Ellie begged not to be sent back to father who killed her Granddad says 6-year-old was ‘absolutely petrified’
THE grandfather of tragic Ellie Butler yesterday revealed how she begged not to be sent back to her violent father a year before he murdered her.
Neal Gray, 70, said the youngster was ‘absolutely petrified’ that she would be taken back to him.
The pensioner said he had a ‘premonition that Ellie would not be safe’ and suggested a senior judge condemned the six-year-old to death by handing her to her monstrous parents.
Mr Gray and his wife Linda had fostered Ellie as a baby after her father Ben Butler, 36, was jailed for violently shaking her.
Their bid to adopt the little girl was blocked by social workers who suggested they were too old.
The couple then spent their £ 80,000 life savings fighting ‘tooth and nail’ in the Family Court trying to stop their own daughter, Jennie Gray, 36, and her partner Butler getting custody.
But in 2012 the girl and her younger sibling were handed over and a year later Butler murdered Ellie in a fit of rage.
Fighting back tears yesterday, Mr Gray said his grandaughter was ‘ absolutely petrified’ of social workers and told them she ‘didn’t want to go back’.
‘She started to have night dreams where she was scared they were going to come and take her in the night,’ he said.
‘She used to hide behind the curtain, or under the duvet.’
The child, who barely knew her biological parents, was handed over to them in a Family Court ruling that sparked outrage among social workers.
Mrs Justice Hogg ruled the couple deserved a ‘happy end’ after Butler’s conviction for shaking Ellie as a baby was quashed on a legal technicality. Her decision came despite a battle by Mr Gray and council officials, who argued that Butler and Gray posed a serious danger to the children.
In a dramatic showdown, Mr Gray even warned the judge she would have ‘blood on her hands’ if she handed the children over. Mrs Justice Hogg was criticised for giving Butler a ‘get out of jail card’ that social workers, teachers and doctors said left them ‘powerless’ to intervene.
Asked yesterday by the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire why he warned the judge, Mr Gray replied: ‘I just had a premonition that Ellie would not be safe and I think Justice Hogg made a big mistake. I don’t think she followed proper procedure of the law. She did not give proper directions to social workers.’ Butler was this week convicted of murdering Ellie in her bedroom in Sutton, South London, in October 2013. Gray was convicted of child cruelty and attempting to cover up his crime. They were both jailed at the Old Bailey on Tuesday.
Clearly emotional, Mr Gray described yesterday how Ellie grew into a ‘beautiful, bubbly and gorgeous little girl’ who he had brought up as a daughter. He called for the law to be ‘ radically changed’ to drag the secretive and archaic Family Court into the 21st century.
Demanding a full independent inquiry into the court’s actions, he said Ellie had been ‘ completely and utterly’ failed. Mr Gray said: ‘The law should be radically changed and judges should be made accountable – either through a proper procedure or through the Home Secretary. They are not above the law.’ Calling for ‘less secrecy’, he added: ‘We’ve had ten murders in the last ten years of children that have gone wrong because of inadequacies of social services or the Family Court.
‘I will make it my goal for the rest of my life to fight for any child to be saved because no child deserves to go through what Ellie went through.’
He and his wife – who died of cancer, aged 69, in April – spent their life savings fighting the custody case. But Butler and Gray, neither of whom ever held down a long-term job, had their legal bill picked up by the taxpayer.