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Maria Colwell



Garage_Doors

Originally the Swankers
Jun 28, 2008
11,789
Brighton
Following the Baby P case and seeing Maria's name mentioned in another thread, it like de ja vue all over again, do we never learn.

As reminder of for those who are a lot younger and do not know her name:
Maria Lived her short life in Brighton.



Maria Colwell was just 7 years old when she died in 1973. She was beaten and starved to death by her stepfather William Kepple. She was delivered to hospital by her stepfather in a white pram which she herself had used to carry coal, she was emaciated and had suffered horrific injuries.
Police officers visiting the house where she lived discovered that the door handle had been removed from the inside of her bedroom door. It had effectively become her prison.
Maria was systematically beaten by her stepfather, and was often forced to rummage through bins to find food. Despite countless calls to social services, Maria died at the hands of William Kepple.
Her death produced a public outcry and sparked a huge public inquiry. Despite this, too many children today are suffering the same way.

Can anyone remember what sentence William Kepple received, guess he is now out of prison.:rolleyes:
 


DIFFBROOK

Really Up the Junction
Feb 3, 2005
2,266
Yorkshire
Dont know and to be honest I hope he is dead.

I used to live just down the road from her. I think she lived just off Manor Hill. When we lived in Whitehawk, we lived in Manor way.

I would have been the same age as her. I know it shocked everyone who lived around that area, and it still does for my mum to this day.

God rest Marias soul.
 


DIFFBROOK

Really Up the Junction
Feb 3, 2005
2,266
Yorkshire
Just found out that Kepple initially got life. Reduced to 8 years on appeal.

How disgusting is that. Just over 1 year for everyone of Marias pitiful existence.

You can bet your bottom dollar that those c**ts that killed Baby P will also appeal.
 




Peteinblack

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jun 3, 2004
3,583
Bath, Somerset.
Maria Colwell, Shannon Matthews, Baby P....

None of this will stop until we have the guts to prevent the underclass from having kids. They're too thick and socially dysfuntional to be even half-decent parents, but hey, we must not impinge upon their 'human rights', even though they don't give f*** about anyone else's.

My sister-in-law is a Barrister, and she told me of a case where a junkie had her baby taken off her and put in care, and so she had another kid, etc. In the end , she had 7 kids, all of which were taken of her 'cos she was a smack-head. How much has that cost us ? Why not just sterilise her?

These people are sub-human.

I've always considered myself Left-leaning politically, but these people are gonna turn me into some kind of fascist if we don't start getting tough with them.

:angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:
 




Taybha

Whalewhine
Oct 8, 2008
27,135
Uwantsumorwat
Take a childs life = protection from the general population a full medical and mental health check up wich would prob take me 3 months to get on the nhs,3 square meals a day and your own room with tv dvds ect,reform programmes use of computers,the knowledge that watever sentance you got will be probably halved when some smarmy lawyer finds a daft 16th century loophole to exploit,the list is endless,when the list should just say FRY YOU FUCKERS...Yeah i remember the maria case then the babes in the wood i could go on and on,and until the day this f***ed up society of ours stops protecting the scum that commit these vile crimes they will continue! its not rocket science ffs.
 


Kaiser_Soze

Who is Kaiser Soze??
Apr 14, 2008
1,355
if he got 8 years then did 3 at most.
Not what i call Justice.

In the 70's and 80's there werent to many cut sentences. People generally served the full term. Its only due to the introduction of reductions for guilty pleas and also prison overcrowding that has had a massive effect.
 


D

Deleted User X18H

Guest
I always cry when I see a picture of little Maria Colwell's picture or read the details of her death ....I am doing it now.

I remember that **** Kepple bought Ice Cream for his own children but not Maria , he then forced that poor malnourished girl to watch as the other (his children) enjoyed their treat. If I could kick the shit out of anyone it would be William Kepple but I hope someone already has many times.

RIP Maria.
 
Last edited:




Skaville

Well-known member
Jun 10, 2004
10,099
Queens Park
From The Observer

Why children are left to die beyond help's reach

The horrific details of Baby P's death have shocked the nation and provoked anguished debate about the way we protect vulnerable children. Here we investigate why, despite repeated promises of reform over the past 35 years, social workers and police still seem unable to intervene effectively in homes across the country where abuse wrecks young lives and sometimes causes death. Baby P, 17 months old, died in Haringey, north London, after months of abuse.

For much of last week, Britain's radio phone-in shows were dominated by a single, tragic subject: the short and brutalised life of the child who will forever be known as Baby P.

