Baby suffered brutal death at the hands of his father
Murdered one-month-old boy looked like ‘car crash victim’ after suffering 40 fractures over 10 days
A MONTH-OLD-BABY was murdered by his father after social services failed to seize early opportunities to intervene in his upbringing.
Ollie Davis, from Leicester, was pronounced dead after being found lifeless in his cot in October 2017, following a “brutal” campaign of violence lasting up to 10 days.
His father Michael Davis, 29, was yesterday jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years after being found guilty last month of murder and two counts of causing grievous bodily harm.
Jurors cleared Ollie’s mother, Kayleigh Driver, of murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent, but found her guilty of charges of causing or allowing the death of a child and serious physical injury.
A two-month-trial at Leicester Crown Court was told Ollie suffered around 40 fractures, including breaks to his skull, collar bone, both arms, 23 rib fractures and breaks to the joints of all four limbs.
Following the trial, a safeguarding review found that “early opportunities to refer and assess [the family] were not taken” by social services.
The report, compiled by Leicester Safeguarding Children Partnership Board in 2017, said the abuse four-weekold Ollie suffered was “not foreseeable”.
Officials considered that work with the family before his birth would not be necessary “despite the significant previous involvement which both parents had had with children’s social care”.
It also found that not all of the contacts and referrals made to social care services about the baby were “treated with sufficient care, thoroughness and gravity”.
After his birth, assessments by social workers were not detailed enough and sharing information was “compromised at points in this case” on “more than one occasion and by different partners and local authorities”.
“It is very clear that all the professionals who were involved with [baby Ollie] and his family worked to help his parents to care for him and to keep him safe,” the board said, but “more could have been done to explore vulnerability and risk for this family".
But the review said that the “procedural issues and systemic shortfalls” identified “would have not contributed” to Ollie’s death.
Leicester city council said 16 improvements proposed following the safeguarding review had been implemented since 2017.
Sentencing Davis to a life term yesterday, Mr Justice Cotter said the murder of Ollie had involved a “devastating” fatal spinal injury inflicted up to eight days before death.
Davis, who was living in Upper Temple Walk, Leicester, with Driver when Ollie was killed, was told he had shown “callous indifference” by opting not to summon medical help and had inflicted “brutal” injuries during four separate overnight “episodes” of violence lasting up to 10 days.
The judge, sitting at Loughborough Court, said medical experts had confirmed that Ollie suffered around 40 fractures including 23 rib fractures, a snapped neck, brain injuries and others usually seen after a “high-energy car crash”.
Driver, 31, was jailed for seven years
‘I have no doubt you became frustrated and angry, and this led to terrible violence’
after the judge accepted she did not cause any of her son’s injuries.
The judge told her: “You must have heard Ollie’s cries after he was assaulted, as you were together in the bedroom. This must have woken you up.”
After saying he was sure that Davis had caused all the injuries during four separate overnight “episodes” of violence, Mr Justice Cotter added: “At least five different mechanisms were required to cause this terrible array of injuries.
“Michael Davis, I have no doubt that during the night you became frustrated and angry, and this led to terrible violence. You assaulted him on multiple occasions. The attacks in their various forms were also brutal – in particular, the fatal neck injury.”
The prosecution of the couple was delayed by complex medical evidence and health issues suffered by Driver, who appeared for sentencing on a mobility scooter because of a chronic neurological condition.
Det Insp Mark Parish said: “The heart of this complex investigation has always been to try to get justice for Ollie. He was let down in the most horrendous ways imaginable.”