Baby P: Peter Connelly Story
The face of a cherub with beautiful blue eyes and blond baby curls. It hurts to look at his pictures.
Little Peter Connelly lived for a short while on earth, and while he lived he never knew safety or love or gentleness or mercy. No, he did not know about those things. For Peter, existence meant neglect, indifference, pain and violence. And what does a baby know, really? He probably thought that’s all life was.
Are babies capable of bewilderment, do you think?
Peter was too young to speak, and for as beautiful as he was, he did not hold his mother’s interest. Tracey Connelly was absorbed in other business, really, and couldn’t bother much with Peter. There was so much to do. There was sleeping, relaxing, sitting down, smoking, socializing on the internet. Languishing in her boredom. Thinking about herself.
These things take a lot of time, after all, and there’s only so many hours in a day. And then, I’m sure it must have been very stressful having Social Services watching all the time, visiting the house all the time.
And while Tracey Connelly entertained herself with her activities, Steven Barker also entertained himself.
Steven Barker threw little Peter around like a rag doll. He spun Peter around on a stool until he fell off and hit his head, and then put him back on and spun him again. He trained Peter to obey like a dog, with a snap of his fingers. And speaking of dogs, he used Peter to train the Rottweiler that lived in the house. Under that angelic blond hair, Peter had bite marks on his head; it is not known whether these marks were human or canine. That’s right: as part of training the Rottweiler, either Steven Barker or the dog bit Peter on the head.
Steven Barker’s brother, Jason Owen, participated in some of this abuse.
Have you had enough yet?
There’s more.
Of course there is.
Steven Barker compressed Peter’s windpipe, held for a while, and finally let go. He pinched Peter’s fingernails and toenails until they turned black. He pulled out at least one of the baby’s fingernails with pliers. He cut off at least one of the baby’s fingertips with a knife. One of Peter’s ears was partially torn off. Social Services, meanwhile, kept watching.
Steven Barker broke several of Peter’s ribs.
Then he broke Peter’s back.
It takes a lot of force to break a back. A lot. Force equivalent to a car accident, or a fall from a very high place.
Read that again: Steven Barker broke Peter’s back.
Let it sink in.
This happened near the end, and Peter did not walk unaided again. When asked whether she ever realized that her son was partially paralyzed, Tracey Connelly said that she hadn’t noticed. Nope, she did not notice. He lay down just fine in his bed, she said, and he sat just fine where she put him.By this time, Peter’s hair had been shaved off. This was because of the scabs on his head. And the lice.
Social Services watched and watched. Tracey Connelly was smearing her son’s face with chocolate now, to hide the bruises. I’m sure she thought this was very clever.
Peter went to the hospital. He went there with a broken back and eight broken ribs. But he was cranky. How could the doctor examine such a cranky child? She could not! She sent him home.
At home Peter was cranky. He lay alone in his crib. He cried and he cried.
Peter was seventeen months old. Have you seen a child this age sobbing? The pouty lips, the little gasps, the tears? In an adult, the normal response to this is compassion. The urge to give comfort – that is the normal response.
That was not Steven Barker’s response.
He went into Peter’s room and closed the door. Then he punched Peter in the face. Punched him so hard, in fact, that he removed skin from the baby’s lips and tongue and knocked out a tooth. Peter went quiet.
It was 11:30 on the following morning before Tracey Connelly called for an ambulance. By then Peter’s body was cold and blue, dead already for several hours.
That was August 3, 2007. Only four days after the last visit from Social Services.
"So.. How can a harmless innocent baby fight back for it's rights?" :(
I dont know the reason for such crime. It was horrible. i guess for peter EXISTENCE means neglect. abuse. and crime
