Wasted Ainlee resembled an African famine victim

By ALEXANDRA FREAN and BRIAN LIBERATORE

Article appeared Sept. 21, 2002 on page 7

I assisted by searching through police records, making phone calls and writing parts of the story. I learned a lot about writing in England's English while at the Times - something I had to quickly unlearn on my return to the U.S.

LEANNE LABONTE and Dennis Henry abused their daughter Ainlee from birth, and although concerns about the family were repeatedly raised with social services and police, the little girl was found dead in January this year.

The child's thin arms were described by one paramedic who answered the parents' 999 call as having the circumference of "little sausages".

A social worker had been due to visit the child three days before she died, but did not keep the appointment.

When Ainlee died she had been deprived of food for so long that doctors said she resembled an African famine victim. But police officers found cupboards in the family's home, where her two brothers were relatively well cared for, that were stocked with food.

Ainlee's body was covered in so many bruises, cigarette burns and scald marks that her 64 injuries took two hours to describe in court. An independent inquiry is under way to discover why a social worker and a health visitor failed to attend an appointment to see Ainlee on January 4 last year.

The inquiry, commissioned by Newham Council, will also want to know why it took Ainlee's social worker two months to find the child's health visitor and why the pair then waited a further two months before scheduling a joint meeting to see Ainlee once they had established the child's health might be in danger.

The court was told that the family had been referred three times to social services.

On one occasion social workers closed Ainlee's file, despite a request from Ann Morgan, a nurse at Newham General Hospital, to reopen it because of her failure to thrive.

Doctors, who were concerned that Ainlee only weighed 21lb, told the jury that the couple were abusive towards them. The pair failed to keep appointments with health visitors and doctors on 37 occasions and were removed from two GP registers because of their violent behaviour. Two home visits by doctors had to be made under police escort.

Police responded to a total of 40 domestic disturbance calls at their East London block of flats and the family had a number of disputes with the neighbours. Gwendoline Veale, 50, who had to be rehoused because of the couple's behaviour, said: "I would hear children crying, them arguing, screaming. I have never heard screaming like it."

The court was told that Labonte had wanted to abort the child. A diary entry written by Labonte on September 8, 2001, said: "I wish she (Ainlee) had never been born."

Labonte said she suspected Henry of sexually abusing Ainlee and claimed she was not aware of any of the injuries on her child's body as Henry had been the main carer.

Henry, who is also sometimes known as Walker, denied abusing his daughter. He claimed that Labonte always looked after Ainlee. Labonte, who claims to have been sexually abused as a child, met Henry, the father of her two youngest children, in 1998. She became pregnant with her first child aged 14 and had three children by the time she was 18. Her first child was taken into care after she left him alone at home in December 1998. The boy was later returned to her from foster care after she attended a parenting skills scheme. Henry had previous convictions including criminal damage, causing actual bodily harm, burglary, theft and living off immoral earnings.

The inquiry into Ainlee's care, headed by Helen Kenward, an independent child protection consultant, was commissioned by Newham social services and is expected to be published in November.