Victoria Climbie

Niall Ashton

Victoria Climbie died at 3.15pm on February 25th 2000. She died age 8 after severe physical abuse. Born on November 2nd 1991 in the Ivory Coast. When Victoria was seven she was sent to live in Paris with her aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao. They both flee France after false benefit claims. They arrive in London using false passport and claiming Victoria is called Anna. Kouao gets a job as hospital cleaner and they live in a hostel. Kouao meets Carl Manning on a bus and she moves into Carls flat in Tottenham by July. Within days Victoria suffers abuse at the hands of Manning. July 14th 1999 Victoria visits Central Middlesex hospital the daughter of the childminder suspects her of non-accidental injuries. Doctor believes Kouao’s story that Victoria has been scratching scabies sores. Doctors alert social services as a precaution. Haringey social worker, Lisa Arthurworrey and PC Karen Jones are assigned to case. They cancel home visit after hearing scabies story. July 24th, back at the hospital with scalding to her head and face. Doctors immediately suspects it’s deliberate but Kouao tell Pc Jones and Arthurworrey that she did but to stop her itching the scabies sores. August 6th Victoria is discharged – authorities believe Kouao’s excuses and Victoria returns home with Kouao and Manning. October-January 2000 Manning forces Victoria to sleep in a bin liner in the bath every night. November 1999, Kouao tells police that Manning has sexually abused Victoria. Next day allegations are withdrawn. PC Jones is asked to investigate further but Kouao has no reply to letter. February 24th 2000, Victoria rushed to hospital suffering from malnutrition and hypothermia. Transferred to St Mary’s hospital and admitted in to intensive care. Next day she is declared dead. Dr Nathaniel Carey, the home office pathologist finds 128 separate injuries and scars, many are cigarette burns. Described as “the worst case of child abuse I’ve ever encountered”. Manning and Kouao charged with murder. Year later both found guilty they get life in prison. Judge Richard Hawkins said Victoria had “endured was truly unimaginable. She died at both your hands, a lonely drawn out death”. Prosecution also said the child protection authorities were also to blame. There were at least 12 times they could have intervened.

This story supports the Conventional approach because they say that children are vulnerable and that the best family is the nuclear and that working mum and single parent families lead to delinquent children. Victoria was vulnerable and she died because of the physical abuse she was given by Kouao and especially Manning. Their family wasn’t nuclear because she spent time in between leaving her real parents and Kouao meeting Manning as a single parent family. Also Kouao was working which is against the conventional approach because it leads to delinquent children. Conventional believers could say that the physical abuse was ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

The 2004 children act was called every child matters. It stated that the social services had to make sure every child:

Is healthy.
They stay safe.
They enjoy and achieve through learning.
They make a positive contribution to society.
They achieve economic well-being.

This may have helped because there services would have noted that earlier she wasn’t in school. They would have had to keep her safe and healthy as well so should never have been physical abused.

Victoria’s case shows that we cannot make a generalisation about every child and their childhood because not every child is treated like that. A lot of children have had a good childhood but a lot haven’t either. Some children are brought up by good parents who have good parental skills and the children will probably do that for their children. However if the child had a bad childhood and was abused they are more likely to do it to any of their children they may have.

The government agencies like child protection can fail to protect children like Victoria because no one can track every child. The government agencies can’t watch every child at the same time so a lot of children can be missed. Also human error comes in and if someone makes a wrong judgement then it could have repercussions like the death of a child.

A recent case of this would be Vivian Gamor. She was acting increasingly strange towards her children before then she killed them attacked 10-year-old Antoine with a hammer and suffocated daughter Kenniece, three, with cling film in January last year. Social services knew Vivian had schizophrenia but did not work close enough to try and tackle the problem.

Another would be in Bristol a baby Rio in July 21st 2007 a 14 month old baby died from having an overdose from his crack addicted mothers drugs. The child was in care of his prostitute mother why his dad was out getting more drugs. His mother had a morphine and methadone intoxication so was clearly unfit to care for the baby. His farther was sentenced to manslaughter and got 5 years.

Victoria Climbie

This is a preview of the whole essay

Document Details

Related Essays