Calls grow for report in full on boy torturers

Children's Secretary Ed Balls, MP for Normanton, has resisted calls from Tory leader David Cameron for the release of a serious case review (SCR) into Doncaster Council's dealings with two brothers locked up indefinitely for a sadistic attack on two young boys.

But the parents of one of the boys who was sadistically tortured said last night they were considering legal action after hearing about how various agencies failed to stop their son's tormentors earlier.

Revelations of how social services and other organisations missed numerous opportunities to intervene with the perpetrators during their violent and chaotic upbringing has provoked widespread anger.

The mother of the older victim told a Sunday newspaper: "Why did it take until they tried to kill (the two boys) for them (the authorities) to do something?

"They'd assaulted kids where they'd lived before, they shouted at a woman with five kids and punched the woman. The police did nothing.

"They threatened a teacher with a baseball bat. We knew none of this until it came out in court. We were furious."

The Yorkshire Post revealed on Saturday that Audit Commission inspectors were poised to move into the council, where only one member of staff was disciplined for the multiple failings which led to the Edlington attack.

The torturers were aged 10 and 11 at the time of the attack and their family had been known to social services for 14 years, during which time agencies failed to intervene on 31 occasions.

The council has published an executive summary of the SCR, but Mr Cameron, has called for the release of the full report, of the serious case reviewclaiming that the case was symptomatic of a "broken society".

That claim was rejected by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said: "There are broken families in this country, but this is not a broken society.

"If you look at the responses to any of the challenges we face, whether they are local or international, this country comes together.

"To say this is a broken society is to misunderstand the nature of the country we live in."

The Government's chief adviser on the safety of children, Sir Roger Singleton, said he did not support the full publication of the SCR.

"The way forward is to ensure that the published summaries of SCRs are accurate, comprehensive and set out unambiguously what has gone wrong and the lessons which need to be learned," he added.