Khyra Ishaq: Social services profanation let lady starve to genocide

Prisoner: Khyra Ishaq was deliberately starved to death by her mother Angela Gordon despite a well-stocked family kitchen

A girl of seven was starved to death by her mother and stepfather after a series of failures by public officials.

Khyra Ishaq was beaten with a cane and allowed to die a slow andagonising death, despite being monitored and visited by at least ninesocial workers, education officers, teachers and police.

Many of them were simply fobbed off by the girl"s calculatingmother. They did not even find out that her schizophrenic and brutalstepfather was living in the house.

Yesterday a judge said Khyra - who had lost 40 per cent of her bodyweight and was just 2st 9lb when she died - would still be alive ifthey had done their job.

Astonishingly, she had not even been placed on the at riskregister - despite concerns from her head teacher that she had beenspotted stealing food.

Yesterday it also emerged that:

Her mother and stepfather exploited a loophole in homeeducation laws to keep her a prisoner in their house without arousingthe suspicions of the authorities. Her school sawsigns of starvation and told social services, who did nothing beforeeventually relying on a single fleeting glimpse of Khyra to decide shewas "fit and well".None of the "incompetent" officials who dealt with Khyra"s case has been disciplined.

Her mother Angela Gordon, 35, and stepfather Junaid Abuhamza, 30,were convicted of her manslaughter and cruelty to five other childrenwho lived in the house. They will be sentenced next week.

Abuhamza had moved into the house in Handsworth, Birmingham,and introduced a horrific regime of punishment. He believed an evilspirit lurked inside the innocent girl, and had to be beaten, whippedand starved out of her.

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Angela Gordon, left, was found not guilty of murdering her daughter Khyra Ishaq. Junaid Abuhamza was Khyra"s stepfather. He suffered from schizophrenia and thought the house and Khyra were possessed by an evil spirit

Khyra had been withdrawn from state school by her mother, who told authorities that she would be educated at home.

But court papers said that Khyra"s death in May 2008 would "inall probability" not have happened if there had been "an adequateinitial assessment and proper adherence by the educational welfareservices to its guidance".

In a secret ruling made last year, High Court judge MrsJustice King said: "It is beyond belief that, in 2008, in a bustling,energetic and modern city like Birmingham, a child of seven waswithdrawn from school and thereafter kept in squalid conditions for aperiod of five months before finally dying of starvation."

Disappointment: Khyra"s natural father Ishaq Abuzaire believes the defendants should have been convicted of murder

So when she spied stale breadcrumbs left out on a bird table in the back garden, she took a risk and devoured them.

She knew that the punishment for scavenging food could be a fullyclothed cold bath, a night spent in the garden shed or a brutal beatingwith a bamboo cane.

Khyra"s mother "went mad" over the bread and admonished theneighbour who left it out. Her daughter"s punishment was doled outbehind closed doors.

The horrific cruelty Khyra suffered in those final monthswhile being kept a prisoner at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham, wasrevealed after her mother Angela Gordon and stepfather Junaid Abuhamzapleaded guilty to killing the schoolgirl in a "calculated anddeliberate" campaign of abuse.

The house was described as a world "more like a Victorian workhouse than a semi-detached in Birmingham in the 21st century".

Abuhamza had started but not finished a series of repairs whichleft the family with only three usable rooms. One was the kitchen, butwhile it contained a well-stocked fridge, the door was locked.

Khyra and five other children who lived in the house were fed "like puppies" from communal bowls.

Yet for most of her tragically short life, Khyra had been an energetic child with a voracious appetite.

Her grandmother Eartha Gordon said: "She was so lively, a chatterbox. Once she had finished one meal she would ask for another.

"We used to say how come she can eat so much and not put on weight?We used to say she is probably going to be the model of the family."

Unfit mother: Gordon, pictured in a family video, resisted attempts by welfare workers to visit the home

TIMELINE: HOW KHYRA WAS ALLOWED TO DIE

Theseare the key dates in the months leading up to the death of Khyra Ishaq,who had lost about 40 per cent of her body weight by the timeparamedics were called to her home in May 2008.

December 6, 2007: Khyra is withdrawn from her primary school - where she had a 100 per cent attendance record - by her mother Angela Gordon.

December 19:The deputy headteacher of Khyra"s school contacts the children"sservices department at Birmingham City Council to raise concerns abouther welfare. The teacher and a colleague later visited Khyra"s home butare not allowed into the property.

January 28, 2008:Khyra"s school again contacts social services to raise concerns aboutwhether Gordon is able to meet her daughter"s educational needs byteaching her at home. Social worker Ranjit Mann visits their home at2pm on the same day, but it appears that no one is at the property andshe leaves 10-15 minutes later.

January 29-30:Gordon contacts Ms Mann by phone, leaving a message but later refusesto arrange for the social worker to visit the home again.

February 8:Educational social worker Richard Lewis and council mentor Irving Hornevisit the home to offer advice on home schooling. Neither official seesany children at the property.

February 21:Birmingham City Council social workers Sanya Scott and Anne Gondo pay ajoint, pre-arranged visit to the family but are refused entry to thehouse. The women decide that they have no concerns for Khyra"swell-being after she is brought to meet them at the front door.

