Marie-Thérèse Kouao

Case information

Marie-Thérèse Kouao

Background

Victoria Climbié was born on 2 November 1991 in a small African village called Abobo, near Abidjan, the former capital of the Ivory Coast. Her parents were Francis Climbié and Berthe Amoissi.

Marie-Thérèse Kouao was Victoria’s great aunt. Kouao offered to take Victoria back with her to France. Unknown to the family, Kouao only wanted Victoria to help her access better state benefits back in France as she believed having a child would prioritise her on things like housing lists. To this end, Kouao had prepared a false passport in the name of her fictional daughter Anna. The family of the intended target refused to let their Anna go. To get Victoria through border controls, Kouao gave Victoria hair extensions so she resembled the photo in the false passport. From that point onwards, Victoria became known as Anna in the United Kingdom.

Timeline

• 25 February 2000 — With no successful contacts made with Victoria, Haringey closed the Victoria Climbié case; at 3:30pm in a London hospital, doctors declared an eight year old girl dead.
• 12 January 2001 — Both Carl Manning and Marie-Thérèse Kouao were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
• 12 January 2001 — Nearly a year after Victoria’s death, Carl and Marie-Therèse were found guilty of her murder; both were sentenced to life imprisonment.
• May 2001 — Lord Laming inquiry begins.
• 7 January 2002 — Two year old Ainlee Walker was found dead on her parent’s table; Dennis Henry and Leanne Labonte had cruelly starved and abused her until she died of her 64 injuries.

The offence

Victoria Climbié died after months of abuse and neglect. The torture she suffered included starvation, cigarette burns, repeated beatings with bike chains and belt buckles, and hammer blows to her toes. She suffered 128 injuries.

During the abuse, Victoria was burnt with cigarettes, tied up for periods of longer than 24 hours, and hit with bike chains, hammers and wires.

Investigation

Police interview and forensic findings focused on the abuse and attempts to cover it up. Dr Nathaniel Carey, the Home Office pathologist assigned to examine Victoria, found 128 injuries and believed it to be “...the worst case of child abuse I’ve encountered.”

Detectives searched the flat for forensic evidence and found that Carl Manning had tried to cover up the evidence of the abuse by cleaning it with bleach. Blood samples were recovered from the bath and the walls. There was also blood on the furniture in the living room and on the furniture in the bedroom.

“We managed to recover many, many samples of blood. Now, given that they had already been cleaned I think that gave an indication of exactly what had happened there. She had been assaulted regularly and severely and she had bled and even though they had attempted to cover this up, it must have been in abundance.”
Detective Superintendent Keith Niven, Metropolitan Police

In the bins, detectives found the discarded tapes used to bind Victoria’s feet and wrists. They also found a passport in the flat that seemed to confirm the dead girl as Anna, but detectives soon realised the photo in the passport was not that of the girl lying in a London mortuary. They tracked down and contacted Victoria’s real parents by establishing which family Marie-Thérèse Kouao targeted. Victoria’s parents then made a 3,000 mile journey to identify their dead daughter.

Arrest

Marie-Thérèse Kouao was arrested immediately at the hospital where Victoria was declared dead. A murder investigation was launched. Police interview her but found her evasive and obstructive; she did not co-operate in any way.

Carl Manning was arrested at his flat the following day. In his police interview, detectives were shocked by his openness; he talked of punching Victoria or of using a shoe to beat her. Other times, he talked of using a bicycle chain to her body and head.

During police interviews both claim that Victoria was possessed by demons.

On admission, Victoria’s core temperature was so low that doctors did not have instruments with the capacity to record it.

Trial

Carl Manning and Marie-Thérèse Kouao were charged with the murder of Victoria Climbié.

They went to the Old Bailey in November 2000. Their trial lasted just over two months.

Marie-Thérèse Kouao denied all charges. Carl Manning denied murder but pleaded guilty to child cruelty and manslaughter.

Sally Howes QC, Counsel for the prosecution, stated:

“Marie-Therese defence was that Victoria’s condition was due to the fact that she was possessed by demons. And she maintained that throughout. Carl Manning, realising from an early stage that he was probably going to have to accept his responsibility for ill-treating this child; his defence was, ‘although I am responsible for injuring her, at the time I injured her, I didn’t intend to cause her really serious bodily harm, and I certainly didn’t intend to kill her.”

Some of Carl Manning’s statements were described as almost incomprehensible:

"You could beat her and she would not cry at all. She could take the beatings and pain like anything."

The account also described Kouao’s behaviour in court, quoting Sally Howes QC, Counsel for the prosecution:

“The way she chuckled in such a menacing way and laughed dismissively, yes, it made the hairs stand on the back of my neck. This is the only time I have genuinely felt myself in the presence of evil.”

It emerged during the trial that Marie-Thérèse Kouao used a hammer to break Victoria’s toes. Neither Carl Manning nor Marie-Thérèse Kouao gave a satisfactory explanation as to why they treated Victoria as they did.

The jury took four days to convict, and almost a year after Victoria’s death the jury found both defendants guilty. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The judge said to them:

“what Victoria endured was truly unimaginable. She died at both your hands, a lonely drawn out death”

Kouao went to Durham prison and Manning went to Wakefield prison.

Appeals

No appeal outcomes for Marie-Thérèse Kouao were stated.

Aftermath

A public inquiry was ordered after Victoria Climbié’s death and produced major changes in child protection policies in the United Kingdom.

A statutory inquiry into Victoria Climbié’s death was appointed on 20 April 2000 by the health secretary, Alan Milburn, and the home secretary, Jack Straw. William Laming, Lord Laming, was appointed to conduct the inquiry. It became the first tripartite inquiry into child protection.

The inquiry was split into phase one and phase two. The phase one hearings began on 26 September 2001 and finished on 31 July 2002. Phase two took place between 15 March 2002 and 26 April 2002. The Counsel to the Inquiry was Neil Garnham QC.

Lord Laming concluded that a radical reform of child protection services was needed and particularly that there should be a children’s commissioner to head a national agency. Lord Laming said:

“In most cases, nothing more than a manager reading a file, or asking a basic question about whether standard practice had been followed, may have changed the course of these terrible events”

After the inquiry, the whole child protection system was overhauled. A new act of parliament was brought in and new guidance was issued to social workers. The government set up a regulatory agency, the General Social Care Council, and the Social Care Institute for Excellence.

Child protection changes described in the aftermath included the formation of the Every Child Matters initiative, the introduction of the Children Act 2004, the creation of the ContactPoint project, and the creation of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

Victoria’s parents, Francis Climbié and Berthe Amoissi, started a campaign to build a school for children in the Ivory Coast; their newly built school now taught 360 children. Victoria’s parents finally laid Victoria to rest in her home town in the Ivory Coast.

Francis Climbié said:

"Do not let Victoria's death be in vain"