London - A series of appalling blunders by police, social workers, teachers and NHS staff allowed a boy of four to be starved, tortured and beaten to death by his mother and her lover.
Daniel Pelka resembled a “concentration camp victim” and weighed less than a toddler when he died following an “incomprehensible” campaign of cruelty carried out by the evil pair.
“Callous and wretched” Magdalena Luczak, 27, and stepfather Mariusz Krezolek, 34, imprisoned the little boy in a locked box room, force-fed him salt and held him underwater in a bath until he was unconscious.
They also hoodwinked the authorities who then missed crucial opportunities to save the boy who had been starved for six months.
On Wednesday neither Luczak nor Krezolek showed any emotion as the jury found them guilty of murdering the boy.
Daniel was a “bag of bones” when he died, despite the fact that teachers had seen him stealing food from bins.
And social services closed the file on him even after the couple waited 12 hours to take him to hospital with a broken arm. Following the trial, it emerged:
- Police, social services, school staff and NHS workers missed countless opportunities to intervene and yet not one professional has faced disciplinary action,
- A serious case review has been launched into their failure to prevent his death,
- Daniel’s factory worker stepfather is a wanted criminal in Poland who will be jailed if he ever returns to his homeland,
-His drug-taking mother was thought to be a prostitute in Poland,
During the nine-week trial, Birmingham Crown Court heard how Daniel was systematically starved, tortured, force-fed salt and locked in a home-made cell in Coventry for days. He was so frightened of Krezolek - who forced him to perform punishment exercises such as squat thrusts - that he would wet himself when spoken to by an adult man.
By the time he died a few months short of his fifth birthday he weighed 1st 9lbs, the same as an 18-month-old child. He also stood 3ft 3inches tall, six inches smaller than the average. His body bore 30 separate injuries, including the fatal bleed on his brain caused by a violent assault to the head.
Police never established which of the pair delivered the blow, but Daniel spent his final hours locked in his cell on the mattress he was forced to use as a bed and toilet.
By the time Luczak made a “staged” 999 call on March 3 last year, two days after the assault, he had been dead for a few hours. Luczak and Krezolek were arrested two days later after a post mortem examination found Daniel died from a large subdural haematoma.
When the couple’s computer was examined, 55 internet searches including “table salt overdose”, “when a child stops responding” and “patient in a coma” had been made.
Krezolek, who was described as a “monster” in court, also admitted that he went online to check his bank account and the price of car tyres after the assault.
Birmingham Crown Court also heard that the couple had sex just hours before they were arrested. Luczak later accused Krezolek of raping her. But days later she was observed holding and stroking her lover’s hand in the dock of Coventry magistrates court as the pair appeared charged with murder.
In court, the couple both denied murder and blamed each other for his death, with Luczak claiming Krezolek attacked Daniel after he wet the bed and Krezolek saying he was injured in a series of falls.
But prosecutor Jonas Hankin, QC, said a series of sickening texts in Polish between the pair showed the extent to which they acted as a “team” to abuse the boy. At the time of the abuse, Krezolek and Luczak were both drinking heavily and taking drugs, including cannabis and amphetamines.
The court heard how the couple managed to trick officials into believing that Daniel was suffering from a genetically inherited eating disorder which left him permanently hungry. His teacher Lisa Godfrey described seeing him scavenging in classmates’ lunchboxes for food and likened his gaunt appearance to that of a “leukaemia” sufferer.
Witnesses said he was “disappearing” inside his school uniform and looked “desperate and lonely”.
By then, he had been reduced to looking in playground bins.
The pair told the school that he should not be fed as it would interfere with the medication for the fictional condition, so staff locked up the other children’s lunchboxes.
But despite their concerns and suspicions - especially after teaching staff saw him with bruising to his neck and black eyes - nothing was done. Police were also aware of both defendants and attended the couple’s home at least three times in the year before Daniel’s murder.
Social services had become involved after the couple waited 12 hours to take Daniel to hospital when he broke his arm. Prosecutors believe Krezolek broke Daniel’s arm “clean in half”, but the couple said he had fallen off a sofa.
The senior investigating officer in the case, Detective Inspector Chris Hanson, said: “Those with the ultimate duty of care turned Daniel from a beautiful and bright-eyed little boy into a broken bag of bones. They left him, starving, locked in a room in the dark to die on his own.”
Peter Wanless of the NSPCC, said: “Once again crucial questions need to be asked about how a youngster slipped through the child protection net with the most catastrophic of consequences.”
A serious case review into the tragedy, commissioned by Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Board, is due to be completed in September.
The couple are expected to be sentenced tomorrow. - Daily Mail
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