How did I have a daughter so evil she let her partner kill my grandchild?
By Rebecca Hardy
AWEEk ago last Thursday, Neal Gray picked up a photograph of his late wife, Linda, from the sitting room mantelpiece, as he’s done every morning since her death four months ago. He told her: ‘I’m going to see Miss Lynch today. She’s a nice lady. I think she’s going to make things right. You look after Ellie and tell her we haven’t stopped fighting for her. I miss you both very much.’
Then Neal, 71, put on his jacket, collected his walking stick and left his home in Wallington, Surrey, for a hearing at Croydon Coroner’s Court.
Miss Lynch, the South-East London Coroner, listened to an hour of submissions from a barrister and two solicitors, each of whom is working pro bono to see justice finally done for Neal’s granddaughter, Ellie.
It is up to Miss Lynch to decide whether to reopen the inquest into Ellie Butler’s death and thus force the local authority and courts — along with a private team of social workers appointed to the case by Mrs Justice Hogg — to answer for their actions. Or rather, their abject lack of action.
Six-year-old Ellie was battered to death in October 2013 in one of the most atrocious cases of domestic violence doctors had ever seen. Two months ago, her father Ben, 36, was jailed for 23 years for murdering Ellie in a brutal fit of rage. Her mother Jennie Gray — Neal’s youngest child — was convicted of child cruelty, having admitted perverting the course of justice. She was sentenced to three-and-a-half years. But for Neal and his beloved Ellie, justice has not been done.
Time and again, Neal and his wife, Linda, warned that Butler — who was jailed for causing a six-week-old Ellie grievous bodily harm, but cleared on appeal — was an evil, abusive man.
In a further, hideous twist, while the elderly couple spent their life savings of £79,000 trying to retain custody of the granddaughter they had raised since she was five months old, last week the Mail revealed that Butler was handed a staggering £2 million of legal aid to fund a Rolls-Royce team of lawyers and barristers to defend his already tainted name. The discovery, says Neal, was ‘unbelievable’.
‘We were willing to do anything to get her back,’ he says. ‘We fought tooth and nail. But it wasn’t an even playing field — we ran out of money and ended up not being represented. It makes me very angry.’
Emotions in the Gray household have been running high since November 9, 2012, when they were forced to say a tearful goodbye to their precious Ellie following an order from Mrs Justice Hogg to restore the child to her abusive parents.
Brushing aside Butler’s criminal record — which included acts of violence — Mrs Justice Hogg astonishingly concluded: ‘It is seldom I see a “happy ending” in public law proceedings. It is a joy for me to oversee the return of a child to her parents.’
Within a year of returning to her parents, Ellie was dead.
‘We saw her four times after she was taken from us,’ says Neal. ‘The second time, in May, we were allowed to meet her at a pub.
‘She tried to give us hugs, but the mother [such is Neal’s loathing for his daughter, Jennie, that he cannot bring himself to call her by name] was watching us all the time.
‘Ellie was unrecognisable. She had bruises here and here.’ He points to his eye and cheek.
‘She’d lost weight and her hair was falling out. She looked bedraggled. She just wanted to cuddle us. We told her we loved her and she said to my wife: “Can I come home, Nanna?” The mother got angry. She said: “That’s it. We’ve got to go now.” I said to the father: “How come she’s got all these bruises?” He started shouting and swearing, threatening to take me outside and give me a good hiding.
‘We drove home, worried sick about her. I phoned the private social services and emailed them repeatedly, but they blanked us. When I called the local authority, they said it was out of their hands.’
Neal’s eyes are haunted. ‘Why wasn’t anyone keeping an eye out for her? When Butler was tried for shaken baby [Butler’s 2008 hearing for GBH], a top forensic psychiatrist assessed the parents. He said: “These two people should never have been left unsupervised with a baby. They’re unstable.”
‘We mentioned this to Mrs Justice Hogg, but she said: “That’s all in the past. It means nothing.” Butler completely hoodwinked her.