Amid the cacophony of anger, one comment stood out. The husband of a social worker spoke of how his wife often arrived home from work angry and in despair. In her case files were children who went hungry and unwashed, were sadistically treated by their parents and in many cases, she believed, sexually assaulted. When she was at her lowest, she raged that some men and women should be sterilised.

'We both know that this would be wrong, but what is the answer?' the husband asked.

Indeed. Baby P's legacy is a national debate over how we protect our children and why, in a modern educated society, do we still have mothers, fathers and carers who gratuitously inflict pain on those they have brought into the world?

Sue Berelowitz, a former social worker and the new deputy children's commissioner, is better placed than many to answer. During the Seventies, Berelowitz was at the frontline of Britain's battle against child abuse, visiting families that were straight out of nightmares.

'What I have come across is one sorry saga after another, where people have had really terrible lives and that does get played through generation upon generation,' Berelowitz said. 'I can think of families where I feel furious with the parents because of the awful things they have done to their children, but what I also know is that they have gone through stuff that I would not have wanted to go through.'

Inevitably, the immediate focus has been on the professionals who came into contact with the blue-eyed, blond, 17-month-old boy in the months leading up to his death. In the last weeks of P's life there were countless missed opportunities to save him. Haringey council's serious case review stated P's mother 'presented her son to health professionals eight times, and in his last week, he was seen by a social worker and a paediatrician. None of those professionals identified major concerns about the child's health and well-being.'

There were earlier clues. In April 2007, four months before his death, P was examined in hospital for bruises and scratches to his face, head and body. The following June, he underwent a medical examination which concluded that some bruising was due to abuse. The trial heard how the mother deceived social services into thinking the baby was not at risk. On one occasion, she smeared chocolate on his face to hide his bruises. It was a sophisticated web of deception, made all the more convincing by her apparent willingness to allow social services through the door. Nevertheless, the warning signs were there.

Last week, the mother and her boyfriend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were found guilty, with lodger Jason Owens, of causing or allowing the death of Baby P. They have been told to expect 'significant' jail sentences.

Following the verdict, Sharon Shoesmith, Haringey's director of children's social services, denied the council was to blame. 'The child was killed by members of his own family,' she said. 'The very fact is, you cannot stop people who are determined to kill children.'

Ian Willmore, former Lib Dem deputy leader of Haringey council, said this argument was 'the reverse of the truth'. Willmore said: 'It is because these sort of people are so despicable and irresponsible that the public pay officials and elect politicians to take responsibility for the well-being of vulnerable children. The burden we put on them is that they accept this responsibility.'

Ever since the tragic death of Maria Colwell, a seven-year-old killed in Brighton by her stepfather in 1973, there have been grand promises to protect children more rigorously.

Like Baby P, Maria had her own social worker. Her distress and bruises had been reported to police and to social services. In phrases that are now all too familiar, an official inquiry reported: 'What has clearly emerged is a failure of the system compounded of several factors of which the greatest and most obvious must be that of the lack of ... communication and liaison.'

After the inquiry, there were strenuous efforts to streamline the myriad agencies, the idea being to simplify child protection and build lasting relationships with those who needed them.

But children still died in a series of similar, haunting tragedies, most notably Victoria Climbié in 2000, and now Baby P, both in Haringey.

A gloomy conclusion from the serious case reviews conducted each time a child dies is that abuse and neglect are strongly linked to wider, societal problems. As with Baby P, the child often comes from a broken family where the father is largely absent. Often, the family is on benefits and lives in an area of socio-economic deprivation.

Maria Colwell lived on the Whitehawk estate in Brighton, 15 minutes from the pier of this now thriving seaside city. Thirty-five years on the housing is modern and well maintained, there are far more well-kept gardens than those full of dog excrement and rubbish, there are government-funded community centres and a library, a good bus service and the council clears the area of abandoned cars regularly. But even today, many children there have never seen the sea. 'That is not an urban myth, it's perfectly true; we had quite a lot of children who were scared to go off the estate and certainly plenty had never stood on the beach,' said Gill Clough, the former headteacher of Whitehawk's only secondary school, which was closed in 2003.

'The case of estates like these is that the clean front doors hide very deprived interiors. There are entire generations of families who have never had a job. There is a lot of drug-taking, drinking, incest. It's one of these estates where a lot of grown men leave and you get middle-aged women hooking up with much younger men, which brings its own issues for families. Children would come to school on Monday mornings and weep - they were exposed to violence and abuse. I would say about 70 per cent of the children in my class would have quite serious issues and, of course, that was among those who came to school at all.'

