NOW PUT HIM IN THE DOCK
As coroner rules Poppi was sexually assaulted in dad’s bed, mum pleads for prosecution
POPPI Worthington’s mother last night pleaded with prosecutors to reexamine her daughter’s death after an inquest ruled she had been sexually abused by her father in his bed.
It was the third court judgment to conclude that the 13-month-old had been subjected to a brutal assault hours before her death in 2012.
In 2014, Mr Justice Jackson ruled in a family hearing that Poppi had probably been assaulted by father Paul Worthington, coming to the same conclusion at appeal in 2016.
Yesterday, at the second inquest into Poppi’s death, a coroner ruled she had been sexually assaulted in her father’s bed in the hours before she died from suffocation due to an ‘unsafe sleeping environment’.
As the verdict was read out, Poppi’s mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, fled the courtroom in tears.
Senior coroner David Roberts said Worthington’s account of the morning of his daughter’s death did not ‘stand up to scrutiny’ and only the father could provide an account of ‘what happened upstairs’ at the home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
After a series of police blunders, the 49-yearold has never been charged with an offence.
Outside court yesterday, a lawyer for Poppi’s mother called on the Crown Prosecution Service to review the case – and criticised the way Worthington had used coroner’s rules to avoid answering questions at the inquest. Fiona McGhie, of Irwin Mitchell Solicitors, said: ‘The past five years have been a complete nightmare for her. She is now closer to the truth, even though that truth is devastating.’
The CPS insisted there was nothing it could do and said there were ‘no plans’ to review the case. Prosecutors previously said police errors meant there was not enough evidence to charge Worthington.
Last night Nazir Afzal, former chief crown prosecutor for the North West, was among those to call for a rethink. He said: ‘That they have said flat-out “no” does seem a premature assessment.’
John Woodcock, MP for Barrow and Furness, said: ‘We owe it to [Poppi] to campaign for a public inquiry that can expose all that is rotten in the system that has led us to this terrible day.’
The findings came after a threeweek inquest at Kendal Coroner’s Court, held before Christmas, into the toddler’s death. Giving evidence, Worthington had refused to explain how Poppi’s DNA came to be on his penis.
Yesterday he was not present in court but his sister Tracy Worthington said afterwards he felt ‘like a lamb led to the slaughter’ and was consulting his lawyers for his next move.
Poppi was a ‘fit and active’ baby living with her siblings and parents, who had an on-off relationship. But on December 12, 2012, she was rushed to hospital at 5.56am, when her father found her unresponsive lying next to him. She died just over an hour later.
Investigators failed to secure the family home and did not collect key evidence including the bed sheets Poppi was taken to hospital on and the computer on which Worthington watched pornography the night before her death. Though a pathologist warned that Poppi may have been sexually assaulted, police did not order forensic tests of samples from her body.
Worthington was not arrested until August 2013, and no charges were brought. In March 2014, he tried to win custody of Poppi’s siblings in the family division of the High Court, but Mr Justice Jackson ruled he had probably abused his daughter before her death.
He also came to the same conclusion ruling on an appeal from Worthington, who contested the medical findings in the first hearing, in January 2016.
The first inquest into Poppi’s death, which lasted just seven minutes and ruled that her death was ‘unexplained’, was quashed and Mr Roberts opened the second hearing last March.
Yesterday, more than five years after Poppi’s death, the inquest concluded with the finding that – on the balance of probabilities – she had been sexually assaulted before her death by her father.
The coroner said there had been significant police failings but he could not speculate on what the evidence that had not been collected might reveal. Mr Roberts said a conclusion of unlawful killing was not available to him as he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Poppi died from an act of murder or manslaughter.
Although he ruled she was brutally assaulted, he found that was not the cause of death. He said the cause of death was asphyxia, with Poppi’s ability to breathe compromised when Worthington took her from her cot and put her next to him in his double bed.
‘Expose all that is rotten’