Alex Phillips: There are other Arthur Labinjo-Hughes' out there whose lives depend on us to protect them

Alex Phillips: There are other Arthur Labinjo-Hughes' out there whose lives depend on us to protect them
6 Alex mono
Alex Phillips

By Alex Phillips


Published: 06/12/2021

- 16:08

Updated: 06/12/2021

- 20:24

It is estimated at least 62 children a year are killed by assault or abuse by those closest to them.

How? How in this day and age, with the provisions of social services, the police, schools and doctors, with digital cameras and electronic record keeping, specially trained safeguarding officers and experts and a litany of historic abuse from which inquiries sprang and vital lessons supposedly learned, how can two evil, subhuman monsters get away with a campaign of the most devastating and horrific child torture for such a sustained period.

How? As details of the unimaginable cruelty of towards Arthur Labinjo Hughes emerged, shocking and uniting the nation in communal horror and heartbreak, the inevitable questions as to who failed in their remit, what circumstances enabled such wickedness to go unchecked, and how such a vile atrocity could yet again occur in 21st century Britain, should remind us all that there are other Arthurs out there, right now, whose lives depend on us to protect them from the very people expected to do just that.


It is estimated at least 62 children a year are killed by assault or abuse by those closest to them. One poor, helpless baby or tot, one forgotten teen abandoned by the system, one life yet to be lived, snatched away by the perversion of a deranged monster, every single week.

As Arthur’s face was displayed in football stadia around the country this weekend, it is critical that we all realise there will be more Arthurs this weekend, and the one after, and the one after, whose names we may never know.

Little babies tortured, caged and beaten up, confused and frightened toddlers accused of medieval curses, with at least 2000 cases of child abuse related to faith and superstition uncovered each year. Girls being raped and assaulted by paedophiles.

Boys starved and beaten. Helpless newborns left for countless hours to cry, hungry and alone, never knowing the love and nourishment of their mother.

Keira Conroy, Jake and Chloe Ford, Holly Roe, Jessica Dalgleish, Jacob Lennon, Maliki Keresi, Alfie Lamb, McKenzie Ellis, Aria Ring, Eli Cox, Frankie Hedgecock, Asiah Kudi, Peter Connelly, Kristy Bramu, Victoria Climbie and so many others whose tragic names adorn small headstones, whose tiny bones were broken, untainted innocence destroyed, their cruelly short lives riddled with terror, neglect and suffering.

It is almost too much to bear and far greater than you and I can really comprehend.There will always be evil in the world.

Yet the past year and a half has incarcerated hundreds if not thousands of helpless children exclusively with it. It has hidden them from the view of those who could intervene.

It has literally locked kids up with their abusers. Some authorities have reported a rise in cases of physical and sexual abuse and severe neglect shoot up by a breathtaking 60% in the past year alone, as the state mortgaged its tools to catch the little ones most in need of help.

Lost in the system, forgotten, neglected, hidden from view.

Today's programme is for all of them. Every single one. And the ones yet to come. For the lives of innocent children, we really need to talk about at risk kids.

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