20 Thursday May 26 2022 | the times
News
A woman who applied to adopt a baby
boy and then murdered him after
admitting to children’s services that she
did not love him has been described as
a monster by the biological mother.
Laura Castle, 38, was jailed for life
yesterday and must serve a minimum
of 18 years for killing Leiland-James
Corkill. He was one year old when he
died of catastrophic head injuries five
months after the authorities in Cum-
bria placed him with Castle and her
husband Scott, 35, who was acquitted of
child cruelty and of allowing the death.
In text messages shown to the court,
Laura Castle wrote that the child was a
“proper nob head”, “shit bag” and “top
twat”. On the day he was fatally injured
she shook, pinched, slapped and prod-
ded him and may have hit him against
a solid surface, the jury was told.
In a statement to the court, Leiland-
James’s biological mother Laura Cor-
kill, from whom he was taken at birth,
said: “I was told he would be safe and
would have a good life... now my world
is broken.”
She described Castle as “a monster
that was meant to love, nurture and
cherish him as I would have done. A
monster that robbed Leiland-James of
his life, robbed me, his brother, sisters
and my family of one day opening the
door to the wonderful young man that
I know he would have become. Leiland-
Adoptive mother jailed for
life over baby boy’s murder
James was ripped from my loving arms
but I was always his mammy. I carried
him within my body for nine months,
with every beat of my heart full of love,
full of pride, full of promise. My beauti-
ful blue-eyed baby, love saw his first
breath, evil took his last breath.”
The Castles were selected by an
adoption panel after an application
process overseen by Cumbria’s child
services unit. Leiland-James was ap-
proved to live with them at their home
in Barrow-in-Furness from August- That November, during the
second national lockdown, concerns
were raised after Castle said in a home
visit that she did not love Leiland-
James and was struggling to bond with
him. The possibility of removing him
was canvassed but Castle said that her
extended family loved him and so he
was “not going anywhere”.
On January 6 last year she called an
ambulance and said Leiland-James had
fallen off a sofa, injured his head and
was struggling to breathe. He died in
hospital the next day. Castle, a former
care worker, maintained the death wasan accident until the day a jury was
sworn in last month for her trial at Pres-
ton crown court. She pleaded guilty to
manslaughter and said she had shaken
Leiland-James because he would not
stop crying, his head had hit an armrest
and he fell off her knee to the floor.
Medical experts told the court that
the degree of force required to cause his
injuries would have been “severe” and
likely to be a combination of shaking
and an impact with a solid surface.
Michael Brady QC, for the prosecu-
tion, said that Castle had lost her tem-
per and suggested she smashed the
back of the boy’s head against a piece of
furniture. The jury also convicted her
of a separate offence of child cruelty.
Mr Justice Baker said it was “nothing
less than a tragedy” that Laura Castle
had not returned Leiland-James to the
local authority.
“I consider that your account signifi-
cantly underplays the extent and
degree of violence which you inflicted
upon Leiland-James, which of necessi-
ty must have involved either very
severe or considerable impact and os-
cillation forces to have caused the in-
ternal injuries, whilst some of the exter-
nal injuries were consistent with slap-
ping, pinching and prodding.”
David McLachlan QC, in mitigation,
said that Castle was “alone and broken”
and with “no support whatsoever”.
An independent review into the
adoption process is due to report in July.Emma Yeomans
Child protection workers may have
assumed that women were less likely
than men to harm their children, a
review into the murders of Arthur
Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson said.
The way child protection is
approached in England needs to
“change fundamentally” following
their deaths, the child safeguarding
practice review panel said.
Its national review found that the
fatal abuses suffered by Arthur, aged
six, and Star, 16 months, “are not isolat-
ed incidents”, but reflective of wider
problems with poor information-shar-
ing and weak decision-making.
Concerns raised by their wider family
members were “too often” disregarded
and not properly investigated by police
and social workers, the review said.
Star was murdered in her home in
Keighley, West Yorkshire, in Sep-
tember 2020, by her mother’s
girlfriend, Savannah Brockhill,
who was jailed for life. Arthur
was abused and beaten to death
by Emma Tustin, his step-
mother, in Solihull, West Mid-
lands, in June 2020. She was
jailed for life.
In Star’s case, allegations
and concerns raised by her
family were deemed to be
malicious and motivated by
prejudice against Star’sWomen ‘overlooked’ as
possible child abusers
mother, Frankie Smith, and her same-
sex partner, Brockhill, and dismissed by
social workers.
The review said: “Effective child pro-
tection work requires practitioners to
unpack biases and assumptions that
may impact on how they perceive and
assess the risk to a child. This includes
assumptions and biases relating to cul-
ture, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.”
Such assumptions impacted how
child protection workers “understood
Arthur and Star’s daily experiences and
made decisions about their safety”, it
went on, and include “potentially, the
perception of women as unlikely perpe-
trators of harm to children”.
The review called for dedicated child
protection teams in local areas.
The panel said the way child protec-
tion is approached in England should
“change fundamentally”, with a
national child protection board to co-
ordinate policy.
Annie Hudson, chairwoman of
the panel, said: “At the moment,
each professional who comes
into contact with a child holds
one piece of the jigsaw.
“Our reforms would
bring together experts
from social work,
police and health into
one team so that they
can have a better pic-
ture of what is happen-
ing to a child, listening
to relatives’ concerns
and taking actions to
protect children.”Emma YeomansLaura Castle had
said that she did
not love Leiland-
James CorkillArthur Labinjo-Hughes was
murdered by his stepmother