The Benefits of Multiculturalism in Britain - Page Five
If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand. Confucius, The Confucian Analects
No eyes driver a danger! Oldbury
What do a Bangladeshi, a Zimbabwean and a Jamaican have in common?
They are in Britain illegally and they are rapists.
29th May 2008
After the horrible death of Victoria Climbie, there was the usual pious hand-wringing. Mistakes made, lessons learned, it must never happen again, a couple of lowly officials sacked, we are all to blame. You know the script.
I can remember writing at the time that it would happen again, whatever 'safeguards' were put in place.
Lord Laming's inquiry into this ghastly case heard from 230 witnesses, including neighbours, police officers, social workers and assorted child protection 'experts'.
Victoria Climbie's mother Berthe, with the murdered child's father Francis, is responsible for her daughter's death because she farmed her out to virtual strangers in a foreign land
In 1998, Victoria had been sent by her mother at the age of seven from the Ivory Coast on a false passport to live with her great aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, then resident in Paris.
Shortly afterwards Kouao was pursued by the French authorities over benefit fraud and legs it to London. Still using the dodgy passport, she gives Victoria's name as Anna.
After living in a hostel in North London, she meets a man called Carl Manning on a bus and Kouao and Victoria move into his flat.
Within days, Victoria was suffering the most appalling abuse at the hands of Manning. It would eventually lead to her murder. A couple of weeks later, she's taken to hospital, where suspicious doctors alert social workers.
To cut a long story short, there were 12 separate occasions when social services could have intervened to save Victoria's life.
But, despite her grievous injuries, they either accepted her aunt's lame excuses or concluded that even if Victoria was being tortured, there wasn't anything they could do about it because physical chastisement was 'part of a culture of strict discipline in African families'.
Innocent victim: Victoria Climbie suffered a horrific death in 2000
The fact that torturing a child to death is against the law in Britain came a poor second to considerations of 'diversity' and the terror of being accused of racism.
The inquest was told by a Home Office pathologist that Victoria died from a combination of malnutrition and hypothermia, that she had 128 injuries on her body, and this was the worst case of child abuse he had ever encountered.
Lord Laming made 108 recommendations, of which 80 were accepted by the Government. None of it made the slightest difference, except to render a lumbering bureaucratic structure even more useless and cumbersome.
Yesterday, the Mail reported that one child under the age of ten is the victim of murder or manslaughter every week - the vast majority of them at the hands of what passes for their 'parents'. So much for 'it must never happen again'.
The most recent was the horrific starvation of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who was found by paramedics with her five emaciated brothers and sisters lying on a filthy mattress in a terrace house in Handsworth, Birmingham, after neighbours reported the children scavenging for bread left out for the birds.
This tragic family was known to the authorities and had been visited by police and social services within the past four months.
Khyra's mother, Angela Gordon, and her boyfriend of eight months have been charged with 'causing or allowing' her killing.
So why didn't the authorities act to save her? There'll be the usual inquiry in due course, lessons learned etc. But there might be a clue in the fact that the boyfriend recently changed his name to Junaid Abuhamza. Boyfriend and mother are both converts to Islam.
You can just imagine social workers agonising over potentially career-ending accusations of 'Islamophobia' and deciding to take the easy option. Eight years after the murder of Victoria Climbie, 'diversity' still trumps child protection.
There was one more unsavoury aspect of all this, as far as I'm concerned. This week, Victoria's mother travelled to Britain for the first time since her daughter died to complain that she had been 'betrayed' by the authorities.
Interviewed through an interpreter - she only speaks French - Berthe Climbie was treated like royalty by the BBC. She angrily criticised the Government for failing to implement many of Laming's recommendations.
'They gave their word, but they did not live up to their responsibilities,' she said. She found this 'heartbreaking'.
Hang on a minute. She may have a point. But this is a bit rich coming from a woman who lives in the Ivory Coast, who sent her frightened and bewildered seven-year-old daughter halfway round the world on a false passport to live with a distant relative wanted for benefit fraud by the French police.
Mrs Climbie could not have known that this great-aunt was going to move herself and Victoria into the flat of a sadistic child abuser she picked up on a bus in London. Nor that those charged with protecting children in this country would do nothing to save her daughter's life.
She can rail against the authorities, with justification. But, ultimately, Victoria's death is her responsibility. Little girls need their mothers, not to be farmed out to virtual strangers in foreign countries.
Mrs Climbie claims to have sent Victoria to Europe for a better education, but there's no evidence she ever went to school here or in France.
All the accusations she levels at the Government, the police and the social services may be true. But she hasn't been betrayed.
Berthe Climbie betrayed her daughter and sent her to her death. However negligent and culpable the British authorities were, we are not all to blame.
She is.