Last night, Ms Amanda Hutton, the mother of Hamzah Khan, the baby whose mummified body was found in 2011, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He had systematically been starved and suffered from extreme malnutrition. His alcoholic mother and his 8 other siblings had lived in squalid conditions in their Bradford family home. You can read it here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24401112I wrote this essay last week because Hamzah’s case severely upset me. Have a read and leave a comment if you can. I just think, many more children are going to be let down by the services. We haven’t really learnt much from Victoria Climbie’s case or have we? I cant wait to read the Serious Case Review on Hamzah.
If United Kingdom is the safest country on earth for the protection of young children, how come children are still being starved to death in 2013? Or killed by the sheer cruelty of their parents? This is the question that is echoed in the minds of many people who are familiar with recent happenings of child abuse and safeguarding failures in the UK. After all, this is Britain and not Syria or Ethiopia. A case currently in court details the tragic death of four year old Hamzah Khan. His mummified corpse was found in a cot next to his teddy bear, in a room where his mum had been sleeping in 2011. He had been dead for two years since 2009. When the body was found, his mother, Ms Hutton was covered in flies at her Bradford home. His father said of him that at four, he wore baby gro and looked like he was between 6- 8 months old. His death unfortunately tells the broken sorry of the disconnect between social services in England today.
Daniel Pulka, another four year old boy from Poland lived with his mother and step father in Coventry. He spoke no English and throughout his short life, he was the invisible party. There is no record that any of social services system spoke to him. He was beaten to death and he died from an head injury he sustained in March 2012 after a systematic campaign of emotional and physical abuse by his mother Magdelena Luczak and step father, a former soldier, Mariusz Krezolek.
Daniel was beaten, suffered a broken arm which needed hospital treatment and arrived at school one day with two black eyes. He was also kept locked in a box room at home, fed salt and starved to the point where he stole food from other pupils’ lunch boxes and raided school bins for scraps at play time. His mother and step father are currently serving a thirty year jail term for their roles in his death.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2423264/Four-year-old-Daniel-Pelka-beaten-starved-death-invisible-authorities-missed-chance-chance-save-report-finds.html In another school in Northampton, Janice, a black girl from Zimbabwe, fell down from a table, whilst playing at school and she died. Her autopsy revealed severe internal injuries. Her mother and her boyfriend were jailed for their complicity in her death.
Sadly, many more children will die in the Uk from the hands of their parents before state services work out the best way to look mend the holes in their service. This vicious cycle will continue. Why? There is a significant and re-occurring break down in the social service system that is meant to protect children. Meaning, health professionals, teaching staff, social workers and the Police have failed too many times in the past to be reliable in the future.
The Serious Case Review of Victoria Climbie’s death in 2000 brought about significant improvement in safe guarding of children in the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2062590.stm. Victoria was an 8 year old girl from Ivory Coast. Her mother had allowed her to live with her grand aunt in France because she wanted to give that child a better life. The aunt moved to the UK and subsequently moved in with her boyfriend-Carl Manning- a bus driver. This was the beginning of the abuse which led to Victoria’s death. Victoria spoke no English, just French. At the time of her death, Victoria was known to 18 different agencies and had 128 separate injuries to her body, including cigarette burns. She had been taken to the hospital from where she died of hypothermia (as she had been made to sleep in a bin liner in a bath) and extreme malnutrition. She was also sexually assaulted by Carl Manning several times, the aunt never pressed charges.
In Britain today, teachers, pastors, social workers, health professionals, Sunday school teachers and all those who deal with vulnerable people are required to undergo a criminal check from the Criminal Records Bureau. This is now called the Disclosure Barring Service (DBS). This is to safeguard children by making sure criminals don’t come near them. There is a requirement that teachers are expected to report to a designated person when they come in contact with evidence of abuse in a child. So why did Daniel’s teachers do nothing? When he was eating from the floor and scavenging the bins, why didnt that trigger a response on their part? Instead, they locked up other children’s’ lunches in lockers. It would seem that the underlying truth is that they did not care enough. It beggars belief that nobody in Daniel’s short life attempted to directly intervene. This is how cold the system here can be.
No matter how hard we try, our safe guarding procedures cannot effectively protect every child from death from the hands of their parents if parents are manipulative and aggressive as was the situation in Daniel’s case.
If the United Kingdom which is the safest place on earth for children to live failed Daniel Pelka, Hamzah Khan and many others, what hope do children below the age of 18 have in Nigeria? In Nigeria today, many children face the threat of hunger. Many children are indeed bitterly hungry every day. This is one side of it. Every day in our national dailies, we read all sorts. Step fathers having carnal knowledge of their step children, teachers defiling their wards, pastors and their sexual escapades all in the name of exorcism or deliverance. In an extreme case, a grand father defiled his 8 month old granddaughter. The Nigerian society harbours within its closed doors these evils, yet it seems not much is being done to significantly protect children from the viciousness and perverseness of adults who are meant to protect them.