In Whitehawk today, a child has eight years less life expectancy than the average, is five times more likely to suffer accidental death, and is more prone to cancer, heart disease and mental illness than children living a few miles away in the Regency rows of middle-class Brighton. The doctors' surgery had to redesign its appointment cards to take account of the numbers who could not read and more than half of pregnant women smoke during their pregnancy. More than one in 10 girls will get pregnant between 15 and 17, double the national average.

The picture in Whitehawk is far from unique but it is replicated in pockets of social deprivation across the country, where an underclass is untouched by the affluence of modern Britain and distrustful of those trying to help them. Many social workers in these areas are reluctant to place children in care, influenced by a legal system that favours trying to keep children with their families. Rather than risk parents' fury, social workers will often act only if they believe beyond reasonable doubt that the child is being abused.

'The big question this case (Baby P) raises is, where do we set the threshold for intervention?' said Dr Peter Sidebotham, an academic and government adviser conducting an official review into children's deaths. 'If you set it too high, children die or are abused,' he said. 'Too low and you can hurt families. But the question we now need to ask is should we lower the threshold? There are no easy answers.'

But Sidebotham's analysis shows answers need to be found. His research suggests around 100 children die each year in England and Wales as a result of abuse or neglect. And these are just the most 'serious' cases. A report last year by the NCB children's charity found that, each week, hospitals in England treat an average of 471 children who have sustained deliberate injuries, many of which can be presumed to have been inflicted by parents or carers. There were 24,497 such cases in 2005-06 involving injuries such as a black eye or a broken arm - 21,334 children were treated, some more than once.

Not everyone is convinced that lowering the threshold at which social workers decide to place children into care will yield results. 'If you look at the Danish system, where they pour money in and take twice as many children into care as we do, they still have the same mortality rate for child murders,' said Barry Sheerman, chair of the Commons education select committee.

Sheerman admitted, however, that he has heard disturbing cases from colleagues. One fellow Labour MP told him that he had been approached by constituents, the grandparents of two children at risk. 'The parents are crack addicts and dealers: the house has been raided successfully three or four times,' Sheerman said. 'They still can't get the children out of that family. The mind boggles. But you go to a local authority and they say, "Our belief is that the best outcomes for children are achieved when the children stay with their birth family and the worst outcomes are when they are taken into care." It's an incredibly complex area.'

Taking a decision to place a child in care is an expensive option. It costs around £50,000 to put a child in a residential home for a year. A chronic shortage of foster parents is also a limiting factor.

And if, as with Baby P, the mother is being co-operative and allowing social services through the door, this can compound their reluctance to act. 'There is a paradox here,' said Chris Hanvey, director of operations at Barnardo's. 'You've got to build trust with the families. You develop a relationship with them, support and mentor them and then sometimes you've got to take action that destroys the trust you have built.'

Low pay, long hours and its lowly status make attracting skilled social workers difficult. In London, 15 per cent of social work posts are vacant. Around 40 per cent of social workers come from overseas, which has led to concerns that they lack the necessary cultural awareness to detect signs of child abuse.

And many social workers are stuck in their offices. A new report by the Economic and Social Research Council found that they were spending 60 to 80 per cent of their time in front of computer screens, typing up reports to meet targets generated by the Integrated Children's System, a database that tracks performance management.

The system, a major government IT initiative, allows for comparisons. Haringey, for example, had 155 children on the Child Protection Register last year - 32 per 10,000 people, lower than many other London boroughs.

But, according to experts, a focus on performance targets can detract from the 'real work'. 'Workers report being more worried about missed deadlines than missed visits,' the ESRC report noted. It concluded: 'At every stage of the process, workers lamented the tensions between the performance elements of the system and the imperative to safeguard children and support families.'

The catalogue of errors that led to Baby P's death make for disturbing reading, given how government departments and quangos have spent hundreds of millions of pounds attempting to improve the lives of children. 'This has led to an increase in what the public expects,' Hanvey said. 'But we are spending an awful lot and still these things happen.'

From the 1989 Children's Act to the creation of a children's commissioner, there has been a steady flow of legislation and personnel in the last two decades. But experts are not convinced the changes have helped. 'The government has been constantly reorganising but they still can't make things join up,' Hanvey said.

Indeed, new pressures are creating further tensions in the child protection system which were largely absent when Maria Colwell died.

'My first job was in 1975 in London, working with some very, very disturbed children,' Berelowitz said. 'But what is probably different now is the use of drugs; for too many families that causes neglect of the children and then mental health problems. I think drug misuse is a very, very serious issue and if it was easy we would have tackled it successfully by now. Having worked with many parents who are alcohol and drug abusers, what is so difficult to cope with is that they can be very effective at hiding what they are doing: it takes vigilance and determination to predict where the risks are.'

