South Wales agencies heavily criticised over triple murderer Carl Mills
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Version 0 of 1. Police and social workers have been heavily criticised for failing to tackle a “predatory, controlling and abusive” man who murdered three generations of a family, including his own seriously ill baby daughter, by setting fire to their home hours after the child was discharged from hospital for the first time. When concerns were first raised about Carl Mills, who is serving a minimum of 35 years in prison, police did not discover his long history of violence – including once setting fire to his mother’s bed – because his offences were committed in another force area. Later, though Mills threatened to kill his girlfriend, Kayleigh Buckley, and carried out a disturbing vandalism attack on the family home, officers did not treat him as a potential domestic abuser. It has also emerged that social workers did not do enough to intervene even though Mills began to groom Kayleigh for sex via Facebook when she was just 15 and he was 26. Her mother, Kim Buckley, who also perished in the fire, had 69 contacts with agencies about her daughter in the three years before their deaths but a string of opportunities for the authorities to step in were missed. Mills killed his six-month-old daughter, Kimberley, who was born deaf and blind, her mother, Kayleigh, 17, and the child’s grandmother, Kim, 46, who were all trapped in the family home in Cwmbran, south Wales, when a blaze ripped through it in September 2012. Mills, who was originally from Bolton, Greater Manchester, started the inferno after becoming convinced that Kayleigh had been seeing other men and because he was jealous that she was spending more time with the child than him. Three reports, all published on Thursday, criticise the way the case was handled by Gwent police and other agencies in south Wales. Concerns are raised that police across the country still may not have the access they need to records and intelligence held on potentially violent men and women from other force areas and calls for a need for “cultural change across all agencies in their response to domestic abuse”. The first of the reports, a serious case review from the south-east Wales safeguarding children board, reveals that teachers at Kayleigh’s school raised concerns with social services that she and other 15-year-old girls were being contacted by Mills in November 2010. Police and social workers investigated and established that Mills, who had moved from the north-west of England to Wales, was already making threats against members of Kayleigh’s family and controlling her. But the review says that at first Gwent officers found no evidence that he was known to the police – though information about previous convictions and intelligence was held by four police forces – Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Cheshire and the British Transport police – and Mills had committed 45 offences of violence in Bolton alone. By December they had discovered that he had been in prison but could not pinpoint why, even though they had his date of birth and knew where he was from. Kayleigh became pregnant by Mills with twins when she was 16. She lost one of the baby girls but gave birth to Kimberley in March 2012. The serious case review concludes social workers believed Kayleigh was entitled to make her own life choices – even if they were bad ones. But the review says this was confused thinking. “Children are children until they reach 18 years,” it says. Police made further inquiries about Mills and finally found “25 pages of offences of aggressive nature on record”. Offences included “firearms/weapons and threats to kill”. While Kimberley was treated in a baby unit, staff reported that Mills had made “extreme” threats including vowing to dig up the body of the twin who had died and saying he would kill Kayleigh so her surviving daughter “does not have her milk”. Three weeks before the fire, Kim Buckley complained to police that Mills had stolen her keys, cut electricity leads and planted dog mess in the bedroom where his baby was to live when she got out of hospital. The case was allocated to a probationary police constable and Mills was not arrested or interviewed. According to the serious case review, Mills’ behaviour was not recognised and addressed by the agencies as sexual exploitation and domestic abuse. It says: “The risks were not fully understood because information about Mills’ background was not sufficiently accessed and considered and did not inform the judgments reached and actions taken,” it says. “Expected processes and procedures were not followed effectively and arrangements within Gwent police for accessing police information and intelligence held by other police forces were inadequate.” It goes on: “If the information in Bolton concerning Mills’ history had been properly researched and considered … the risks would have been better understood and it is likely that action would have been taken that was more likely to protect [the family] from the extreme act which caused their deaths.” A second report, a domestic homicide review, expresses concern that Gwent police’s arrangements for accessing information from other police forces did not comply with recommendations made following the Bichard inquiry, which was set up to establish why the authorities in Cambridgeshire did not know of double killer Ian Huntley’s abusive past, allowing him to become a school caretaker and giving him the chance to murder 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham. This report concludes: “It was surprising that, so long after the Bichard inquiry, the problems with police forces accessing information held by other forces appeared not to have been wholly resolved despite commitment by government.” It goes on to say that Gwent police has since implemented a system called Niche, which would have given officers access to the information they needed in five minutes. But it says only 16 of the 43 forces in England and Wales have Niche. It recommends that all forces roll out the system. The third report, from the Independent Police Complaints Commission, says the response Gwent police provided to the Buckley family “fell well short of the standard expected”. Speaking on behalf of the Buckley family, Gwyneth Swain, Kim’s mother, said: “We want these reports to be used to stop anything like this ever happening again. Lessons must be learned from the many things that went wrong. “Three members of my family should not have been killed by Mills. There were so many missed chances, as the facts in these reports show.” |