Steven Hoskins

Steven Hoskins was a 39 year old man with learning disabilities who was subjected to harrowing abuse ending in his death in St Austell, Cornwall on 6th July 2006. He had a troubled history, had experienced a significant amount of bullying and discrimination in his life and needed support to live in the community.
Hoskins was placed in a bed-sit by Adult Social Care in April 2005 and he was allocated 2 hours of help each week, but he chose to cancel the service in August 2005 and by September 2005 the council closed his case.
Hoskins lost all control of his life when Darren Stewart and his girlfriend Sarah Bullock moved in and began to manipulate and abuse him – just prior to his death he was forced to sallow lethal doses of paracetamol, hailed around his bed-sit by a dog collar and burned with cigarettes.
Stevens body was found at the base of the St Austell railway viaduct. He was terrified of heights and had been made to walk to the viaduct where has was forded over the safety rail and made to fall 30 metres to his death by Sarah Bullock kicking his face and standing on his hands.
There was no lack of information about Steven and his circumstances but with better inter agency working Steven would have been spared the destructive impacts of abuse.
Failure to take reasonable and appropriate steps to safeguard individuals from abuse or life threatening events is in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights. Agencies have to be pro-active in undertaking risk assessments to ensure that preventive action is taken wherever practicable.
The emergency services did not appear to regard themselves as potential alerters. Individual agencies did not have access to what other parts of their organisation and other agencies knew.
Each held a piece of a jigsaw puzzle without any sense of the picture they were creating. Information senders need to know that their information has been received and should confirm to what use it has been put. It is not enough to send or leave a message, this leads to the error of assuming that information that has been passed on or shared will be known by recipients.
All the agencies in Steven’s case could have been potential rescuers, but every part of service system had significant failures. The emergency services were Darren Stewart’s first port of call and perhaps, under influence, they became Steven’s. Steven’s murder presses the case for ever-greater investment in partnership working in safeguarding adults. This cannot be regarded as the sole responsibility of Adult Social Care. The fact the individuals in all agencies knew that Steven was a vulnerable adult did not prevent his torture and murder.
Serious Case Review colleagues have been willing to explain the weaknesses of their own agencies. This does not imply that these agencies are without merits or strengths, or that they are wholly culpable, but is intended to convey their acknowledgement of their individual and collective under-performance and what has to charge in the light of the magnitude of cruelty experienced by Steven.