a difference between excuses and trying to understand.

No one is making excuses ,there are many reasons and contributing factors though.

[quote Maddison12]@spittycup
Who said she was living on £80 per month? These two comments were before mine:

How on earth could she afford to party for six days?

With the money the government give her to have a child

I said roughly £80 child tax credit and child benefit per week that the government gave her TO HAVE A CHILD (overall benefit amount wasn't mentioned) wasn't enough to nightclub/ eat/ drink/ train for 6 days. I implied she was getting money from other sources. Why would I imply she wasn't partying when there was pictures of her in nightclubs? what an odd thing to say.
DON'T imply that I'm making excuses for this vile individual, there are no excuses.[/quote]

Sorry but who said you're making excuses? I was just replying to the comment I saw, which said something about not stretching £80/pm- implying she wasn't partying.

I agree there's no excuse. I was just clarifying she absolutely does have enough money and the fact she's a care leaver will mean she's entitled to even more.

My mistake if that wasn't you who implied that