TW!!! Another child killed

[Wonderi]

Trigger warning!!

This story makes me feel so sick.

It’s obviously awful to kill a child but to carry on living like nothing has happened just adds an extra level of sadness to the situation.

I don’t understand why the mother didn’t get a life sentence too as she knew exactly what was going on and should have protected her own child.

All they had to do was give her up for adoption and she would have had a chance at a happy life but instead they chose themselves over her.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07gzr5r9eko.amp

Nothing makes me more angry than when parents (usually mothers) stay in abusive/violent relationships.

If you cannot/don’t want to leave your partner then at least remove the kids from the situation.

Of course it is not always easy to leave but I have never put a man above my child and I don’t understand what goes through these women’s minds when they know the impact it has on their kids.

Honestly I find it quite absurd sometimes.

“but he is a good daddy”

”he hit me but he’d never hurt the kids”

”when he’s not like this, things are great”

Give me peace.
I do appreciate that 99% of these women must have rock bottom self-esteem but in what world does your motherly instinct to protect your child take a backseat to “but he’s under a lot of stress and said sorry right away”?

Just ridiculous.

Totally agree. These are the top three trending right now

I completely agree.

If he is abusive/violent towards a much physically weaker woman who he apparently loves, then why do these women think he wouldn’t hurt the kids.

And if he ‘didn’t mean it’ or is under a lot of stress etc or whatever excuse they make, then surely that makes him even more dangerous around kids.

These poor kids have no choice but to stay in these situations and they end up usually paying the bigger price either physically or mentally.

It’s absolutely shocking in this day and age.

Yep. And so the cycle continues. Any child growing up in a home where daddy beats mummy (or vice versa) is never going to be likely to form normal relationships as an adult.

They then become the next generation of perpetrators and victims - unless they’re punched too hard one day and end up dead themselves.

Absolutely chilling. My blood ran cold.

I hope the pair of them rot in jail , sick twisted pair am sure they will get more than life in jail and live a life of misery no one like a child murderer.

Couldn’t agree more

Just when you think there can't be further cruelty after reading about Sara Sharif, along comes this horrendous story.

The wickedness of them laughing and joking after that poor child has died is utterly appalling.

The only consolation is the horrendous time they will have in prison at the hands of their fellow inmates.

💯 absolutely. Some people in the UK think “a village” means people who babysit and buy their kids gifts.

Sometimes I wonder who are these people who do this? But then when I think of it I’ve known at least two women who have let partners abuse their kids. I was not aware of the abuse at the time of course. It happened years before either of the women even met me and I never met the men as they’d gone by then.

For woman A it was her husband /father of the child. It began with smacking their newborn for crying. She stayed with him for several more years. Even when the girl reported him to the school for abuse she backed him up when social services interviewed them. She only left when he cheated on her!

For woman B it was her sons father. She let him kick her older child - 5 year old daughter- around so she would her a break from the violence.

They both told me this themselves, and I was shocked they would so freely admit to it with not a huge amount of remorse.

I heard from a mutual friend that Woman B also let her (white) relatives “jokingly” call her (mixed race) children racial slurs.

Safe guarding is everyone’s responsibility. So everyone who saw a tent on a beach and thought it was unusual had a responsibility to tell the police. Even if they didn’t know there was a child inside. Everyone who noticed something about the couple in those months should have reported to the police, that’s how we protect children. It’s not just the police or social services, they can’t see what the public see. Imo

We aren't because it takes money. I'm not a social worker but do occasionally have to work alongside them. When I first started my career a social worker would maybe have seven families in their books - ten would be seen as a lot. That was time to build up relationships with families and understand what their issues were and identify ways to help. It wasn't perfect - it never will be when they're dealing with really complex situations, but at least there was the opportunity to build up trust.
Now it's not unusual for one social worker to have 3 or 4 times that number of cases to work with. It's impossible to stay on top of the basics when working with that many families let alone building up a relationship with them. Until more money is thrown at social services so they can train and employ more social workers then this will continue to happen.

