Social services blunders allowed
sadistic father to murder his 54-day-old baby girl
Social services blunders allowed sadistic father to murder his 54-day-old baby
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By CHRISTIAN GYSIN - More by this author » Last updated at 07:46am on 14th
February 2008
Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk
A baby girl murdered by her sadistic father could have survived if health and
social workers had taken action over signs of ill-treatment, a damning report
said yesterday.
Jessica Randall was just 54 days old when she died.
Her brief life was dominated by systematic and horrific abuse at the hands of
her 33-year-old father Andrew, who was jailed for her murder last year.
Yesterday's report found that both social workers and hospital staff failed to
classify her as a child "at risk", even though concerns over her safety were
raised a number of times.
Jessica was seen on ten separate occasions by up to 30 healthcare
professionals, including doctors, health visitors and nurses.
Staff at her local hospital noticed her "crying and twitching" unnaturally.
She had scratches on her cheek, nose and mouth and suffered from vomiting and
breathing difficulties.
Her parents missed two GP appointments without explanation but this was not
followed up.
There was also concern about the mental health of her mother, a schizophrenic,
and a lack of bonding between the baby and her parents.
But the first the police knew of the case was when they were called to
Jessica's home in the early hours of November 22, 2005, and found her dead.
A post-mortem discovered skull fracture, with bruising and bleeding on the
brain, and nine broken ribs.
She was also underweight and undernourished.
Some of her injuries were at least a week old.
Her father admitted sexually abusing Jessica, forcing his fingers down her
throat to make her choke and stamping on her chest. She died after he threw
her against the hard armrest of a sofa at the family's flat in Kettering,
Northamptonshire.
Randall is now serving a life sentence – the judge said he should never be
released.
Jessica's mother Sharon Park, now 30, did not face charges.
The report from the Local Safeguarding Children Board for Northamptonshire –
made up of medical officers, council workers and police – said: "At no stage
was Jessica Randall recognised as a child at risk and in need of protection.
Consequently, those procedures which were designed to protect her were never
activated.
"In recognising that opportunities had been missed to identify signs of abuse
we must conclude the outcome may have been different had these signs been
acted on, as this would have created opportunities for assessment and
involvement of other agencies by activating protective procedures."
Denise McMahon, director of nursing and midwifery at Kettering General
Hospital, described Jessica's death as a "collective failure".
The hospital's medical director, Dr Brendan O'Malley, admitted failures in the
system for assessing children who may have been abused.
But he said tests to establish whether Jessica had been injured by violent
shaking had come back negative.
Dr O'Malley said: "When Jessica was first presented to us, she was twitching
and the doctor felt she was probably fitting.
"He felt there were several possibilities for the diagnosis behind this and he
set a range of investigations in motion.
"He organised a chest X-ray and an MRI scan, but they came back negative.
"He also did a specialist examination for haemorrhaging at the back of her
eyes, but this also came back negative."
Dr O'Malley admitted there was no "extensive account" in the doctor's notes of
why he thought there was the possibility of abuse.
He added: "The system was there, but the problem was that it had not been
triggered.
"The lesson that we have learnt is that we need to raise people's awareness of
what has to trigger off referral to making a child at risk."
Staff at the hospital are undergoing retraining.
The board's report pointed out that Randall did not have a criminal record and
there was nothing in his medical records to suggest he was a danger to his
daughter.
At his trial in March last year, Randall was said to have been obsessed by
horror films since he was 12. He also fantasised about serial killers.
Jailing him for life, Judge Charles Wide told Northampton Crown Court: "I am
quite satisfied there was a sexual element inextricably bound up with the
violence.
"Even if it were not, one can only look at the aggravating features of this
case – a tiny child, abuse lasting the whole of her few weeks of life, the
murder and the culmination of continual acts of abuse, premeditated in the
sense of being daily thought about, and the most gross breach of trust one can
imagine, a father murdering a tiny, vulnerable, utterly dependent baby."
The case is the latest in a string of child tragedies, which have produced a
string of reports supposed to prevent the same thing happening again.
The most notorious case was that of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie, who died
in January 2000 after being beaten, starved and tortured by a relative and her
lover.
In July 2002, nine-month-old Perrin Barlow died of neglect at his mother's
squalid flat in Plymouth, despite repeated visits by social services.
In February last year the sadistic parents of a disabled four-year- old girl
were jailed for subjecting her to unspeakable cruelty under the noses of
social workers.
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