A high Court judge has hit out at the council responsible for the Baby P scandal for preventing seven abused siblings from seeing each other after their parents were sent to prison.
Mr Justice Holman said he felt a “sense of the utmost despair” after it emerged social workers at Haringey council organised a “goodbye meeting” last year. In doing so they ignored a legal order made in 2012 to allow the brothers and sisters to stay in contact.
The judge added: “It simply shouldn’t have happened that way. It was a frankly catastrophic situation.
“This local authority seems to have got itself in a position whereby it was possible to act and then did act in direct breach of the order of the court which had originally been made with reasons with which the local authority agreed.
“There seems to have been a great lack of communication between a range of different professionals so that in the end no one knew what had been directed by whom and when and why.”
Joseph and Gloria Musa, the children’s parents, were jailed for seven years for beating them with brooms, vacuum cleaners and wire. The Nigerian couple claimed six of the children were possessed by evil spirits. The eldest five are in foster homes and the youngest two are to be placed together with an adoptive family.
The judge said yesterday the council’s failings “almost beggar belief” and accused it of a “flagrant breach” of the order that ensured the five older children, aged 13 to six, would remain in touch with their siblings, aged two and three.
He also demanded the council write to the children explaining what had happened so they would be aware of the situation when they were older.
“It may now be too late to unscramble the egg on the issue of direct contact and the local authority has most probably created a fait accompli,” he concluded. But I can only say I part from this with a sense of the utmost despair. A terrible thing has happened.”
Elaine Redding, Haringey’s assistant director of children services, said “aspects” of the team’s compliance with court orders had fallen “unacceptably short of good practice”.
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Haringey council was heavily criticised for its handling of the cases of Baby P — 17-month-old Peter Connelly — who died in 2007 and eight-year-old Victoria Climbié, who died in 2000.
