Six sacked over Baby P blunders demand payouts
THE six people sacked for failing to protect Baby Peter want compensation of up to £3million.
The figure, which will be paid by taxpayers if they win, includes a possible payment of up to £1million to Sharon Shoesmith, the disgraced former head of children’s services at London’s Haringey Council.
After a public outcry over the failings that left Baby Peter’s sadistic stepfather free to repeatedly assault him despite more than 60 visits from social workers, Shoesmith was removed from her £133,000-a-year job on the orders of Children’s Secretary Ed Balls.
This week more damning evidence of the authorities failings were revealed as details emerged about the 17-month-old’s horrifying home life in the lead up to his death last August.
His mother Tracey Connelly 28, was a manipulative liar, more interested in her dogs than her son, who sat eating pizza while he died and turned up the TV to blot out his screams. The flea-infested home in Tottenham, north London, was strewn with dog faeces
Her lover, Steven Barker, 33, was a Nazi fanatic who terrorised Peter with his rottweiler Kaiser.
He and the lodger, his brother Jason Owen, 37, had a history of violence and had even beaten up their own grandmother.
All three were convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child at trial at the Old Bailey.
Despite this background, child protection agencies left Baby Peter with Connelly.
Sharon Shoesmith denied responsibility and launched a judicial review to test whether Ed Balls had exceeded his powers in removing her. She is being backed financially by the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives.
She is also taking Haringey Council to a tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and sexual discrimination.
She claims she “was treated less favourably by the council than a man would have been”. Legal experts say she alone could win more than £1million.
Four of Shoesmith’s colleagues are also suing Haringey Council.
They are Baby Peter’s social worker Maria Ward and team manager Gillie Christou, both dismissed for gross misconduct, and Shoesmith’s £80,000-a-year deputy Cecilia Hitchen, who was fired in April.
Clive Preece, Haringey’s head of safeguarding children, is appealing against dismissal for gross misconduct. And Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, the consultant sacked after failing to spot Peter’s broken back and ribs two days before his death, is suing London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The paediatrician, who qualified in Pakistan, was suspended from practice by the General Medical Council last November.
Liberal Democrat MP Lynne Featherstone said: “It is their right to appeal but people will be shocked to find those who were in the position of responsibility for what happened appear not to want to take that responsibility.”