March 8:Amandeep Kaur, who lived nearby, sees Khyra - dressed in just herunderwear - in the back garden of her home. She was later to tellpolice that it was a cold morning and the "abnormally thin" child waswhimpering.

April 16: Mr Horne returns to Khyra"s home, but there is no answer at the door and he leaves after posting a note through the letterbox.

May 10:According to evidence presented to the court, Khyra"s condition wouldby now have been so severe that it must have been obvious she neededurgent medical attention.

May 17:Khyra is found dying or dead by paramedics called to her home shortlyafter 6am. She was so thin that her body mass index could not bemeasured on any available chart. Ambulance service worker StevenHadlington later likened her emaciated frame to that of a famine victimor a concentration camp survivor.

Then Khyra"s regular visits to her grandmother - and nearly all her contact with the outside world - came to a halt.

After her biological father Abu Zaire Ishaq (originally namedDelroy Francis) left Gordon for another woman, his friend Abuhamza -real name Samuel Williams - stepped in as a "Muslim brother" to helpwith shopping and the school run.

When he moved into the Victorian terrace at 36 Leyton Road inSeptember 2007, Abuhamza decided to teach Khyra and the five otherchildren there what he called "the Islamic perspective about beingdutiful to your parents".

He used food as a tool to force them to be obedient, startingby abolishing junk food and then reducing meals and even cutting themoff altogether.

The decorator became convinced that Khyra"s innocent face concealeda jinn - a spirit which Muslims believe can possess humans to takerevenge or carry out black magic.

Even as Khyra lay dying, too weak to move or cry out afterfive months of hunger, he refused to phone an ambulance and insteadread the Koran over her frail body to exorcise the evil jinn.

Gordon, who had low self-esteem and depression, helped himrain down punishment after punishment as part of a strict regime of"discipline". She told her family that Abuhamza was her "saviour".

Then, on May 17, 2008, Khyra lost her fight for life afterdeveloping bronchopneumonia and septicaemia brought about by starvation- a common cause of death in concentration camps.

It was a fortnight after her seventh birthday. The 4ft 1inschoolgirl weighed just 2st 9lb, all her ribs were poking through herskin and her face was sunken. Her heart and most of her other internalorgans had shrunk.

She had 60 scars and bruises on her skeletal body, 34 of themrecent and eight inflicted by a cane. Her hair, once prettily styled insugar cane rows, was short and balding.

Five months earlier, a teacher had seen Khyra desperatelystealing-food from another pupil"s bag in the first and only clear signof her starvation.

Gordon took her and three of the other children out of schoolsoon after on the pretext that Khyra was being bullied for wearingMuslim robes. From then on, visitors and relatives were kept away andthe maltreatment escalated.

The children were told they were "greedy" and locked out ofthe kitchen, with its tins of sweets, bowls of fruit and packed fridge.

Meals were limited to two a day - breakfast, typically porridgeand occasionally fruit, and dinner, often corned beef or chicken, riceor dry bread and sometimes vegetables.

The children were fed in the upstairs bedroom - where all six slepton two mattresses - and ate with their hands from a shared bowl. Theydrank from a single, shared cup of water.

Gordon, who appeared slim in court, once had a weight problem thatsaw her balloon to 20st, prompting her to go on a crash diet.

But as a court document put it last year: "Food was an issuefor her and she seemed unable to understand that whilst it may wellhave been appropriate for her to lose weight, it was certainly notappropriate for these growing children to do the same."

Sometimes the children were deprived of food altogether ifthey misbehaved and made to stand in the back garden in all weather forhours or force fed with chocolate spread until they were sick,Birmingham Crown Court heard.

In harrowing police interviews the day after Khyra"s death, three of the malnourished children described the punishments.

One, known as Child A, said it was like being inside "a strictmad house. When we didn"t do as we were told we had to miss out on foodand were made to stand outside. If we were rude at night we"d have togo in the shed.

"When Khyra stole some bread from the kitchen, Junaid told her,"You"ve won a prize, you"ve got a nice treat". He gave her a chocolatejar and told her to eat it all. It made her vomit."

On other occasions, Khyra was splashed with cold water and made tosleep on the bathroom floor. She became "like a bone" and "kept onfalling" but "they"d whack her and she said "ow" ", it was said.

Khyra was discovered at the house after Gordon rang 999 to sayher daughter"s heart had stopped beating. She was pronounced dead inhospital a short time later. The other children were also emaciated butmade a good recovery before being housed with foster carers.

Gordon, a Muslim convert who was born in Birmingham to afamily of Jamaican descent, married Mr Ishaq in 1995 after the pairwere introduced at a mosque in the city only three days earlier.

For 12 years, she was said to be a "good mother" to Khyra andthe other children in her care. But her marriage broke down after shediscovered her husband was having an affair and she turned to Abuhamza.

He had left home at 16 and converted to Islam at 18. At aroundthe time he started abusing Khyra in 2007, he changed his name fromSamuel Williams.

A psychiatric assessment suggested he was schizophrenic, whileGordon is said to have developed spiralling depression after he movedin, making her "unable to function effectively as a mother".