Health professionals and local authority staff missed a series of opportunities to protect Logan Mwangi, the five-year-old boy murdered by his mother, her partner and his stepson, a damning review has concluded.
Staff saw that Logan, whose body was found in a Welsh river in summer 2021, had suffered a series of “significant” injuries almost a year before he died but did not pass on their concerns.
Later there was a “lack of curiosity” over the risk that Logan’s stepfather, John Cole, posed even after it emerged that he had a series of criminal convictions including for assaulting a child, the child practice review said.
The review concluded that chances were missed for agencies to share information that could have created a fuller picture of the risk to Logan and concluded that professionals worked in “silos” rather than cooperating effectively.
It meant Logan’s voice was “not heard”, the review said, while the complex, volatile adult relationships around him overshadowed “professionals’ line of sight to him”. The review team considered the failings “systemic” rather than individual errors.
At a press conference in Bridgend, Paul Mee, the chair of the Cwm Taf Morgannwg safeguarding board, apologised for what went wrong, adding: “This review identifies serious failures where agencies could and should have acted differently.”
Jan Pickles, the independent chair of the review, said Logan’s killers had used the Covid restrictions to “evade scrutiny”, adding: “Children were invisible; they were in their homes.”
She said Covid also meant that “significant changes” were made to the way professionals operated, with remote meetings replacing face-to-face ones. “This undoubtedly had an impact on the robustness of assessments,” she said.
Logan was first taken to hospital in mid-August 2020 after supposedly falling down the stairs. A number of injuries including bruises to his face and head and a blue mark near his genitals were seen by a doctor.
But Pickles said these were not referred to children’s services. “This was a significant missed opportunity for Logan,” she said. “Had further information from health been shared, it most likely … would have triggered a child protection assessment.”
Dom Hurford, medical director at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University health board, said: “We apologise for failures in our systems that could have presented earlier opportunities to recognise abuse and protect Logan.”
Claire Marchant, the head of social services at Bridgend council, said she was deeply sorry that staff had not been able to protect Logan.
She said: “We are deeply sorry that our safeguarding and child protection measures did not prevent his death. The review has identified there were opportunities to share information and better analyse and act on the risks to Logan.”
The review concluded that Cole was coercive and manipulative as well as having an “extensive criminal history”. Marchant said: “The parenting assessment of John Cole did not sufficiently assess the risk which his criminal convictions presented.”
The report noted that Logan, whose father was of Kenyan heritage, may have suffered because of his race and ethnicity, but this was not fully taken into account.
It said: “Professionals did not fully explore the context of [Logan’s] race and ethnicity. With the value of hindsight, we know that [Cole] and [his stepson Craig Mulligan] held and expressed racist and discriminatory views that one would expect to have made life very hard for [Logan].”
The review team also expressed concern at the speed – just four weeks – with which an assessment was carried out when Cole and Logan’s mother, Angharad Williamson, applied to the family court to have Mulligan, who had been taken into local authority care, live with them.
During the trial of the three at Cardiff crown court earlier this year, the jury was told that Mulligan’s move into the family home five days before the killing was like throwing a lit match into a powder keg.
The review said: “This was an extended family unit with complex dynamics … The panel were concerned that this was a multifaceted assessment that was given four weeks for completion.” It is recommending that assessments take a minimum of 12 weeks.
Cole and Williamson were jailed for at least 29 and 28 years respectively. Mulligan, who was 13 at the time of Logan’s murder, was detained for a minimum of 15 years.
When Logan’s body was examined after he was found lifeless in the River Ogmore, close to the family home in Sarn, south Wales, it was bruised, grazed and scratched from head to toe.
The review team made 10 recommendations for local agencies and five for the Welsh government, including considering a full review of health, social care, education and police recording, information-gathering and sharing systems.
Julie Morgan, the Welsh deputy minister for social services, said: “We must learn the lessons from this review and we accept the recommendations relating to Welsh government.”
Tracey Holdsworth, assistant director for NSPCC Cymru, said: “It is a tragedy that Logan’s voice was not heard during his short life. This must be a turning point.”
The shadow social services minister, Gareth Davies, of the Welsh Conservatives, said: “What happened to Logan might have been prevented if the failures identified in this report were avoided.”
