Few things can be worse than the killing of an innocent child, except when more than one such death occurs, as this country has been learning to its horror.
Logan Mwangi, a five-year-old mixed-race boy, was murdered by his mother, stepfather and a teenage boy, and his body dumped in a river.
He had 56 “catastrophic injuries”, including rips in his liver and bowel, which experts said were caused by a “brutal and sustained assault” similar in severity to a road crash.
Trial jurors heard how Logan was treated like a prisoner in the days before his death when he tested positive for Covid-19, was shut in his bedroom and made to face the wall.
Logan’s mother, Angharad Williamson, his stepfather, John Cole, who used racial slurs against Logan and prevented him from seeing his father, and a 14-year-old boy who cannot be named, were found guilty of murder and will be sentenced at a later date.
Benjamin Mwangi, the boy’s father, who broke up with Williamson after a short relationship, described his son as “the most beautiful boy” who had given him “wonderful memories”.
In another disturbing case, drug addict Laura Heath was found guilty of the manslaughter of her son, Hakeem Hussein, aged seven, who was found dead in a freezing garden.
Evidence indicated that Hakeem, who suffered from asthma, left the house at 10pm on November 26 to seek fresh air after failing to rouse his mother, who had passed out from drugs. His frozen body was found the next morning.
A spokesperson said Hakeem, whose father was in prison, was “totally neglected by his mother as she lost herself consuming heroin and crack cocaine”.
Finally, a development in the case of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared, aged three, during a family holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007: Portuguese police declared that a German man, known to be Christian Brueckner, 45, who is in prison in Germany, has been made an official suspect in the case.
Investigators believe Madeleine was abducted from her bed in the holiday apartment while her parents were having dinner in the same complex. Brueckner was known to be in the area at the time. Madeleine has never been found.
Reacting to the latest development, her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, said they entertained the “slim hope” that they would be reunited with their daughter. She would now be 19.
I am not suggesting there is any kind of trend here or that British people are particularly dangerous.
It just happened that these cases came out together. There are bad people everywhere, just as there are good, and one consolation is that these particular four will pay heavily for their sins.
“Spiking” is a nasty new crime here and anecdotal evidence presented to a parliamentary inquiry suggests it is “widespread and dangerous”.
What happens is a drug or alcohol is introduced into a person’s drink without their knowledge or consent, or a victim is secretly injected.
Victims of this crime are mostly young women, but others are also targeted.
In evidence before a House of Commons committee, Zara Owen said she went for a night out in Nottingham but remembered little of it until waking next morning with an agonising pain in her leg.
“The fact that someone had injected a narcotic into my body without me being aware is terrifying,” she said.
Many victims said they received no help from bar staff, who assumed they had “one too many”.
You know that you’re getting old, when…
Everything hurts and what doesn’t hurt, doesn’t work.
On the other hand, you’ve got to respect old people because they graduated without Google or Wikipedia.
And finally, that old bugbear, the English language: Question: “What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?”
