'Police fail to prosecute scores of child killers'

About 200 babies every year are shaken to death or suffer brain damage at the hands of parents and carers, a Home Office-funded study has found.

But many of the child killers, who are most often young fathers or stepfathers, go unpunished because police and Crown prosecutors lack training in such cases, the report's authors say.

The number of cases of "shaken baby syndrome" appears to be on the increase. In one hospital in Newcastle, doctors reported they used to deal with one case a year, but they now had about one a month.

Police gave the researchers details of 50 cases of babies who died or suffered brain damage and blindness in the UK. Clusters of cases were found in Avon and Somerset, Hampshire, Derby and south London. Many more cases treated in hospital are not referred to the police.

In the past, incidents of shaken baby syndrome were often misdiagnosed as meningitis, although doctors are becoming more aware of the issue and symptoms, the researchers say.

Shaken baby syndrome usually affects newborns aged from four to six months and is caused by the child being thrown onto a hard surface or by its head being violently shaken. This can cause the brain to move within the skull, damaging the blood vessels, which can lead to a blood clot on the brain or the retinas being detached from the eyes.

The Home Office-funded report, "Police investigation of shaken baby murders and assaults in the UK", found that cases are often investigated by just one officer with little or no training.

The report's co-author, Detective Chief Inspector Phil Wheeler, of the Metropolitan Police's serious crime group, said that even when abusers are brought to court, which many are not, cases can fail because a large number of officers and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers have not been given appropriate training.

During a seminar of senior officers, only seven out of 140 said they had any specialist training, even though a third had dealt with a case involving a shaken baby, he said.

Det Chief Insp Wheeler said there were "a lot of cases still being missed", despite recent improvements.

He added that 70 per cent of the people who carry out the crime are men, usually aged from 18 to 25. Most frequently it is committed by a father, followed by a stepfather, then a professional carer and in a very small number of cases by the child's mother.

Det Chief Insp Wheeler carried out the two-year research project after discovering the lack of expertise in the field when he investigated the Australian nanny Louise Sullivan in 1999, who was accused of shaking six-month-old Caroline Jongen to death in north London. Miss Sullivan, 27, was given a 15-month suspended sentence after admitting involuntary manslaughter.

He has called for a recording system to establish the scale of the problem and a national training course for police and social workers. He said: "In terms of police and CPS, we found little or no training in how to deal with cases involving shaken babies. There is no central record kept of how many babies are murdered or assaulted in this way. Our best estimate is 200 a year."

Officers are now advised to take expert medical advice to discover exactly when the child first started to show symptoms of having been shaken. This can help pinpoint who was to blame.