The government has promised more supervision and support for affected families. This summer, it unveiled its £100m youth crime action plan which outlined early intervention programmes aimed at 20,000 families whose children were considered to be at greatest risk.

Problem parents will be compelled to attend parent classes and take greater responsibility for their children. But experts suggest that despite the welcome cash injection, it will do little more than provide each family with a few extra hours of counselling each week, not nearly enough to transform those segments of society that have remained stubbornly lost for decades.

Given the sclerotic nature of these problems, an unpalatable conclusion is that there will be more Baby Ps. Hanvey said: 'There are some destructive families out there. You're never going to be able to completely control this.'

Those working in the field and seeking guidance on how they can do their jobs better could spend £50 and attend a conference in January that will focus on improving child protection.

Sharon Shoesmith will be a key speaker. Her topic: 'Breaking Down Silos: Inspiring Ownership and Sharing Responsibility For Measuring Impacts and Outcomes Across Partnerships.'

Tragically, she has plenty of material to draw on.
 


vegster

Sanity Clause
May 5, 2008
27,867
Following the Baby P case and seeing Maria's name mentioned in another thread, it like de ja vue all over again, do we never learn.

As reminder of for those who are a lot younger and do not know her name:
Maria Lived her short life in Brighton.



Maria Colwell was just 7 years old when she died in 1973. She was beaten and starved to death by her stepfather William Kepple. She was delivered to hospital by her stepfather in a white pram which she herself had used to carry coal, she was emaciated and had suffered horrific injuries.
Police officers visiting the house where she lived discovered that the door handle had been removed from the inside of her bedroom door. It had effectively become her prison.
Maria was systematically beaten by her stepfather, and was often forced to rummage through bins to find food. Despite countless calls to social services, Maria died at the hands of William Kepple.
Her death produced a public outcry and sparked a huge public inquiry. Despite this, too many children today are suffering the same way.

Can anyone remember what sentence William Kepple received, guess he is now out of prison.:rolleyes:

I remember this as a young boy, I could not understand how anyone could do this..... I remember the huge inquiry and the statement at the end which went along the lines of " This must never happen again"...... well, I'm afraid it keeps happening.. we heard the same after poor Victoris Climbe, again....and now it's happened again.... sometimes I feel ashamed to be of the same race
 


D

Deleted User X18H

Guest
Fuckin ell Whitehawk I knew it was bad but surely not that bad.

People in Whitehawk can't afford to move away to different or better parts of Brighton and we know why don't for Christ sakes SAVE THE BRIGHTONIAN
 




Guerrero

New member
Jul 17, 2010
793
Near Alicante.Spain
My mum was one of the teachers who kept reporting that she thought Maria was in serious danger,but the authorities didn't listen.I was 13 at the time and I remember my mum coming home in tears because she felt so helpless.
To this day she still thinks that she could have done more,and still thinks about that poor little girl and the evil Bastard Kepple who killed her.
He actually got eight years reduced to four on appeal.
I stumbled on this thread whilst helping my kids with their BTEC Child Development homework in which they are learning about the signs of child abuse.
 


joker

BHA Blues Away
Aug 2, 2010
571
Eastbourne
Maria lived at the top end of Maresfield Rd, two doors from my house, Kepple was an evil bastard to everyone and thought he was handy with his fists, funny how he didn't want to know when my dad offered him out.
One of our neighbours who was a well known Brighton boxer, reported Kepple for abusing Maria, when the authorities arrived they found her in a dustbin in the under stairs cupboard, and still did nothing.
Kepple served a short sentence then moved into a house in Dewe Rd with his missus, who was not blameless in all of this, however , the locals hounded him out.
My dad knew Ray Colwell, Marias real dad, he worshipped his kids before he died, he lived in hove round the corner from my Dads cafe, the Top Ten in Ellen Street hove.
This story has stirred up emotions in me from my childhood that I thought had gone away.
Maria was a lovely little girl that never complained, she always seemed happy until that evil, nasty bastard took her sweet innocent little life away.
If he is not dead already I hope it will be slow and painful
And just for the record I still live in Whitehawk and have done for 45 years on and off, it really isn't as bad as the article makes out
 


macky

Well-known member
Dec 28, 2004
1,651
i think there was a lot if guilt a lot of people thought they could have done more
when in reality it was all down to the social service and the police again thing is all this time later they are making the same mistakes
 


happypig

Staring at the rude boys
May 23, 2009
7,935
Eastbourne
I lived in Dewe Road at the time Kepple moved there and I remember there was a lot of bad feeling towards him although I was only 14 so didn't pick up on a lot of it but I remember my hearing my neighbour's dad commenting that "they should have strung the bastard up".
 



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