Describing what she experienced as 'the worst cruelty' and 'the stuff of nightmares', he told how the eight-year-old girl had only come to England from the Ivory Coast because her parents wanted her 'to have the best education'. Instead, ten months after moving in with her great-aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, in April 1999, and Kouao's boyfriend, Carl Manning, she was dead - 'murdered by the people who had taken the principal responsibility for caring for her'. Both are now serving life imprisonment.
Mr Milburn said, 'Manning told the trial Kouao would strike Victoria daily with a shoe, a coat hanger and a wooden spoon. Victoria's blood was found on Manning's football boots. He admitted hitting her with a bicycle chain.
'Victoria's final days - in the depths of winter - were spent living and sleeping in a bath in an unheated bathroom, in her own urine and faeces, bound hand and foot in a bin bag. Despite valiant efforts on the part of NHS staff, Victoria died of hypothermia, after months of abuse, on 25 February 2000 at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. She had 128 separate injuries to her body.'
The Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, which is supported by more than 350 organisations in the UK, called for the Government to introduce a law against the hitting and smacking of children on the grounds that it 'would help us prevent child abuse before it starts by encouraging a culture of respect for children'.
Rachel Hodgkin, Alliance co-ordinator, said it was 'extremely disappointed'
that Lord Laming 'has continued the narrow child protection thinking that misses the real and obvious link between the physical abuse of children and UK law that allows children to be hit, even with belts'. She said that while his report 'rightly identifies' some of the warning signs, it failed 'to highlight the physical punishment of children'.
Ms Hodgkin added, 'Regular physical punishment is a clear warning sign that things are getting out of hand. Abuse can start with disciplinary slaps, which Victoria's killers admitted.
'Even if this escalation happens in just a minority of cases - it is a good reason to change the law to give children the same protection from being hit as adults.'
