The killing of a child
A national review, involving social services, schools and the police, will begin next week into the horrific death of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, a case that has shocked the country. Boris Johnson promised that the Government would leave “no stone unturned” to establish what had gone wrong.
Arthur’s father and stepmother had subjected him to a months-long campaign of abuse last year – poisoning him with salt, denying him food and drink, and beating him repeatedly at their home in Solihull. He died from a head injury inflicted by his stepmother, Emma Tustin, in June 2020: his body showed signs of 130 injuries. Last week, Tustin was jailed for a minimum of 29 years and Arthur’s father, Thomas Hughes, was sentenced to 21 years. Judge Mark Wall, QC, said the case was “one of the most distressing” he had ever dealt with. Last weekend, tributes to Arthur, a Birmingham City fan, were paid at football matches across the country.
What the editorials said
How on earth were the “red flags” in this case missed, asked The Times. Arthur’s family circumstances were “bleak”: his biological mother is in jail for manslaughter; two of Tustin’s own four children had previously been taken into care after she attempted suicide. Yet after Arthur’s anxious relatives reported seeing bruises on his shoulders, social workers who visited the family home said that it was a “happy household”, and there were “no safeguarding concerns”. Calls to Arthur’s school also failed to lead to action, said the Daily Mail. And when his uncle sent police photos of the child’s injuries, they declined to intervene, and told him he would be breaking lockdown if he visited Arthur again.
Arthur: “red flags” were missed
Yet the response must go beyond the “knee-jerk demands and finger-pointing” which followed the similarly distressing killings of Victoria Climbié and Baby P, said The Guardian. Lord Laming, who led the inquiry into Climbié’s death, says social workers are now running “a crisis service, rather than a preventative service”. Changing that will take “detailed scrutiny” of a system which failed Arthur.