‘Evil, that’s what he is. Pure evil. And as for the mother . . .’
The sentence ends in another weary shake of the head.
Today, Neal says he no longer has a younger daughter. Jennie, 36, is as good as dead to him. As she was to her mother Linda, too.
The last wish of Linda Gray, who died on April 19 on the opening day of the trial, was that the youngest of her three children should not know she was dying of cancer.
Nor was Jennie welcome at her funeral. Linda was cremated the following week and her ashes were scattered in nearby Beddington Park where, two years earlier, they had sprinkled Ellie’s ashes.
‘Ellie loved going there with her dog, Jess,’ says Neal. ‘She liked to go round the lake on her scooter and, when she got a bit older, her bike. I knew Lin wanted to be scattered with her. She loved that little girl to bits. We both did.
‘Lin was diagnosed with cancer of the gall bladder, which went to her liver, two months after we’d lost Ellie. To this day, I believe that if she hadn’t been through all that stress and strain, she’d still be alive.
‘We were married for 45 years and I knew her for 51 years. She was the most beautiful, generous person.’
Neal and Linda also had a son, Jamie, 41, an electrical engineer, and daughter Julie, 40, an archaeologist. Neal says: ‘They never gave us a day’s trouble. They went to university and have professional jobs.
‘Lin and I soul-searched for years. Even in the last days, my wife was saying: “Where has it gone wrong? Where have we gone wrong? How have we produced a child who can be so evil as to stand by and see her partner kill her own child?”
‘I’ve asked the vicar, the doctor, the lady I had counselling with when Lin was dying. I said: “Is it me? Is it my wife?” She said: “It’s not you.”
‘They were all brought up the same, all given the same. We were as proud as punch of them. But somewhere, Jennie took the wrong road and mixed with the wrong crowd.’
Jennie was 26 when she met Butler, a former car salesman with a lengthy criminal record, at a nightclub in Sutton, Surrey.
Divorced following a disastrous, short-lived marriage, she fell pregnant within weeks of meeting Butler and decided to keep the baby.
Neal didn’t meet Butler until Ellie was six weeks old and had been admitted to hospital with injuries that suggested she may have been violently shaken. He took a dislike to Butler at first sight.
When Butler was arrested and Ellie taken into care, Neal and Linda applied to be her temporary foster parents and were awarded special guardianship in August 2008.
They doted on their granddaughter. Neal has hundreds of photographs that chart those precious years: a carefree, smiling Ellie proudly showing off the carrots she had grown in her grandparents’ garden or the cakes she baked with Linda.
He wipes his eyes: ‘She was such a loving, beautiful girl.’
Butler was convicted of causing Ellie grievous bodily harm in March 2009 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Ellie had suffered a brain injury, bleeding on the brain and bleeding in the eyes.
But, after seven months, Butler was released on bail pending a review of the evidence. The following June, he walked free from the Court of Appeal after three judges ruled his conviction was unsafe.
However, social workers for the local authority still considered Butler and Jennie unfit to care for Ellie and encouraged her grandparents to apply for adoption.
Revelling in his status as a wronged father unjustly treated by a corrupt system, Butler went to war with the local authority.
In May 2011, the High Court granted the parents application for a ‘re-hearing of the facts’.
‘That’s when the worst part of our lives, other than losing Ellie, began,’ says Neal. ‘Justice Hogg came on the scene, then a new guardian ad litum (in a lawsuit when a child is involved) for Ellie was appointed called Carol Vicarage.
‘She said she didn’t think Lin and I
I asked her dad: ‘How has she got all those bruises? ‘One day you may have blood on your hands’
were the sort of people who should have been special guardians. She said we were too old and hadn’t got experience with children. She said she thought the parents should have had the child from day one.’
