Star Hobson went to hell before going to heaven, why did Bradford Council not act? – Bill Carmichael

Just looking at the perfectly angelic pictures of toddler Star Hobson, with a bonny smile and sparkling blue eyes, it was clear that reading about the terrible abuse inflicted on her before her eventual murder would be an incredibly upsetting experience.

Toddler Star Hobson’s murder; now Bradford Council chiefs must answer for unforgivable child protection failings – The Yorkshire Post says

The details are indeed horrific. Her mother’s girlfriend, Savannah Brockhill, a boxer, pub bouncer and self-confessed “number one psycho”, used a wrestling move called the “choke slam” on the child when she was around the one-year-old, lifting her by the throat before slamming her on her back.

On another occasion Brockhill took Star to a recycling plant near Doncaster, where she worked as a security guard, and CCTV footage captured the 28-year-old inflicting hours of abuse on the little girl including numerous punches and again grabbing her by the throat.

Eventually, in September 2020, Star’s tragic life was cut short at just 16 months when Brockhill inflicted a punch or kick with “the force of a car crash” that caused catastrophic injuries and unsurvivable internal bleeding. A post mortem examination revealed Star had suffered numerous serious injuries, including untreated bone fractures and brain injuries, indicating many months of vile abuse.

Earlier this week Brockhill was jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years after being found guilty of murder at Bradford Crown Court, while Brockhill’s partner, and Star’s mother, Frankie Smith, 20, received eight years for causing or allowing the toddler’s death.

Sadly, such stories are all too common. It is only weeks since we learned the details of a similarly depressing case involving the torture and murder of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes.

But what makes the most recent 
case all the more upsetting is that 
Star’s extended and loving family, based in the Aire Valley north of Bradford, did absolutely everything they could to protect the little girl. For example, Star went to live with her great-grandmother, Anita Smith, in Baildon for a period of 10 weeks in 2019, during which time the child’s health improved, she put on weight and she became happy again.

But when Star was returned to her mother and her partner in a flat in Keighley, the abuse escalated, and the couple tried to prevent the family from seeing the child.

Friends and family were so concerned with Brockhill and Smith’s treatment of Star, they took photographs of her extensive bruising and alerted Bradford social services department no fewer than five times, but each time were given the brush-off.

Why a failure on this scale occurred will be the subject of a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review that Bradford City Council has promised will be published next month. Those findings will also “feed into” a national review of little Arthur’s case established by the Department for Education.

But one deeply worrying suggestion is that social workers dismissed the family’s warnings because they believed they were motivated by anti-gay malice because the couple were in a same sex relationship.

No one is saying child protection is easy. In fact it is a difficult and demanding job and social workers are often damned if they take a child from a family, and damned if they don’t.

But it is impossible to look at the photographs of serious bruising to 
Star’s face and not conclude that something was going seriously wrong with that family. And misplaced sensitivities over political correctness should play no part in the decisions 
when a child’s life may be at stake.

I will wait for the results of the various reviews with interest. And the results have to go beyond the tired old “lessons have been learned” platitudes that are already being trotted out by Bradford City Council.

If this means Bradford social services being taken over by the government – as happened in Rotherham after the child sex abuse scandal – then so be it.

We owe it to Star and her family to do everything we can to make sure that vulnerable children are properly protected in the future. Star’s heartbroken great-grandfather, David Fawcett, made a poignant comment this week: “Poor little Star, she actually went to hell before she went to heaven.”

No child, or family, should have to suffer like that.

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app, receive exclusive members-only offers and access to all premium content and columns. Click here to subscribe.