In 1999, eight-year-old Victoria Climbié came to London with her father’s aunt in search of a better life & education. In February 2000, Victoria was rushed to the hospital in extremely critical condition and died a few weeks later. Her post-mortem revealed a truth so horrifying that its tremors reached the House of Lords.
Humble origins
Victoria was born on 2nd November 1991 near Abidjan – a metropolis in the west African country of Côte d’Ivoire (French for Ivory Coast). Back then, Ivory Coast was struggling with an economic crisis and faced a political transition, marked by student violent protests & political tension.
Victoria’s parents, Francis Climbié and Berthe Amoissi, had a total of seven children. Victoria was the fifth. The parliamentary summary of the case says the girl had a happy & healthy childhood. She was intelligent, articulate and did well at school.
But given the dire economic & political circumstances, it isn’t far-fetched to think her parents would have wanted better circumstances for her. That is why they didn’t hesitate when the opportunity came – in the form of Francis Climbié’s aunt, Marie-Thérèse Kouao.
After Kouao’s husband died, she lived with her three sons in France, claiming welfare benefits. Three years later, in 1998, her brother died as well. It was during this time that she visited the Climbié family.
She told Francis & Berthe that she was prepared to take one of their children to France and arrange for their education. Out of the seven children, Victoria was chosen.
In parts of West Africa, where Victoria’s family was from, it was common for children to live with relatives – for better schooling, work opportunities & support. That was what Marie promised the Climbié family as well. So her proposal was considered logical & normal.
After leaving her parents’ house, Victoria travelled first to another part of the Ivory
Coast, where she stayed with Kouao’s brother. Shortly afterwards, probably some
time in November 1998, she and Kouao flew to Paris.
Victoria’s parents were hopeful of a better future, but after Victoria left with Kouao, it turned out to be a nightmare.
Paris: First signs of trouble
Victoria left with her aunt Kouao for Paris most likely in November 1998. But the eight-year old didn’t travel under her own name. Instead, Kouao took her to Paris on a French passport of another child – Anna.
Anna was another girl Kouao was planning to take to France, but her parents had changed plans last minute. So here Victoria was – in a new country, with a new ward and living under a new name. While abroad, Kouao presented Victoria as her daughter.
Victoria spent a total of 5 months in Paris. During her stay there, she was enrolled in Jean Moulin primary school in Villepinte – the place where first glimpses of abuse were noticed. By December 1998, the school had started to notice absenteeism. She tended to fall asleep in class & would be frequently unwell.
These were possible signs of abuse, but some of Victoria’s absences were justified by medical certificates, which said she needed rest. The head teacher, Monsieur Donnet, also recalled Kouao mentioning that Victoria was suffering from some form of dermatological condition.
Given the observations, the school assumed that Victoria was clinically unwell and was being monitored and treated by doctors. But by February 1999, things had gotten more serious.
A formal ‘child-at-risk’ notification had been issued. As per a French Government article, a child at risk notification (known as information préoccupante or a signalement) is a legal duty for anyone—including private individuals and professionals—who witnesses or suspects a child is in danger or at risk of being in danger.
As per standard procedure of the notification, a social worker had gotten involved who described the bond between Victoria & Kouao as a ‘difficult mother and child relationship’.
In spring 1999, Kouao gave notice to the school that she was removing Victoria so that she could receive treatment in London. When Victoria went to say goodbye to her classmates in March 1999, Monsieur Donnet noticed that her head had been shaved and she was wearing a wig.
During this time, French authorities were pursuing Kouao. She wasn’t entitled to the welfare benefits she was claiming, and the authorities wanted to recover the money. It is quite possible that this was the second reason (apart from the supervision of social services) that influenced Kouao’s departure from France.
After Victoria and Kouao arrived in London, the abuse started materialising into visible signs.
London: Behind Closed Doors
Kouao & Victoria boarded a flight to London on 24th April 1999. Even on the flight, Victoria was made to wear the wig, so she could resemble the ‘Anna’ whose passport she was using. When the duo arrived in the UK, they went to Acton and moved into a double room in a bed & breakfast in Twyford Crescent.
On the very next day, at about 4:30 pm, Kouao & Victoria paid an unannounced visit to Ms. Esther Ackah – a distant relative whose home address was given as a forwarding address to Victoria’s school in France. While at the premises, Ms. Ester and her daughter, Grace Quansah, noted a few peculiarities.
Quansah had removed the wig from Victoria’s scalp and noticed her shaved head. Her scalp was covered with patchy lesions. She also reportedly thought the eight-year-old looked rather small & frail. Apart from this, they didn’t notice anything disturbing or inappropriate about Kouao’s interaction with Victoria at that point.
Over the next few weeks, Kouao and Victoria visited Ealing Social Services General to collect subsistence payments, and on one occasion, to complain about the standard of their accommodations. It was during this time that the staff there started to notice warning signs.
