Criminal Justice System: The Case Of Daniel Pelka

The case review that I researched was about a little boy named Daniel Pelka aged 4. He was starved, force-fed salt, held under the water in a bath until unconscious and regularly beaten. Daniel was kept imprisoned in a small room and died alone from a blow to the head in March 2012. Once he started school he was a happy little boy but as the months went by he became thinner and thinner every day, his parents gave him half a sandwich to go to school with and told the teachers that he had a rare eating disorder and not to feed him. Daniel tried eating food from the bins and off the dirty floors, when Daniel died he weighed a little over 1 and a half stone. He slept on a thin mattress on the floor with no furniture or toys in his room and the carpet was heavily urine stained.
Daniels brother would have to ask for extra food to give to Daniel and go to the shop to buy him some food with any money that he found.
Daniel had poor attendance as his parents used to lock him in his room, the Education officials investigated this and health visitors went to the home but never saw Daniel. Police were also involved when Daniel broke his arm in 2010 but they decided not to press charges, this incident was referred to the social services which began to work with the family and completed an assessment on Daniel. When Daniel’s body was found he has 30 separate injuries on his body, and the murder of Daniel was planned. There were 3 main key points that could have made a difference one of these were when Daniel had a broken arm the medical assessment was inconclusive but there were things that were concerning the professionals about the
injury. The recommendation was for a core assessment, this was carried out but did not focus on the injury and its background and the long history of domestic violence. Also the assessment did not lead to any intervention with the family.