'My baby was taken by social services - then murdered'
Laura suffered several miscarriages after experiencing severe violence at the hands of a previous partner. After one of them, as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from a blood transfusion, her two children were removed from the family home.
For the first few months of Leiland-James's life, Laura was able to see him at a council-run contact centre. She shows me photographs and it's striking how happy they both look. Laura would see her son four times a week, for an hour-and-a-half a day.Laura had to wear personal protective equipment when she visited Leiland-James in the contact centre
But worse was to come. In July, the family court granted an adoption order for Leiland-James. Laura says she hadn't been told that Cumbria County Council had already identified her son for adoption and had found a family to place him with months earlier.Laura disputes this - and says the time she had with Leiland-James in the contact centre should have indicated she was able to look after her son.
Laura says she was meant to meet Laura Castle, as she still had parental rights, before the formal adoption. But the meeting time was constantly changed. She says she was given excuse after excuse by social workers. "Leiland was poorly when he wasn't, or they had to work. Something always cropped up."
The following day, she was told Leiland-James had been moved to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool. Pathologists would later say in court that Leiland-James's injuries had been a classic indicator of "abusive head trauma" - a replacement term for "shaken baby syndrome" - and were of the severity seen in high-speed car crashes.
In one text, she wrote: "I honestly really don't like him lately, he's an absolute moaning winge bag and I totally regret doin this [sic]. Laura Corkill describes the woman who killed her son as an "evil sadistic monster". But she is also angry with Cumbria County Council and says it also must bear some responsibility for his death.
"It's a national scandal. A lot of the time, these women victims of domestic or sexual abuse make the right choice, they leave the relationship, they try to get help but end up victimised again, either by the perpetrator or by agencies meant to support them. "It didn't matter who we took [them] to. It was shocking nothing happened. We showed a lot of people, community leaders, but nothing changed."The council told us when it was given the names of these women, it reviewed the allegations and some had been through its formal complaints procedures. It added that decisions to remove children from their parents - and where they should be placed - are made by the courts.
Here, Laura says, she can be at peace with her child. But it might have been very different. Laura says social workers wanted the body to be cremated and she had to fight to give him a burial.
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