21 January (Part 2) - You couldn’t make it up
After a month of questioning Bonkers finds itself able to unleash another story critical of Bexley’s
Social Workers, not that I would suggest that they are worse than any others.
The original story seemed so unlikely that I required a lot of reassurance and
documentation that it was not being put out solely to discredit Bexley Council
and since a legal challenge has recently fallen by the wayside one might argue
that it is. However that does not make it fictitious.
I hope I am not too biased against Social Workers who do not generally get a good
press following too many high profile cases - baby Peter etc. - but over my 81
years (why this sudden interest in my age?) I have encountered Social
Workers at a personal level only twice. My son when very young had a
slightly twisted foot which the doctor said would eventually right itself. It
did, but meanwhile he would trip himself up and give himself a bruise or two.
Despite the dodgy foot being on his medical records the Social Workers would have to
come around for a house inspection.
I can understand why they may have done that once or twice but after a while it
may have been more sensible to look up his record and ask the lad what he had
done this time. Not a big deal but it did tend to confirm my view that a
profession content to name itself after
a Communist Newspaper
and use the initials SS may not be made up of the brightest people.
When I was looking after a nonagenarian aunt
the Social Workers were a total let down and her General Practitioner and MP
had to intervene. In Bexley a Social Worker was happy to tell me that
they would punish vulnerable
people they deemed to be awkward.
Generally speaking the worst reports about Social Workers
end with some nonsense about lessons being learned. I suppose they must do
things other than ‘steal’ people’s children but we don’t often hear about it.
I don’t think I will ever forget reading Bexley’s memo which said in mid-December
that they would investigate reports from school teachers “after the party season”
which proved to be a death sentence but except that it didn’t result in a death
the new report may be every bit as bad.
My scepticism that such a thing could happen has been tempered by seeing the legal correspondence in which Bexley Council is referenced.
Its existence doesn’t prove the case absolutely but on the other hand the
Council has not denied it.
The allegation that Bexley Council has faced is that an eleven year old African boy
named Alfonzo - I thought it best to give him a fictitious name but the victim is insisting I
use his real one - was put into Council care
when his teachers made reports that things didn’t seem to be quite right at
home. After being with one OK foster parent he was moved to another where he was
unhappy. After only two weeks the foster parent indicated that she was going to
throw him out from a Thamesmead address I know fairly well and which I have
avoided for many years. Maybe irrational but I do not feel safe there.
The day after being given the warning which had confused Alfonzo he was detained
after school by his teachers and released into the custody of three men in a
black car. They took him to a hotel for the night and in the morning a convoy of
three cars took him to an airport. One man accompanied Alfonzo on a flight to
Sierra Leone which was his place of birth but where he knew no one.
Alfonzo’s more recent investigations have led him to believe that the three men were contracted by Bexley
Council which may have been deceived into thinking they were delivering him into the
hands of his father. Alfonzo has not been able to discover if there was a Court
Order but assumes that if there was his UK parents did not contest it. In any
case his father travelled overseas and Alfonzo was never sure where he was.
Alfonzo was not aware that his father might be in Sierra Leone and not surprised
when he was not at the airport to receive him. Instead a complete
stranger collected him from Freetown Airport. Bexley’s paid escort said he needed to
do a bit of shopping but would be back. He then disappeared into the crowd and was
never seen again. The stranger took Alfonzo across the border to Gambia and from
there to Guinea where he was left to fend for himself in a half built house.
He now believes the stranger was most likely a family friend.
Alfonzo lived rough for about five years by which time he was old enough to do a runner
and organise a passport which got him back to Bexley. The Council promptly put him back into care.
The story so far can be told because Bexley Council found a legal defence to
the alleged neglect and that aspect of the case against them is ended but the
legal documents do not deny what Alfonzo calls his kidnapping and delivery
to a stranger. The subsequent trauma deserves compensation but it is difficult to prove
and Alfonzo does not want to blight his life any more than Bexley Council already has.
What sort of Council delivers a young boy into the hands of a stranger in
another land? Are the people who did this to Alfonzo and at much the same time
to Rhys Lawrie now living off of a fat pension?