child protection

I make no apology for the pun, because quite frankly, this has got to be a joke, right?

Two special education students at the controversial Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton were wrongfully delivered dozens of punishing electrical shocks in August based on a prank phone call from a former student posing as a supervisor, a state investigative report has found.

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If you ever want a really depressing and upsetting read I suggest a copy of the Victoria Climbie Report. It’s the harrowing and utterly tragic story of how a young girl was slowly tortured to death over a period of months, and how social services, health services and the police could have but did not prevent it. As the report notes,

Victoria was known to no less than two further housing authorities, four social services departments, two child protection teams of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), a specialist centre managed by the NSPCC, and she was admitted to two different hospitals because of suspected deliberate harm.

All those agencies involved, and they utterly failed to stop a very gruesome death. Various new policies and legislation have been enacted in response to the Climbie case, but as the report itself notes, to save Victoria’s life, “required nothing more than basic good practice being put into operation. This never happened.”

Is basic good practice being followed now, 8 years on from Victoria’s death? Well…

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