Social services and police have been condemned for failing to stop a violent
father who went on to murder his 11-week-old baby boy.
Courtney Bryan was well known to the authorities in Nottingham where he was
involved in four families in which young children were seriously injured.
But a review of his case revealed there was a disastrous failure by social
workers, police and health staff to communicate with each other.
Police were accused of making slow and inadequate inquiries into his attacks on
two babies while social workers under-estimated the overall threat he posed.
Had he been charged and punished for the Nottingham attacks, the authorities
would have been legally obliged to track where he was living and the murder 35
miles away in Sheffield of his son Amaraye last year may have been prevented.
In fact, he was only charged for the earlier offences after he murdered Amaraye
- a delay of seven years.
The case is the latest to reveal agency failings and follows the death, after
months of abuse, of Baby P in Haringey, North London.
The serious case review, conducted by Sheffield and Nottingham's Safeguarding
Children Boards, which referred to Bryan as Adult A, said: 'There was no
coordinated analysis of the risks posed by Adult A and no strategic plans to
address those risks.
'The significant information that Adult A posed a danger to children existed but
was not recognised or utilised. In particular, the investigations of several of
the injuries were not completed quickly enough to charge him at the time.
'The links across the four Nottingham families were not pursued with sufficient
rigour. The cumulative picture was never collated or acted upon in a
co-ordinated way.'
Five children from three of Bryan's Nottingham families were on the child
protection register, the report revealed.
Serial abuser: Courtney Bryan
Police and social services only knew about Amaraye after his death. Bryan, 29,
was jailed for life at Sheffield Crown Court in July and told he would serve a
minimum of 20 years.
The court heard he was staying with his girlfriend at her parents' home in
Sheffield in May last year when Amaraye was killed.
He lost his temper after being woken by his crying son and shook him violently.
He squeezed his ribs until they broke and hurled him across a room and into a
wall. The boy received fatal brain injuries.
As well as the murder, he was convicted of cruelty towards two other babies -
offences which dated back to 1999 and 2000.
Bryan had an affair with the mother of a four-month-old boy referred to in court
as Child T when she was 16 and he was 20.
Bryan was left to look after the boy and the next day the mother found bruising
around his eyes and nose. Doctors found he had bleeding around the brain and a
broken left leg. The boy later made a complete recovery.
The other four-month-old boy, referred to as Child M, was not Bryan's son.
Bryan, then 21, was seeing his 18-year-old mother, also from Nottingham.
After Bryan looked after her boy one night doctors found he had bleeding to the
brain and the back of the eyes. Older injuries included broken ribs and a
fractured leg. He now needs full-time care.
There was a 'very significant delay' before Bryan was interviewed by police, the
report said, and he was not charged for these offences at the time. The serious
case review detailed involvement with two other families in Nottingham. In both
cases very young children were injured.
A spokesman for Nottingham City Council insisted: 'It is not true that we had
information that could have saved Amaraye's life. We were aware of him in
Nottingham but had no reason to believe that Courtney Bryan was in any way
connected to any case in Sheffield.
'It's too easy to imagine that we have some kind of crystal ball.'
Margaret McGlade, chairman of the
Nottingham Safeguarding Children Board, said 'considerable developments' had
been made to ensure child abuse cases involving the same adult were linked.
Daily Mail
