had a little time to examine the reports on the victoria climbié case on the newspaper web sites.



not one of the 'professionals' who were supposed to have cared for her have even said they're sorry for letting her be so brutally beaten and, finally, killed.



to them i say this: you are almost as heartless and uncaring as the pair of inhuman bastards who killed her. if you had the tiniest grain of decency in your bodies you'd all resign, at the very least, and find new jobs training carers to be really caring and not to be the selfish bastards that the lot of you are.



if it takes 50 years of holding enquireies into why adults have allowed child after child to be murdered by their carers, the best thing we can do is tear down the who child protection edifice and start again.

• a comprehensive list of working practices should be made;


• penalties for failure to follow those practices should be harsh;


• everyone working in child welfare should be sacked, with no exceptions for age, race, sex, seniority, rank;


• new staff should be recruited to every single position. prior holders of a post will not be favoured above new applicants;


• recruitment interviewing and decision-making should be carried-out by people who do not know personally or by reputation any of those they are recruiting. any hint of malfeasance in this procedure should be met with instant dismissal of the recruiter;


• all holders of such posts will have it made absolutely clear to them that priority one is child safety, not some stupid woolly-minded concept of keeping families together or not wanting to upset the adults. we're talking about situations in which children get hurt or killed - no-one else's feelings matter at all;

none of this will bring poor little victoria back nor reduce the appalling, inhuman, brutal suffering she endured. it may help to stop it happening to another child.



to victoria's parents, berthe and francis climbié, i offer my condolances and sorrow that this could happen in her adopted country - my country.



to victoria's killers, marie therese kouao and carl manning, i offer the profound hope that you both languish in prison for the rest of your days, you pair of bastards, and that whatever gods you believe in choose some truly exquisite way of torturing you for eternity, you scum.