So what exactly does safeguarding mean? Perhaps, it is just another buzz word. But, it is not. When we talk about safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, we simply mean actions we take to promote the welfare of children and to protect them from harm. This must be regarded as every one’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with families and children has a role to play. In the United Kingdom, safe guarding of children in Education became mandatory because of the death of several child death cases including that of Victoria Climbie. Section 179 of the Education Act places a duty on local authorities (in relation to their educational functions and governing bodies) of maintained schools and further education with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children who are pupils at a school, or are students under 18 years of age attending further education institutions.
In this country, safeguarding includes child protection training for teachers every three years and every two years for the designated staff. In Nigeria, we find some teachers abusing their pupils. How can this happen? In the media, there have been stories of male teachers forcing female pupils to perform acts of oral sex on them. What we need to do to prevent this is to make all teachers, nursery staff undergo a police check. Hopefully, any record of impunity will make them unemployable. But, it is Nigeria. Police checks on teachers is still a million mile away. However, Proprietors of schools can endeavour to make the necessary checks i.e the due diligence checks before they employ particularly male teachers. References should be vigorously taken up. But let’s face it, Nigeria is such a porous society, there are no national databases of paedophiles and such. Paedophiles could easily slip through.
There is are ways around this. Head teachers can put into place simple procedures to safeguard children in their wards. First, they can warn the male teachers to leave the door open when it is just them or any child. They must warn male teachers from being with a kid alone in a room. It must not happen. All conversations must be witnessed for the safety of the teacher. No teacher should knowingly place him/herself in a compromising position. Teachers must begin to self regulate here. No teacher must require a child to wait behind after school and meet him in the toilet for whatever reason.
Secondly, head teachers must have assemblies informing children to be aware of acts that constitute paedophilia. Children (both male and female) must be taught what constitutes grooming. Grooming is when a male predator gives to a female/male child gifts like sweets, recharge cards, money, mobile phones, chocolate, promise of grade alteration for a favour from the child. Parents can help by teaching their children not to collect any gifts from teachers, uncles aunties without requisite disclosure. Children must be taught the differences between a safe touch and an inappropriate touch. Parents must create the environment for their kids to tell them anything.
Fourthly, head teachers need to spell out what actions are criminal for teachers. It is that simple. A teacher must never a touch a child for any reason. Some children require cuddle because of their age and so on, that is fine. Baring that, no teacher must ever touch a child. Beatings should be outlawed. When cuddling takes place in the toilet, or a back room somewhere, that is unacceptable. Systems must be in place to monitor the movement of teachers particularly the religious ones. We tend to think religion improves the character of paedophiles, but it doesn’t. It only make us less wary of them. The nicest teachers are usually the teachers who go to great lengths to hide what they do to kids in secret. Sometimes. A teacher must never say declare his love for any child, it is an abomination, that teacher is a paedophile. These are just some tips. If we all work together, we can curb this growing menace in our society.
Safeguarding our children involves for us all to take a part. We cannot rely solely on schools to identify abuse and report it. What if the abuse is being meted to the child by the mother or the father? The church or the mosque where the child attends may also be culpable in propagating this abuse under guise or deliverance crusades or exorcisms. What do we do then?
It still seems to me that the chances of a child dying from a parent or close family member is higher
than in any other circumstances. In the United Kingdom, 1-2 children are killed every week, in 44% of these cases, these parents were the principal suspects. Killings of children by the natural parent- committed in nearly equal proportions by mothers and fathers. 47% of mothers and 53% of fathers. It is unclear what this statistic is presently in Nigeria where orphaned children and indeed all children face incredible hardship. Children from one parent homes face even more hardship which includes but not limited to emotional abuse and in many cases domestic abuse from the mother’s new boyfriend/ partner. Abuse is also common where the father remarries. There are in excess of 110,000 convicted child sex offenders living in the UK. Each perpetrator on average abuses 100 times before they are caught. Children with disabilities are three times more likely to suffer abuse.
It is highly unlikely that a child in the UK would die at the hands of a complete stranger. Less than 8% of kids in total are killed by strangers, in Nigeria, it is hard to tell. Most children are harmed by the people who come into their homes. Male house helps, step fathers, step mothers are most likely to abuse children over the course of their childhood leaving them with low self esteem and damaged emotionally.
Child Cruelty and death arising from child abuse is an evil that we must absolve ourselves of. Every Nigerian child (Muslim and Christain) alike must be allowed/ be able to grow without the fear of harm or maltreatment. Knowing that 75% of children who are abused never say a word about their abuse to any body, we must openly work with teachers and stake holders in the community to keep out kids safe. As members of the media, we must keep talking about this till it is ingrained in our subconsciousness that every Nigerian child is worth fighting for. If Daniel, Victoria and Hamzah died in Britian, how many kids are dying undetected in Nigeria every day? How many kids are being abused daily? Who is there to help?
P.S: The baby in the picture is Hamzah Khan and his mother Amanda Hutton. The little girl is Victoria Climbie.
Tundun Adeyemo
Naked. A blog by Tundun Adeyemo 