Notes
Maurice Beckford, who battered to death his four-year-old step-daughter Jasmine, has been convicted of manslaugh- ter and jailed for ten years. Beverly Lor- rington, Jasmine's mother, has been con- victed of wilful neglect and cruelty and jailed for 18 months. Brent Council, which in 1981 took responsibility for Jasmine (she had been brought to hospital with a broken leg), faces no legal sanction for neglecting the parental duties which it then assumed. There is no doubt that the Council was negligent in the discharge of those duties. Jasmine and her sister, having been placed with foster parents, were removed from them and returned to the home where they had previously been abused, and were seen only twice by their social worker, Miss Gunn Wahlstrom, in the ten months before Jasmine's death. Miss Wahlstrom was de- scribed by Judge Thomas Pigot as 'naive beyond belief' for allowing herself to be fobbed off with excuses for not seeing Jasmine. At the time of Jasmine's death, when she weighed only 23 pounds and had 20 broken bones and 40 face and head injuries, her social workers were actually hoping to have her care order lifted. If as a result of such negligence Jasmine had been grossly maltreated by foster parents, she could have brought an action for damages commensurate with her injuries against Brent Council. The victim having died, the scope for legal action would have been reduced. But her parents, in this case, because she was illegitimate, her mother, could still have brought an action under the Fatal Accidents Act, claiming £3,500 for bereavement, and also the expenses of the funeral. In the present case, however, even that trivial measure of accountability does not exist, because the principle that some- one may not profit from his or her own illegal act applies to Jasmine's mother. And as if to emphasise how little social services departments are accountable for their acts, the head of Brent social services at the time of Jasmine's death, Miss Valer- ie Howarth, has now been appointed head of Cambridgeshire social services, at a
salary of £30,000. The unaccountability of social workers most often gives cause for concern because of their powerful instinct
to interfere. It is for this that the Spectator has criticised Swedish social workers in the
past. But here that instinct was overborne, and there is a very strong likelihood that it was overborne in the name of anti- racialism. Would Jasmine have been hand- ed back to a white stepfather with Maurice Beckford's record? Mr Louis Blom- Cooper's inquiry must address that ques- tion, or it will not command confidence. It is in the interests of the race relations industry itself, that crimes committed in its name be acknowledged.
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