The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
The little boy who starved to death, cold and uncomforted
Questions must be asked about why Bronson Battersby wasn’t found until it was too late.
Atoddler gazes up guilelessly into the camera lens. Big brown eyes beneath a long fringe, a Pudsey pyjama top, bare legs. Cute as a button. His name is Bronson Battersby.
Two years of age. Big enough for a Teletubbies birthday cake. Not big enough to reach the door of the fridge.
Bronson is the little boy who starved to death in his Skegness home after his 60-year-old father, Kenneth, died from a heart attack sometime around New Year.
Trapped and helpless, Bronson couldn’t raise the alarm, couldn’t fend for himself. The fridge was full of Christmas leftovers. There were snacks in a high cupboard. Yet Bronson perished alone, in the dark.
His emaciated body was found, curled up behind his father’s corpse when the authorities finally gained access to the dingy basement where he lived with his father.
Anyone who has ever spent time with small children negotiating their terrible twos will find it is impossible not to reel in horror as images, at once familiar yet obscenely distorted, rise unbidden; a bewildered toddler’s screaming frustration, his weepy terror, his exhausted despair.
“It is haunting me. I will never forgive myself for not being there,” his distraught mother, Sarah Piesse,
43, told reporters. “When I picture Bronson alone in that flat it makes me feel like a failure, cruel, selfish. That little boy was sitting there wanting a drink, wanting something to eat. It breaks my heart even more.”
Bronson Battersby died cold and uncomforted. No adult arms scooped him up to make things better. His father was dead, his mother was not in regular touch. The family was “known to social services” as the ominous phrase goes.
He was the youngest child of Kenneth and his on-off partner Sarah who also shared a seven-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter, who live with their mother. She is a mother of 10 in total, although very sadly another of her sons, Travis, died some years ago.
It was decided that Bronson would live with his father six months ago, when Sarah moved into a new flat. It featured a high staircase without a bannister which she felt was unsuitable for a toddler.
Separating such young siblings seems like an unusual move, but Sarah explained: “Kenny and Bronson always had a bond, so it made sense for Bronson to stay with him. Social services were involved, so I knew they were around and they were checking in.” She last saw her youngest child alive in November when she made spaghetti bolognese and he happily played with his brother and sister.
But after a row with Kenneth, she didn’t have any contact over Christmas. “I backed off a bit and gave him space,” she says. “I will never stop regretting that now.”
Father and son were last seen alive by a neighbour on Boxing Day. Their social worker called at the property for a scheduled visit on January 2 and, after getting no response at the door, spoke to her manager and the police.
She then returned on January 4 when she again informed the police. On January 9 she called by again. After receiving no reply on this third attempt, she alerted the landlady and gained entry to the property. It is estimated that Kenneth died on or after December 29.
Lincolnshire Police yesterday revealed that burglars had broken into the flat between January 10 and January 12. Mr Battersby’s landlady, Maria Clifton-Plaice, said she believed the thieves had taken his painkillers and wallet. “It makes you despair, really. How low can people stoop?” she said.
“If only Bronson was a little bit taller, then he would have survived. The fridge would have been packed with Christmas leftovers,” said Sarah.
“I want to know, why did they not gain access on the first visit? That would have saved Bronson.”
By contrast, Kenneth’s adult daughter, from a previous relationship, is reluctant to point the finger at the authorities. “I don’t place any blame at all on them,” Melanie Battersby, 37, told the BBC. “I believe that social services and the police did what they could within the powers that they had and the information that they were given… it must be devastating for them to have to work in that profession, to have to deal with tragedies like this.”
Nonetheless, Lincolnshire County Council is already engaged in a “rapid review” of the case, while the police watchdog is investigating “any missed opportunities” that could have altered the harrowing outcome.
“Opportunities” is a jarring, illchosen word to use in the context of the agonising death of a little boy.
But stiffly official management-speak is as inevitable as the bunches of flowers left by the door of the dismal flat in Prince Alfred Avenue, Skegness, that Bronson shared with his father.
It’s the modern way to mark untimely deaths in uniquely tragic circumstances such as these. But it would be wrong to dismiss what happened as an absolute anomaly. There is nothing unique about the fact Kenneth, who suffered from poor health and had survived a heart attack a few months previously, was struggling as a single parent and had reached out to social services asking for help.
Nor is there anything unique about the revelation that Bronson was classed as “vulnerable” by social workers or that an upstairs neighbour was so concerned about Kenneth’s shouting and Bronson’s crying that she raised the alarm in December.
“Ken tried to be a good dad but he was really struggling,” said Amanda Tovey, who lives in the flat above. “Social services were aware he wasn’t coping very well but did very little, if anything to help.” Her impression of Bronson was that he was loved and generally well looked after but craved affection and cuddles, something that irritated Kenneth, whom she knew drank heavily.
“It was mainly at night when he started having a go at the poor lad,” she recalled. “I could hear it all from my flat above but I never felt I was in a position to confront him. I have no kids myself so cannot tell someone else how to parent a child. But I was concerned and shortly before Christmas contacted the NSPCC because I could hear the boy crying all night. I left a message but they never got back to me.”
The NSPCC has since confirmed it received and logged the call before passing on Tovey’s concerns to “the appropriate authorities”. We can only hope that a rapid review will take place into this incident along with the chain of other events that led ultimately to Bronson’s death.
The background to all this is depressingly commonplace; a toxic mixture of acrimonious family breakdown, alcohol misuse, poverty and the acquired helplessness of those whose ramshackle lives and atomised communities lead them to rely on the state.
The faith Bronson’s mother placed in social services to “check in” on her little boy was woefully misplaced. What led her to think it would be enough, that social workers were an acceptable substitute for family and friends?
It is not enough to ask whether procedures were followed. The urgent question must be this; are the procedures fit for purpose? When a toddler dies of dehydration and hunger in 21st century Britain because he fell through holes in the social services net, the whole system must be closely examined in its entirety.
It is impossible to know for sure what happened inside that basement during Bronson’s unspeakably bleak final days. But when we piece together events beyond those four walls, it becomes painfully clear that this little child, who died before he had a chance to start living, was monumentally failed by the adults around him.
‘If only Bronson was a little bit taller, he would have survived – the fridge was packed’