Child Dead Because Council Passed The Buck (From Wirral Globe)

Child Dead Because Council Passed The Buck

9:30am Wednesday 10th January 2001

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January 10, 2001 15:18: An eight-year-old girl is dead because social workers were passing the buck instead of following-up a family friend's warning, the Old Bailey heard.

Ealing's social services department was the focus of a scathing attack by the prosecutor in the trial of a couple accused of inflicting 128 injuries and sexually abusing the girl, before tying her in the bath where she contracted the hypothermia which killed her.

The council housed the child, Anna Climbie, and her adopted mother Marie Therese Kouao in a bedsit and offered them money to return to France.

Brent Council had previously been tipped-off by a family friend that the child was the victim of terrible cruelty. Tragically, this warning was not followed up.

"Social services were quite anxious to get her back to France so she was the responsibility of France rather than England," said prosecutor Linda Stern QC.

Kouao, 44, and her boyfriend Carl Manning, 28, of Somerset Gardens, Tottenham, are accused of leaving Anna tied up in the bath throughout the winter months, and of repeatedly sexually and physically abusing her. She was discovered lying in the bath in February last year and despite being rushed to hospital she later died.

Manning has admitted manslaughter and cruelty, but denies murder, while Kouao denies all three charges. The trial continues.

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