Climbié supervisor fined for blocking abuse inquiry

A senior social worker who for months refused to account for failing to save eight-year-old Victoria Climbié from abuse and murder yesterday became the first person in Britain to be found guilty of deliberately breaching a summons to a public inquiry.

Carole Baptiste, who conducted a lengthy campaign of "obstruction, obfuscation and non-co-operation", faced up to six months in jail for ignoring a summons from the Laming inquiry into Victoria's death, but was fined £500 instead.

Victoria was "imprisoned, beaten and starved" for many months before being killed by her father's aunt and her partner. Four London borough councils, two police teams and two hospitals had all been involved in her case but failed to save her.

Baptiste, 39, team manager in charge of the Haringey Council social worker who closed the file on Victoria just hours before she died, was considered an "extremely important witness" to a government-appointed inquiry. Yet, despite repeated attempts "simply to secure a modicum of co-operation" from her, she refused to help, Camberwell Green magistrates' court heard in June.

In an unprecedented move, the inquiry chairman, Lord Laming of Tewin, ordered that the former social worker be prosecuted after his patience was "brought to breaking point". In a statement yesterday, Lord Laming explained that he had been determined that the statutory investigation be open, fair and rigorous. "And he views the failure of a public servant to co-operate with an independent public inquiry as a very serious matter," his spokesman added.

District Judge Hayden Gott rejected Baptiste's defence that she had been too mentally ill to attend the inquiry for seven months.

"This was a major inquiry into the tragic death of a young person. You were an important witness," he said yesterday. "I do not underestimate the potentially debilitating effects of the kind of illness from which Ms Baptiste suffered. The evidence is clear however that she made a good recovery from her illness and that in December 2001 she was fit to attend the inquiry and had the necessary support to do so. In my judgment the determining factor in her failure to do so was Ms Baptiste's own personality."

Outside the court yesterday, Baptiste said she "deeply regretted" any part she played in the death of Victoria but described the court case as a waste of time and money and the inquiry as "very archaic, traditional and very conventional". She added: "I think the whole way that my illness was managed, and I was recovering from ill health, made it very, very difficult for people to manage the way that I would deal with my illness and therefore I do feel persecuted."

Baptiste, who had been on almost constant leave from Haringey Social Services since losing her managerial position in November 1999, was made redundant in February 2000. With the prosecution already hanging over her, she eventually testified before the inquiry in January, when she expressed her sorrow to Victoria's parents, Francis and Berthe Climbié. They rejected her comments as "rather late".

Brian Altman, for the prosecution, told the court that the inquiry could have concluded sooner if she had attended as instructed.

Baptiste, a born-again Christian from Clapham, south London, denied the charge.

During the 64-day inquiry earlier this year, Baptiste was described by witnesses as an "unsupportive, unfocused, chaotic" supervisor with a "bizarre, passive" management style. Lisa Arthurworrey, the social worker responsible for Victoria in the months before her death, told the hearing that she was rarely available and preferred to talk about God and her experiences as a black woman than child protection.

Victoria died in February 2000. Marie Therese Kouao and Carl Manning are serving life for her murder.