25 years on from Victoria Climbie’s murder, why are children still dying from neglect?

When Victoria Climbie was seen by doctors and nurses in the multiple hospital trips she endured in her short life, she was sweet, bubbly and lively. But as soon as her guardians appeared, the little girl immediately went into herself; silent and frightened.

It was just one of the many signs that something was seriously wrong and should have been picked up. Instead, it cost the child her life. 25 years ago that eight-year-old Victoria died at St Mary’s Hospital, London, after months of unimaginable cruelty. Her story shocked the nation – how could any human inflict such pain and terror to a child, and how did nobody notice?.

The Home Office pathologist who examined Victoria’s body, found 128 separate injuries and scars, many of them cigarette burns – and described them as ‘the worst case of child abuse I’ve encountered’. The little girl had been violently assaulted, tortured and neglected by the people that were supposed to care for her.

Horrifyingly, Lord Laming’s 2003 inquiry into Victoria’s death listed 12 missed opportunities when various agencies could have saved her life, blaming racism, incompetence and failures of duty of care. Victoria Adjo Climbie was born in the Ivory Coast to Francis and Berthe Climbie and sent to live with her great aunt Marie-Therese Kouao in Paris ‘for a better life’ in 1999. Her aunt then took her to London after being pursued by French authorities over benefit payments.

In July 1999, Kouao and Victoria, who spoke no English, moved into the home of Carl Manning – Kouao’s boyfriend – in Tottenham, north London. There, the couple called the little girl  ‘Anna’. *Warning: contains distressing and graphic content*.

Within days, Manning started abusing Victoria and she was taken to hospital that same month with bruising on her feet, arms, legs, buttocks and infected bruises on her fingers. The daughter of her childminder who looked after Victoria during the day (she never went to school in the UK)  suspected that her injuries were inflicted, but medical staff accepted Kouao’s story that Victoria had caused the wounds herself by scratching at scabies sores.

That same month the little girl was seen in casualty again with scalding to her head and face. Doctors immediately suspected that the injuries had been deliberately inflicted but Kouao insisted she poured hot water over Victoria to try and stop her scratching her scalp and that the child caused other injuries with utensils.

A nurse on duty remembered how Victoria had no possessions, only the clothes she arrived in. She told the inquiry into her death: ‘Some of the staff had brought in dresses and presents for Victoria. One of the nurses had given her a white dress and Victoria found some pink wellingtons which she used to wear with it. I remember Victoria dressed like this, twirling up and down the ward. She was a very friendly and happy child.’.

On 24 February 2000, Victoria was again rushed to North Middlesex Hospital, this time suffering from a combination of malnutrition and hypothermia. She was bruised, deformed and malnourished. Her temperature was so low it could not be recorded on the hospital’s standard thermometer.

The little girl was transferred to the intensive care ward at St Mary’s Hospital in west London but tragically died the following day. In the space of just a few months, Victoria had been transformed from a healthy, lively, and happy little girl, into a wretched and broken wreck.

She had spent much of her last days living and sleeping in a bath in an unheated bathroom, bound hand and foot inside a bin bag, in her own urine and faeces. Towards the end of her short life, Victoria was stooped like an old lady and could walk only with great difficulty according to eye witnesses at her church.

Police, doctors, social workers all had contact with her while she was being abused. Yet she was never take out of her Kouao’s care. On 12 January 2001, her great-aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, and Carl John Manning were convicted of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Just this month, Manning was granted a fresh appeal for freedom – his third in total – after he was told he must serve a minimum of 21 years behind bars.

During the trial, it emerged that Kouao would strike Victoria on a daily basis with a shoe, a coat hanger and a wooden cooking spoon and would smash her toes with a hammer or hit her with a bicycle chain. Victoria’s blood was also found on Manning’s football boots.

The horror of what happened to the little girl during her last months was outlined by Neil Garnham QC, who told the public inquiry into her death: ‘The food would be cold and would be given to her on a piece of plastic while she was tied up in the bath. She would eat it like a dog, pushing her face to the plate…To say that Kouao and Manning treated Victoria like a dog would be wholly unfair; she was treated worse than a dog.’.

Lord Laming, the report’s author wrote: ‘Perhaps the most painful of all the distressing events of Victoria’s short life in this country is that even towards the end, she might have been saved… She died a slow, lonely death – abandoned, unheard and unnoticed.’.