Why not testify till six years after the murder?
At the time of the trial in 1998, when events were most recent, Lois Jenkins did not appear as a witness.
At the time of the first appeal a year later she remained equally silent.
Yet in 2003 when the CCRC began to question the safety of the conviction, she did not hesitate to voice her views in the British press.
By 2004 and 2005 she was prepared to give evidence at the second appeal and both retrials. For the second appeal and the second retrial she travelled all the way from Tasmania. For the first retrial she insisted on testifying by video link from ‘a secret location’. All of this was at the expense of the British taxpayer. Why did her presence become increasingly necessary for the prosecution?
Why put a vulnerable child at risk?
Lois Jenkins — herself a social worker — apparently failed to alert Social Services to what she claimed, after the verdict, had been years of her husband's violence.
If those claims of violence had any substance, how could she — with her professional knowledge and background — have introduced a vulnerable child into an abusive household?
Does this really have the ring of truth?
What was the role of Social Services?
This tragic case involved the death of a child in care. Her death, was, evidently, at the hands of someone into whose care Social Services had placed her.
Did the system really fail to protect Billie-Jo Jenkins…?
Is it seriously being suggested that the social workers involved would have failed over five years to recognise the risks presented by this placement?
What do the records over these years show?
What about their routine reviews?
What did the inquiry reveal?
There are two possibilities:
- Social Services failed abysmally to protect a child at risk, a failure which should have prompted public scrutiny and still demands accountability.
- Social Services were unfairly implicated in a misrepresentation of the truth in order to convict Siôn Jenkins.
Only one can be true.