Murdered three-year-old Ryan Lovell-Hancox 'badly let down by officials'
A three-year-old boy murdered in a Black Country bedsit was badly let down by Wolverhampton City Council, housing officials, probation staff and police, a damning report into the tragedy revealed today.
A three-year-old boy murdered in a Black Country bedsit was badly let down by Wolverhampton City Council, housing officials, probation staff and police, a damning report into the tragedy revealed today.
Ryan Lovell-Hancox was battered to death after being systematically abused by Kayley Boleyn and her boyfriend Chris Taylor.
The youngster had been staying at Boleyn's squalid flat in Slim Avenue, Bilston, for less than a month before his death in December 2008 after his single mother paid Boleyn to look after him because she was struggling to cope alone.
A Serious Case Review into the tragedy, which published its findings today, made 60 recommendations for improvement and disclosed how:
* Probation Service failed to properly record that Taylor was branded a "medium level risk to children" and failed to spot the potential danger when he took Ryan along with him to an interview with a probation officer days before the murder.
* Police "lost" details of an earlier assault by Boleyn on one of her siblings that could have flagged up her potential danger to children.
* Shaftesbury Young People's Project, employed by Wolverhampton City Council to monitor Boleyn, used "poorly trained staff" who did not visit her often enough.
The review found that one of Shaftesbury's housing officers did call at the flat on the day Ryan was later rushed to hospital unconscious with multiple injuries.
But during a press conference today, lawyer Martin Burnett, who headed the review commissioned by Wolverhampton Safeguarding Children board, said he concluded the worker was given "more responsibilty than it was reasonable for someone in those circumstances to bear". "Having seen a child at the flat, the worker took no action," he added.
The review heavily criticised Wolverhampton City Council for not properly checking on the work carried out by Shaftesbury, which had been contracted to "provide a minimum level of contact" with Boleyn in the run-up to the tragedy, but did not do so. The council was also criticised for having a contract with Shaftesbury that was "neither sufficiently detailed nor precise enough to govern the complex arrangements it was supposed to deal with".
Ryan was rushed to hospital with 54 separate visible marks of injury, less than 40 hours before his death on Christmas Eve 2008.He also said that not enough had been done to help Ryan's natural mother bring him up alone.
Full story and four pages of special reports in Thursday's Express & Star.