There was a marked difference in appearances. Kouao was always well-dressed while Victoria looked far shabbier & untidy. A staffer, Deborah Grant, even described Victoria as an ‘advertisement for Action Aid’.
In a UK government enquiry, it is also noted that during this time, she wasn’t enrolled in any school or day care activity. Nor are there any recorded friends or playmates. Victoria was going through this bleak phase of her life alone, and with no respite or silver linings.
But the girl wasn’t completely isolated from society. Kouao did take her to a nurse for a checkup, but Victoria didn’t have any health complaints. So the nurse didn’t carry out any physical examinations, because there were no child protection concerns that required reporting to other agencies.
Shortly after the nurse visit, Victoria started to show visible signs of harm. When Ms Ackah bumped into her & Kouao on the street, she noticed a new scar on her right cheek. Kouao told her that the girl fell on an escalator which had caused that scar.
3 days later, Ms Ackah couldn’t stop thinking about what she saw in the street. She decided to investigate. She visited Kouao at her residence at Nicoll Road. As per her, the accommodation was “dirty, cramped and ill-equipped”. Victoria had also lost weight since their meeting on the street.
A Ghanian man present in the vicinity told Ms Ackah he was concerned about the way Kouao treated the little girl. With her suspicions partially confirmed, she decided to take things into her own hands. Ms Ackah made an anonymous call to Brent Social Services reporting what she saw.
Brent Social Services didn’t respond until a month after the call, but until then it was too late.
The childminder’s testimony
Mid-June, Victoria was kept under the supervision of a Prescilla Cameron, a child-minder – the UK equivalent of a paid babysitter. Kouao would drop Victoria at her place at 7 am and pick her up even as late as 10 pm.
Cameron treated the little girl with kindness, and they both struck a good relationship. But the experienced child-minder picked up on some alarming behaviors.
Kouao would speak harshly to Victoria & call her a ‘wicked girl’ on multiple occasions. The girl also often turned up with small cuts to her fingers. Kouao lied, saying they were caused from Victoria playing with razor blades.
Cameron also heard from people living nearby that the woman used to beat the girl every night. A few weeks later, Kouao moved in with her boyfriend, Carl Manning – a bus driver working in north London. She also took Victoria with her. The flat was cramped.
Only a one bedroom with a separate kitchen & bathroom. Sleeping arrangements were tight. The little girl was made to sleep on a sofa bed while Kouao & Manning slept in the same room.
During this time, Manning confessed in a report that Victoria had started experiencing urinary incontinence. That prompted him to slap her, and by the end of July, he had resorted to punching her. When her boyfriend couldn’t tolerate Victoria’s presence anymore, Kouao brought the little girl to Cameron’s house.
She pleaded the child-minder to take Victoria in for good. Since the girl looked ill, Cameron agreed to let her stay for one night. During Victoria’s stay, Cameron noticed there were burn marks on her face, circular marks on her jaw & swelling around her eyes.
In the middle of the night, the girl was groaning. When Cameron checked on her, she saw her face was swollen & pus was oozing out of her fingers. That morning Victoria was taken to the Central Middle Sex Hospital.
In & out of hospitals
During her first hospitalisation visit, a number of injuries were recorded all over her body.
The paediatric registrar concluded that at least some of her bodily injuries were deliberate. Due to this, she was placed under police protection at the hospital. The little girl also contracted scabies & was placed in isolation for a day.
The next morning, when the girl’s condition improved, police protection was lifted and Kouao took her back home.
A week later, Victoria was rushed to the hospital again, this time by Kouao. There was a serious scalding burn on her face. Kouao said that the girl herself put her head under warm tap water to relieve the itching from scabies. But observations by the hospital staff revealed something else entirely.
The nurses who looked after & bathed Victoria, saw a bite mark & a belt buckle mark on her shoulder – signs of deliberate physical harm. Even when Kouao & Manning visited the girl, she appeared shy & timid. On one occasion, Victoria even wet herself while Kouao was telling her off.
Although, when the great aunt & her boyfriend were not around, the little girl was a “little ray of sunshine”, Dr. Rossiter expressed in the official enquiry. She liked to play dress-up and the nurses even took her to see babies in the neonatal ward. They even gave her sweets & treats.
This brief phase of happiness was Victoria’s last. After Manning & Kouao took her home, the abuse intensified drastically.
The last seven months
While Victoria was back at Manning’s Somerset flat, she had limited contact with the outside world. Lisa Arthurworrey, the social worker assigned to Victoria, didn’t note anything out of the ordinary on her first visit.
The little girl was dressed in nice clothes, and playing with a doll. She looked like the ‘ray of sunshine’ the hospital staff had described her as. Seeing that everything ‘looked’ normal, it didn’t occur to Arthurworrey to enquire why the girl wasn’t enrolled in any school.
