The Sun agrees payout to Baby P social worker after wrongly accusing her of negligence
The Sun has apologised in court to a Haringey social worker who it wrongly accused of negligence in the ‘Baby P’ case.
The newspaper had claimed that Sylvia Henry was guilty of gross negligence in the case, showed no remorse, ducked her responsibility for the child’s death and was a lazy social worker who had generally shown an uncaring disregard for the safety of children, even in cases of children requiring urgent protection.
‘Baby P’, later named as Peter Connelly, died in August 2007 and in November 2008 his mother, her boyfriend and his brother were convicted of causing the baby’s death after he had been horrifically beaten and abused while on the council’s ‘at risk’ register.
The Sun’s ‘Justice for Baby P’ campaign called for the immediate sacking and barring from future work with children of those at Haringey social services it alleged were responsible for Baby P’s death.
It ran daily news articles and occasional editorials, together with a petition that attracted 1.6m signatures from readers.
Ms Henry was among those targeted over some four months by The Sun. She had been the referral and assessment team manager at Haringey responsible for Baby P for the six weeks between his first being referred to social services by Whittington Hospital in December 2006 until at the end of January 2007. Some six months before his death, his case transferred to the council’s long term safeguarding team.
The Sun also referred to Ms Henry being involved in the Victoria Climbie case, where an eight-year-old girl had also been cruelly abused and killed by her carers in Haringey some eight years previously. It accused Ms Henry of lying to the inquiry into that case conducted by Lord Laming and of trying to avoid criticism for alleged failures by her in that case.
Ms Henry’s libel claim had been due for trial yesterday [13 June]. But The Sun apologised to Ms Henry by a statement in open court on 9 June, acknowledging that she should never have been a target of its campaign and unreservedly accepting that there had been no justification for any of its allegations.
The Sun confirmed that Ms Henry had not been at fault or to blame in any way for anything done by Haringey social services that may have contributed to Peter Connelly’s abuse and death. It accepted that she had done her very best for Peter and particularly that she had made repeated efforts to have him kept safe by being placed in foster care rather than being returned to the care of his mother.
It said it would publish its unreserved apology to Ms Henry in the newspaper and on its online edition, as well as compensating her and paying her legal costs.
