I have witnessed many instances of horrific cruelty as a campaigner for child abuse and domestic violence over the years.
I will always remember the cruel torture Star Hobson endured in her final months of life.
My anger about what happened to that poor child – just 16 months old when she died at the hands of her own mother, Frankie Smith, and Smith’s thuggish partner Savannah Brockhill – burns all the more fiercely due to one key aspect of the case.
This is that Star’s death might have been avoided had the social workers and police officers involved not capitulated in such a cowardly fashion to the forces of ‘political correctness’.
This phrase is something I find offensive. It implies minorities are oversensitive to not being discriminated against and abused. I am a lesbian, and have experienced my fair share of homophobic attacks.
But there is no doubt that in Star’s tragic tale those who should have saved her – and who were being paid to do so by the taxpayer – failed in their duty because they were too keen to toe a liberal line.
On no fewer than five occasions, frantic friends and relatives raised their concerns with the authorities about Star’s life at home, before former boxer Brockhill – after torturing the toddler for weeks – finally ‘punched, stamped on or kicked’ her in the abdomen, rupturing a vein which led to the catastrophic internal bleeding that killed her.
Yet, unforgivably, social services in West Yorkshire accepted Smith’s lies that the complaints were ‘malicious’ because Star’s great-grandparents, Anita Smith and David Fawcett, supposedly did not approve of Smith and Brockhill’s same-sex relationship or Brockhill’s traveller background.
There is no doubt that in Star’s tragic tale those who should have saved her – and who were being paid to do so by the taxpayer – failed in their duty because they were too keen to toe a liberal line
My anger about what happened to that poor child – just 16 months old when she died at the hands of her own mother, Frankie Smith, and Smith’s thuggish partner Savannah Brockhill – burns all the more fiercely due to one key aspect of the case
This was nonsense: Anita and David simply wanted to protect the baby they loved, saying this week: ‘There was no malice on our part.’
The authorities seemed to be unable to bear the thought of digging too deep into a house where two of the people in question were members of vulnerable minority groups, despite all the evidence. After all, they seem to have thought, we don’t want to be thought racist and homophobic.
Yesterday, Brockhill was sentenced to 25 years in prison and Smith to eight years, reflecting Brockhill’s greater culpability in the crime.
I am disgusted — but not surprised — that these cruel women weaponised their sexuality and Brockhill’s ethnicity in this self-serving way.
However, let’s be very clear. Their sexuality and their ethnicity do not have anything to do with it.
Death partners: Savannah Brockhill (28), and Frankie Smith (20) were both convicted in the murder of Star Hobson.
They were victims of abuse. That’s all. Long-term experience has shown that abusers are willing to use any means necessary to hide their crimes.
It’s the responsibility of the people charged to root out abusers to not allow themselves to fall for manipulation, which seems to have been the case in this instance.
It is such a waste of time and an example of how even best intentions to prevent discrimination and prejudice from happening can lead to the worst outcomes.
In fairness to those — including doctors as well as police and social services — who had to sort fact from fiction in the awful circumstances of Star’s death, some of the evidence in favour of Smith and Brockhill’s innocence might initially have seemed persuasive.
Such monstrous acts are far more often carried out by men, so perhaps — on the face of it — it seemed unlikely Smith and Brockhill could really have been responsible for the toddler’s injuries.
But why rely on statistics when you have the physical evidence of a child covered in bruises, with breaks to her shin caused by ‘forceful twisting’, and a 12cm ‘crazy paving’ fracture to the back of her skull and fractured ribs?
To me, however, the most grim parallel with Star’s case is that of the child-grooming scandal in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
This, readers will remember, saw dozens of men from the town’s Pakistani community raping and trafficking girls as young as 12 over a period of years.
This story was first reported by me a decade ago. Victims claimed that they gave the police critical evidence including car numbers plates and addresses, but no action was taken.
It later became clear that, as police forces across the country were facing accusations of being ‘institutionally racist’, these complaints had been ignored for fear of stoking tensions within the local community. As a result, more than 1,400 children — mainly white British girls — were viciously abused by dozens of men in the gang, their lives often destroyed.
A graphic of Star’s bruises has been released by police. This shocking picture prompted family members to call social services.
Now we can fairly ask whether the same skewed priorities that then prevailed in Rochdale’s police force — that being falsely accused of racism was somehow worse than allowing children to suffer terribly — afflict elements of Britain’s liberal social-services sector as well.
In today’s climate of hysteria about LGBT rights and other strands of identity politics, how tempting it must be at times to turn a blind eye and accept the noisy reassurances from the accused that those making claims against them are just ‘bigots’.
It should not be disputed that all races and sexualities can abuse children.
This information about an accused shouldn’t be used as a cover for evading the thorough and rigorous investigation into appalling crime. To do so is just as bad as the opposite: to assume guilt because of a defendant’s sexuality or race.
This would be a great thing if more people saw it.
Yet another child is dead. This happened less than two weeks after nation was shocked by Arthur Labinjo Hughes, six years old, who died from complications in his stomach.
Like Star, Arthur endured appalling brutality and psychological torment before he was murdered by his father’s girlfriend during the first lockdown last year.
Needless to say, many of us remember the 14-year-old death of Baby P. In his brief life, he was visited 60 times by Haringey Council social workers, doctors, and police.
There are so many lessons to be learned from children.
In each of these cases, a lack of funding for social services was a crucial factor — and this must be addressed.
But so, too, must the right-on and growing misplaced ‘sensitivity’ that gets in the way of justice for children such as Star.
We owe children like her so much more — and, tragically, she will not be the last to die until we finally start to get it right.