A consultant paediatrician told a murder jury toda
A consultant paediatrician told a murder jury today (Mon) why she effectively took a child out of police protection after diagnosing the cuts and bruises covering her body as scabies.
Little Anna Climbie, 8, was to die in agony after she was forced to sleep in a bath throughout the winter and battered with bicycle chains, the Old Bailey has heard.
On July 14, seven months before she died, Anna was taken to the Central Middlesex Hospital by a family friend.
She had grazes to her cheek, on either side of her ear and on her eyebrow.
There was bruising to her buttocks and back and her hands were scored with infected cuts.
Her left eye was bloodshot and her clothes and and body were filthy and reeking.
Some injuries were up two days old but some scars dated back several weeks.
But Dr Ruby Schwartz, who has been involved in child abuse cases for nearly 20 years, said the marks all over her body were ‘compatible’ with scabies.
And she denied belt buckle marks and cigarette burns shown on photographs taken two weeks later were present at the time of her examination.
When the diagnosis was made police and social services had no alternative but to lift protection order that had been made on little Anna.
Dr Schwartz said: ‘She had lots of marks on her body with very nasty infectious lesions on her hands and lots of scratches and cut marks.
‘Following examination, these marks were compatible with intensely irritant condition called scabies.
‘I have seen many cases in the past of scabies in children.
‘Although the predominant rash is on the hands, you scratch the whole body.
I did not feel these were signs of physical abuse.
‘
She said she was more concerned about her general condition and did call social services.
Presented with photographs taken at North Middlesex hospital on July 27, the consultant insisted: ‘They are completely different form any of the lesions I saw when I examined Anna.
‘
Earlier Dr Ejkundayo Ajayiube, who initially examined the girl said despite the injuries she detailed, Anna was ‘a jolly little girl.
‘
‘When I was examining her she did sing.
She was bubbly as well,’ the doctor said.
‘There was a foul smell, a pungent smell.
She looked unclean.
The doctor added: ‘I was not happy.
I was suspicious.
I wanted to rule out child abuse.
‘
Anna did not speak English and Dr Ajayiube spoke no French, so they had to communicate in sign language.
She said the girl managed to tell her she had caused the injuries herself by scratching, the doctor said.
‘She said she did it herself,’ Dr Ajayiube told the court.
‘I was not happy.
That is why I asked the consultant to see her.
‘There were some bruises I did not feel she could have got round to.
‘ (reached)
Nurse Grace Pereira bathed Anna at North Middlesex Hospital on July 27, 1999, and noticed scars covering her body.
‘I tried to ask her what happened and she would just say scabies and nothing else,’ she recalled.
‘I asked her mother.
She just said it was her condition, the condition she had been to another hospital for.
‘
Anna got into bed by herself and put the blanket over her head.
The nurse suggested to the mother she should buy some food for her little girl – sweets or biscuits.
They then both went to the bed and and the mother spoke to Anna.
‘When she called her name, Anna literally jumped out of bed and she stood to attention,’ Nurse Pereira said.
Anna’s aunt Marie Therese Kouao, 44, who adopted the child and her boyfriend Carl Manning, 28, deny her murder.
Manning admits manslaughter and cruelty, charges Kouao denies.
The trial continues.
ends
addbruises.
