By the time she was 25 Tracey Connelly had lived with a mother who had drink & drug problems, born to a father who had a conviction for sexually assaulting a girl. At 15 she was given the choice of being taken into care or going to a school which is variously described as a ‘special’ or a ‘boarding’ one. She left at 16 & within a year was in a relationship with a much older man whom she married at 23.
But when she was 26 Tracy’s marriage fell apart, others moved in with her & her children & soon her youngest son was dead, brutally tortured & killed.
Whatever the failings of social services in this case, they didn’t start in the few short months during which Haringey are deemed to have failed Baby P. It might not have taken much of a change in her circumstances to make her the BabyT of 1983
But then, as Gaynor Arnold has pointed out:
One reason why social workers fail some children may be this very ability to establish a rapport with difficult & abusive parents … Many of the parents we deal with are very young – it may be only a week since they were officially children themselves, yet, if they have a child of their own, that child must be the focus of our intervention
I was surprised to hear on the BBC news at midnight that “It can now be revealed” that the 2 men in the case are brothers. At least one newspaper slipped up on this one in the early days of the trial – even carried a photo of one of them & named him. I know because I saw it. I think I know which newspaper it was, but I can’t be 100% sure, so better keep quiet about it
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