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I'm Sruti, I'm Hannah, and welcome to Redhanded. We are in week two of Halloween at Redhanded.

And today we're staying close to home, as we discuss the case of the murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbae.

Just three years after Victoria came to Europe from her home in the Ivory Coast in search of a better life,

there would be a national inquiry into her horrendous murder at the hands of her guardians.

Now normally, we definitely try to consider those in social care, the police, the health service, and schools,

basically all of those agencies involved in protecting children, a fair chance.

They are, of course, completely overwhelmed with potential cases. They're overworked and they're definitely underfunded.

But in the words of the judge who heard this case in court,

the child protection team's investigation into Victoria's abuse was quote, blindingly incompetent.

And it left a beautiful, vulnerable eight-year-old little girl dead, having suffered 128 separate injuries.

And what's maybe like the most heartbreaking thing is that she wasn't abducted and killed by strangers.

She was murdered in her own home by her own family. And their motives? They're completely unbelievable.

Victoria's death in 2000 was so significant. It led to some of the most radical reforms to child protection law here in the UK.

And we'll go into these in a bit more detail in the episode.

But it was also the case that dragged the dark and hidden world of witchcraft-based abuse into the national consciousness.

Victoria's life started as a happy one. She was born in November 1991. So she's only a year younger than me.

I thought about that when I read that just now that she's literally, she would have been our age now.

Yeah, she would be. Yeah, you're right. She'd be our age.

So she was born to loving parents in a small village called a Bobo in the Ivory Coast, which is West Africa.

She was described as a fun child. She had six brothers and sisters, but was seen as the Joker of the family.

She was well loved and happy, but her parents knew that her opportunities in a Bobo were limited.

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