One of the murderers of a Black Country toddler Ryan Lovell-Hancox used a puppy to successfully distract a care worker as the three-year-old lay badly injured under bedclothes, a damning report has revealed.
A serious case review by Wolverhampton’s Safeguarding Children Board into the death of Ryan at the hands of Kayley Boleyn and her partner Christopher Taylor has lambasted 14 organisations for not acting to protect him.
The report said authorities should have read several warning signs that could potentially have saved the Bilston toddler. Boleyn and Taylor, then aged 19 and 25, were jailed for life last July for his murder in December 2008 at the flat they shared in Slim Avenue.
The pair subjected Ryan to days of attacks before fatally wounding him. Ryan, who had more than 70 injuries, was placed in the care of the couple by his depressed mother Amy Hancox, who regarded Boleyn as a “close” family member. She paid them around £40 a week.
Concluding that lessons could be learned from the tragedy, the report’s author, Martin Burnett, identified a range of issues including failings by police the Probation Service, Wolverhampton City Council and Shaftesbury Young People, which held the contract for after-care services for needy young Wolverhampton adults.
The report said: “A member of the contractor’s (Shaftesbury) staff saw Boleyn, Taylor and a child who it is presumed was Ryan, at the flat on the morning in late December 2008. The child was under a pile of bedclothes on the bed.
“Boleyn distracted the worker’s attention by drawing attention to a puppy that Taylor had apparently given Boleyn as a birthday gift.”
It added: “The member of staff involved had no specific social work qualification, limited qualifications and experience generally, and had received insufficient training from the contractor.”
The review said police had “tardily” dealt with a previous complaint from a member of Boleyn’s family when she allegedly hit her six-year-old sibling, and officers had lost the report.
It said an earlier Probation Service report on Taylor had “not properly recorded” an assessment of him that he posed a “medium-level risk of serious harm to children.”
Wolverhampton City Council was criticised for poor wording of the Shaftesbury contract and not monitoring it properly.