A catalogue of errors by a woman police officer now training recruits in Hendon meant the horrific abuse of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie went unnoticed, an inquiry heard this week.
Neil Garnham QC said PC Karen Jones, failed to investigate adequately what has been described as one of the worst cases of child abuse in British legal history.
PC Jones who is based at the Peel Centre in Aerodrome Road and spent six years from 1987 as an officer in West Hendon did not visit the girl's home for fear of catching scabies. She also did not deal with allegations Victoria had been beaten with a belt buckle, scalded with hot water and sexually abused.
He said her entire handling of the case was based on "the most enormous assumption" that a nurse's memo which only noted Victoria was a possible victim of emotional abuse, meant she was not being abused physically.
Victoria died in February last year after months of torture at the hands of her great-aunt Marie Therese Kouao and Kouao's boyfriend Carl Manning. The duo are currently serving life sentences for murder.
PC Jones, who was attached to the Metropolitan Police Child Protection Unit at Haringey, was assigned case officer when Victoria was admitted to North Middlesex Hospital with scalding injuries to her face and scars believed to have been inflicted by a belt buckle.
But she let Victoria return to her killers' Tottenham flat after receiving a nurse's memo which did not question Kouao's version of events: that Victoria had poured boiling water over herself to ease the itching caused by her scabies.
"I regarded it the investigation as closed and finished unless further evidence came to light," said PC Jones. "No-one ever indicated that a crime had ever happened and no-one ever did."
Mr Garnham said: "You misinterpreted a memo from a nurse dealing with emotional abuse as if it was a medical report dealing with all of Victoria's complaints.
"You proceeded on an assumption about what that memo meant which coloured the whole way you managed the case thereafter."
He added: "I suggest to you that the whole of your investigation into this alleged crime was inadequate."
The inquiry continues.
November 21, 2001 18:33
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