| A year has passed since the people tasked with keeping poor Arthur Labinjo-Hughes safe were jailed for his brutal death. We will never forget Arthur at BirminghamLive. He died thinking nobody loved him - no child should ever think that. Our court reporter Carl Jackson sat through every second of the horrific trial - so I have handed over to him to bring you his thoughts in his words.
Overgrown grass in the garden, shutters still fixed to the windows and even unopened post on the doorstep - the house where six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was murdered presents a desolate picture today. Its sinister presence looms like a spectre over Cranmore Road in Shirley, Solihull. The empty house left a lump in my throat as I stood outside on an overcast rainy morning this week, returning for the first time in a year. Twelve months ago I sat through every day of the trial which saw Arthur's stepmother Emma Tustin convicted of his murder while her boyfriend, the boy's father Thomas Hughes, was found guilty of manslaughter. After their sentences were passed I did something I had never done before for a case I had covered and visited the scene of the crime. Having being on autopilot for weeks, reporting the harrowing details of the case for Birmingham Live's blog, the true horror of the words I had been writing had yet to sink in. So I drove to Cranmore Road on the Sunday morning immediately after the court proceedings ended with some trepidation. I began to process the reality of what happened in that house. It was where Arthur had been forced to stand in a 3ft-square 'hallway' for up to 14 hours a day. It was where he was beaten and degraded the more he cried out for help. It was where he was fed salt-laced meals which poisoned his body. It was where Hughes' subjected him to a hellish regime of 'discipline' to appease his evil girlfriend Tustin. And it was where she unleashed one final vicious attack on the boy on June 16, 2020 - causing fatal brain injuries from which he would die 24 hours later. After the case was opened on the first day of the trial, I said to a fellow reporter sitting next to me: "This is the worst thing I've ever heard in a courtroom." As the details of their 'systematic' campaign of cruelty were pored over in the weeks that followed, many people asked me what it was like to sit through it. So here's an insight. Firstly, I was never actually permitted to sit in the same room as Hughes and Tustin. The Covid-19 pandemic, which played a huge part in concealing Arthur's abuse during the first lockdown, also impacted the trial. Due to social distancing, space was scarce in Courtroom 1 of Coventry Crown Court, which itself was being utilised as a Nightingale court. So I had to sit in Courtroom 2 alongside police officers, solicitors and Arthur's brave grandmother. We watched the proceedings on a television screen, which only provided a single perspective of the main room and an obscure view of the dock. To this day I have not seen Tustin and Hughes in the flesh. Even when they gave evidence the court screen did not afford a view of the witness box. Apart from the CCTV footage shown to the jury, the first proper look I had of them both was when the police released their mug shots. Tustin's cold, remorseless expression still sends shivers down my spine. But I saw and heard enough. After all, this was a case with extraordinary evidence. In particular, the silent footage from their lounge camera captured the sickening assaults both inflicted on Arthur. And, crucially, it allowed police to calculate the torturous lengths of time he spent in isolation at the foot of the stairs. Ironically, the killers had installed the device to catch Arthur's supposed 'naughty' behaviour but but it ultimately served to expose the monstrous pair. But worst of all were the audio clips. Tustin recorded the horrendous sounds of Arthur crying in anguish and sent them to Hughes on WhatsApp as she cooked up her dossier of deceit and painted the despairing boy as an unruly troublemaker to his father. Utterly, wicked. There were more than 200 of them and they dominated the early days of the proceedings. At one point the judge asked the prosecution to curtail them, as it became apparent some people in the main room were finding them understandably traumatic to listen to. It is no exaggeration to label the semi-detached property on Cranmore Road a house of horrors. The acts of evil which occurred inside those walls are the stuff of Netflix true-crime series. But to my surprise the initial scene which greeted me on the morning of Sunday, December 5 last year was uplifting. Dozens of people were outside while the garden had been plastered in flowers. Images of teddy bears, superheroes and Birmingham City FC adorned the address in honour of the things which gave Arthur enjoyment in his short life. Some people were silently reading the tributes, others were in tears and hugging those around them. It was a community in mourning. I never knew Arthur. I only had an insight into the dreadful final months of his life. I was off-duty and no-one knew who I was, but I suddenly felt my presence was an intrusion into the grief of those close to him. I paid my own respects and left. Now, the menacing aura of the home is palpable with the heartwarming tributes to Arthur long-since removed or relocated. Two-and-a-half years since he was taken away in an ambulance, it remains a haunting blot on the road. Many have called for it to be bulldozed while some have proposed it be converted but Solihull Council has yet to confirm its intentions. As it currently stands nature appears ready to reclaim the plot. Earlier this year Hughes' 21-year sentence was increased to 24 on appeal while Tustin's 29-year minimum term, as part of her life sentence, remained unaltered. The spotlight has since shifted to social services, who visited Arthur weeks before his death but found no safeguarding issues. A national review found family concerns about his welfare were ignored. In the wake of the trial, I posed six questions regarding the involvement of social services and police. They included how bruising to Arthur's back was missed and why he wasn't reassessed when social workers became aware of them. Those questions remain unanswered. Instead recommendations focused on creating 'new expert-led, multi agency child protection units' and 'multi-agency practice standards' while Solihull Council was told to 'review partnership arrangements'. It's the sort of vague, meaningless jargon which gets spewed out after such tragedies. As the NSPCC children's charity stated, it is an 'all-too-familiar story of a system struggling to cope'. In recent months the Government sent a commissioner to work with the council due to being 'unconvinced' at the progress in child services. A £642,000 grant was then awarded although the authority said more would be needed during it's 'five-year improvement journey'. I would like to say I will never cover another case like Arthur's, but in truth I already have. In April I reported on seven-year-old Hakeem Hussain who died of an asthma attack at a home in Nechells after being fatally neglected by his mother Laura Heath, who was convicted of manslaughter. Meanwhile, my colleagues on Black Country Live covered the sickening murder of three-year-old Kemarni Watson Darby by drug dealer Nathaniel Pope. His girlfriend, the boy's mother Alicia Watson, was convicted of causing or allowing his death. Each case, while different in their circumstances, provokes rage towards the perpetrators, bewilderment at the involvement - or lack of - of external agencies and frustration at the 'lessons to be learned' lip service that follows. But above all else there is a sense of helplessness that here we are again. Like Arthur's house at Cranmore Road, seemingly frozen in time, nothing seems to change.
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