Worse was to come in July 2012, when Mrs Justice Hogg removed the local authority social workers from the case, on the grounds they were prejudiced against Butler, and appointed a private consultancy called Services for Children to assess the parents’ suitability to have Ellie back.
The service, run by Catherine Harris and Stephen Atherton, charges £50 an hour and £75 at weekends, plus mileage charges.
‘We were scrutinised by these people and kept having to go to court,’ says Neal, who was funding his legal costs while, unbeknown to him, Butler was being funded to the tune of £2 million in Legal Aid.
‘We were accused of not taking Ellie out, but my son and daughter took her to Alton Towers, Waterworld, Peppa Pig World, Chessington, Legoland — places where my wife and I, being that much older, couldn’t have given her the fun that her uncle and aunt could. We went to the New Forest with her three or four years running, and to Swanage in a caravan. She loved it there.
‘They used to come round to monitor us with Ellie. They tried to say we had to obey what they wanted to do — like taking Ellie to see her parents, which wasn’t in the court order — otherwise they’d have us for contempt of court.
‘They’d go to the school to try to talk to her. They said: “It would be better, Ellie, if you go back to live with your mummy and daddy.”
‘Ellie told these people she didn’t want to live with her mummy and daddy. She wanted to stay with her nana and granddad “for a million, million years”.’
By then, Neal and Linda’s savings had run out. They could no longer afford solicitors and Mrs Justice Hogg would not allow Neal to represent himself. However, on the final day of the hearing, on October 12, Neal’s barrister offered to represent him for free.
‘They put me in the witness box and their [Butler and Jennie’s] QC said: “You don’t like your daughter and Mr Butler, do you?”
‘I said: “I hate them both for what they did to my granddaughter when she was a shaken baby.”
‘Justice Hogg intervened: “Well, Mr Gray, they’ve been exonerated. It was a miscarriage of justice. We’re sending Ellie back on November 9. Have you got anything to say?’
‘I said: “Yes, Justice Hogg.” I pointed my finger at her, looked her in the eye and said: “I hope you and all the professionals in this room have a conscience because one day you may have blood on your hands with regards to my granddaughter Ellie.” And, of course, it’s come true.’ For three months, the private social workers kept an eye on the Butler family, but in March 2013 the case was signed off and all support was removed. In addition was an order from Justice Hogg exonerating Butler and Jennie of any blame for Ellie’s injuries.
Crucially, this gave Butler permission to serve a copy of the order on any children’s department, local education authority or school, NHS trust or the police. In short, Butler had immunity to act with Ellie as he wished.
The last time Neal and Linda saw Ellie was with her mother on October 27, 2013.
‘She was very quiet, withdrawn. Her eyes were sunk in a bit,’ says Neal. ‘She looked as if she’d been dragged through a hedgerow — odd clothes, odd shoes, odd socks. She had face paint on.
‘I said: “Can I take some photos?” The mother said: “I don’t care any more.” ’
Later, those photographs were given to the police who, thanks to digital technology, were able to identify appalling bruises beneath the face paint. It transpired Ellie also had a broken collarbone.
‘The next day we were writing her a letter saying how nice it was to see her when there was a bang on the door,’ says Neal.
‘A police lady was standing there. She said: “I’ve got some bad news.” Linn jumped up. She said: “It’s not Ellie, is it?” The lady said, “Yes, I’m afraid Ellie’s dead.”
‘Two months later, Lin was diagnosed with cancer.’ Neal takes a deep breath.
‘That’s why, nine days ago, I went to the coroner’s court. I told Miss Lynch I want a public inquiry into Justice Hogg’s actions and those of the private agency social workers.
‘If they’d listened to us, Ellie would be out there now with her friends, playing on her trampoline.’
But, yet again, in an abominable mockery of British justice, Butler is considering an appeal.
Should his taxpayer-funded lawyers decide to push ahead, the nice Miss Lynch will not be able to ‘make things right’ for Ellie or her grandparents any time soon.
As sickening as it seems, the nightmare is far from over.