By October 1999, Victoria’s situation had deteriorated further. Her sofa-bed was thrown away and she was forced to sleep in the bathroom. The room was windowless and cold. When the girl was inside, the lights would be shut & the door would be closed… leaving the toddler alone, cold & in pitch-black darkness.
IMAGE FROM GUARDIAN.CO.UK
When Arthurworrey made a second visit on 28th October 1991, everything was made to appear normal. The flat had been tidied in anticipation for her visit and Victoria had been told to behave in front of the social worker.
At one point during the visit, Victoria acted out.
She shouted something to the effect that she didn’t respect her mother & needs to be given a house. While this behaviour did surprise Arthurworrey, she didn’t think the girl was at ‘risk of serious harm’ – a status that would have gotten Victoria separate accommodation.
To purposely get that status and get rid of Victoria, Kouao alleged the girl was sexually abused by Manning. But sometime later, she herself withdrew the allegations and continued to live at Manning’s flat in Somerset Road.
This was the time when Victoria was last seen alive.
In the coming months, she was kept in the bathroom not just for the nights, but the days as well. She’d be tied up in a black plastic bag, to seal in the excrement & piss and avoid ruining the bath.
The little girl spent extended periods of time in her own faeces & urine. It started to have a corrosive effect on her skin, leading Manning and Kouao to abandon the method – since it would have raised undue questions from outsiders.
For food, she was given cold leftovers. They’d place the food on a plastic bag and place it in the bath next to Victoria. Because of her tied hands, she was forced to eat by pushing her head towards to food, like a dog.
As if this wasn’t enough, the girl was also regularly beaten. They used a variety of weapons including a shoe, a hammer, a coat hanger & a wooden cooking spoon. Manning would later admit in a trial that he also used a bicycle chain at times.
Victoria’s birth parents didn’t know much about Victoria’s condition. Kouao had kept them in the dark. In early 2000, they received Christmas photographs of a smiling Victoria. On the back of one photograph, there was writing in French “She’s growing up well and she finds herself… well.”
The End… Of Suffering
In the week approaching her death, Kouao took the little girl to the church a few times. But even in the house of god, the severity of Victoria’s condition went unnoticed.
On 24th February 2000, Kouao approached Pastor Alvaro Lima for help, stating the girl had been asleep for two days and hadn’t eaten or drunk anything. He immediately advised them to take her to the hospital.
She was unconscious and suffering from severe hypothermia. Her body temperature was only 28.3°C. She suffered a number of respiratory and cardiac arrests. Even her renal system had begun to fail. CPR was attempted, but all in vain.
Victoria Climbié was declared dead at 3:15 pm on 25th February, at the age of eight years & three months.
Post-mortem of a failed system
Doctors recorded 128 separate injuries on Victoria’s body. She had been repeatedly beaten with blunt & sharp instruments. Dr. Nathaniel Carey, the pathologist who examined her body detailed his findings in a news report.
“She was malnourished. She was in a very damp environment and her movement was limited through being bound – all these would act to prevent the body from being able to maintain its temperature.”
“If you then combine that with a cold, damp environment such as you would get in a bath, and wet clothing, you have an effect that is similar to being lost on the hills with no food and getting exposure.”
Her skin had become leathery, “like the most severe nappy rash”, Dr. Carey said. There were also “bracelet-like” scars, splits of skin and ulcers around her arms and lower calf where she was bound.
Dr. Carey called it the worst case he had ever dealt with.
Kouao & Manning were arrested shortly after Victoria’s death, and are currently serving life-imprisonment sentences for her murder. But the repercussions didn’t end there. Victoria Climbié’s death quickly became understood not as a single criminal case, but as a multi-agency safeguarding failure involving social services, the NHS, and the police.
In April 2001, the Home Secretary and the Health Secretary set up an independent statutory inquiry and asked Lord Laming, a former Chief Inspector of Social Services, to chair it. Laming’s report, published on 28th January 2003, said that on twelve occasions, the opportunity to protect Victoria was missed.
The report led to a multitude of vital reforms in Child Protection.
A national framework called Every Child Matters (2003) was created, shifting policy to a child-centred approach. Focus was on not just preventing abuse, but also overall well-being.
The Children’s Act 2004 directed agencies such as social services, police, health services, and schools to work together more closely in protecting children. Local authorities were required to appoint a Director of Children’s Services responsible for education and child protection together.
Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) were created to coordinate child protection work across agencies. As for Victoria’s parents, Francis and Berthe Climbié, the aftermath was devastating.
But they turned their tragedy into an opportunity for positive change. The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK was established at the parents’ request so an independent body could keep pressing agencies to protect children properly.
Victoria Climbié might have left the world young and in unfortunate circumstances, but her death didn’t go in vain. The UK, and the world is a much safer place for children now because of her.
