I were welling up while reading this..dunno why I imagined Mathias as the baby...and it made my heart so pain...
The toddler had been visited 60 times by social workers.
A doctor examined him,but missed the fact that the child had a broken back and eight fractured ribs.His mother managed to explain away his constant bruises time and time again,sometimes even smearing the wounds with chocolate to hide them.
Now,the 17-month old boy known only as "Baby P" is dead - and all of Britain is aghast at the details of his short life.
The grisly details of the case - along with a computer-generated image of the boy's badly scarred face - were splashed across the front pages of Britain's tabloids last Thursday.Last week,his mother,her boyfriend and their tenant were found guilty of causing his death.
The Times reported that Baby P had been in the sole care of his mother,who lives in North London,since she split from his father when the child was three months old,after she had affairs with two men.The overweight woman,27,never had a full-time job and spent hours trawling the Internet for pornography.And she often left him in his cot unattended for hours while she went online.
Her 32-year old live-in boyfriend treated him even more brutally,using him "like a punching bag" and treating him worse than the family pet,prosecution lawyers told the Old Bailey.Investigators said that after the boyfriend moved in,not one item of the boy's clothing was left unstained with blood.
While the mother chatted with friends online,her boyfriend would beat the boy,swinging him around by the neck or legs and pinching him.He also forced Baby P to obey commands like a dog.A snap of the fingers meant the boy would have to sit with his head bent between his legs.Another snap 20 minutes later would be the signal that he could sit upright again.Other instances of abuse included placing the boy on a stool and spinning it around until he fell off.
As Baby P grew too old for milk and jars of baby food,he was forced to scavenge bits of broken biscuits from older children and was even seen eating dirt in the garden.The mother and the boyfriend can't be named for legal reasons.A second man,Jason Owen,35,who stayed at the house for five weeks,also subjected the boy to similar abuse.
But despite the many beatings that Baby P received,social workers who visited the family somehow did not spot his injuries.The first sign that something was wrong came in October 2006,when a doctor noticed marks on the boy.But the mother explained away the injuries by saying her son "bruised easily'.Two months later,the same doctor referred the pair to a hospital after inspected a head injury.This time,according to the mother,the child was "a head-banger",fond of "rough-and-tumble play".
She was arrested for assault and the boy was put on the child protection register.When social service officers visited her flat,they said it was dirty,untidy and smelled of urine.Sources involved in the case said that when officers went in,they found dead mice and chicks lying around - food for a snake that the boyfriend kept in his bedroom.The man was also said to enjoy torturing animals and would skin frogs alive before breaking their legs.
Officers let the child stay with a family friend while police inquiries continued.Five weeks later,Baby P was returned to his mum.As the months went by,Baby P would sustain several more mysterious injuries.Then,on 3 Aug,an ambulance crew called to the flat found Baby P already stiff and blue in his blood-splattered cot.
The Guardian reported that even as they tried to rush him to the hospital,the mother demanded they wait while she got cigarettes.
Baby P was announced dead on arrival.
The authorities estimate that the child suffered more than 50 injuries at the hands of the mother,boyfriend and tenant.Now,even as public anger grows over how social workers could have missed all the signs of abuse,the mother has reported no signs of remorse."None of them appear to be worried or sorry about what happened to the baby,"a source told the Times.
The boyfriend is said to have told the police he was only trying to 'toughen' up Baby P.The trio who will be sentenced next month,face jail terms of up to 14 years.