I also think we need a more open and honest conversation about the presence of step parents and how that and poverty increase the likelihood of events like this occurring.

I agree ohfook
I think it’s an individual problem, a wider culture problem and a public services spending problem.
Because since the unprecedented in modern times spendings cuts of austerity back in 2010 with the coalition government, they money was never put back into the system for social services. So 15 years later it’s a completely different much less safe and effective job. Wasn’t well funded to begin with. And police forces have had big cuts too. And Schools, NHS maternity services. GPs so overstretched. All the public services that should be there to help and support a girl of 19 who gets pregnant in this day and age which is young now.

I don’t know if anything can be done to stop extreme sadism and violence like these two. But it’s natural to ask what can be done in the surroundings of the child’s environment to stop it happening again. Like with poor little Sarah Sharif’s murder, the government is now talking about more follow up with deregistering families and home schooling.
In this toddler Isabella’s case there was clearly a communication problem and a resources problem between the police referrals getting the local social services to follow up quickly and effectively enough.

19 is not young I was 15 when I got pregnant with my first and gave birth at 16 didn't need all the public services you mention to stop me doing what that girl did. I'm the same age as that girl so I didn't get pregnant back in the golden age of before 2010 whenever you're talking about.

"She's young " is no excuse come on it's insulting to all the good teen mum's out there

This is what I don’t understand. East Villa, where they were living, is a unit for homeless families. I personally know a number of people who have lived there over the years. It’s a temporary accommodation while the council find something more permanent. This is a council run unit, not some anonymous flat. Social services would have been involved but more over the place is full of other families. Given the nature of the place I guess people keep themselves to themselves to a degree, but I know some people who have lived there have found help and support in the other women.

This isn’t about you justforfun123 if you read my posts. At no point have I said the mum (and he is the actual murderer; she is not charged with murder) have an excuse to kill a baby because she is young.

He has the life sentence for murder.
She is charged with lesser offences including causing or allowing the death of a child and got ten years for that.

While I completely agree that it is perfectly possible to be a great teen mum it really depends on the circumstances and the people surrounding the mum.
With supportive family it is possible but this girl clearly didn’t have that otherwise why was she living in a tent.

19 is young to be a first time mum without support.

Damn like I said I didn't have support either lived in a home especially for teen mum's for two years terrible place still no excuse all the girls I lived with there were younger than 19 and good parents. Plus that girl did have family her sister was devastated her niece died and her parents the grandparents were devastated too and the kids dad. She chose to run off an live in a tent with a man she knew a few weeks

That must have been really hard with a new baby Justforfun123 I am sorry it was terrible in that home. This is what I mean though, with more money spent maybe it didn’t have to be terrible.
Hope your family are doing well now and that all the mums you lived with are too.

It wasn’t a golden age before 2010 believe me but there was more money in the system to help families. Politicians in the 70s and 80s up to the late 90s used to regularly say disgusting things about single mothers and especially young mothers. They would sneer about ‘gymslip mums’ and crazily blame them for all sorts of things gone wrong in society. I remember it as the child of a single mum. And now we have a Deputy Prime Minister who had her first baby at 16. 🎉

One thing Labour did after they took over in 1997 was bring in Sure Start centres which did help families (like with Angela Rayner). Then that help got taken away in austerity which started with the change in government in 2010. That why I mentioned that date.

I can’t ever forget that it’s really important who is in power politically, for how single parents and young parents get treated. And that really means mothers. dads are very rarely bringing up the kids alone after a split. If mothers don’t have supportive people around them, then they have to rely on public services. what else can they do.

I’ve always disagreed with the death penalty because mistakes can be made.
every so often though a case comes along that is so clear cut that I think an exception should be made. If feeling that way makes me just as bad, so be it.

Thank you for your lovely comment xx

I’’m really sorry that I made you think I was generalising negatively about young parents. I really didn’t mean it that way. I just want to it to become normal for there to be a lot more help for all mums (and dads) in very hard situations, which being younger can be one of.