Review finds killer Jamal Waddell was a victim of child exploitation

By Jon Ironmonger & Phil Shepka

BBC Look East

A teenager “suffering exploitation” killed a 16-year-old boy within 24 hours of leaving local authority care.

Jamal Waddell, 18, attacked Dylan Holliday in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire in August 2021.

A safeguarding review, published on Wednesday, found it was not clear “appropriate multi-agency planning took place”.

The Northamptonshire Children’s Trust said young people were “at the heart of all we do.”

Waddell, who stabbed Dylan 13 times on the Queensway estate, was tried for murder last year but convicted of manslaughter.

Neither boy is identified in the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NSCP) review, but the BBC has chosen to name them.

It said that there was “substantial, ongoing concern by children’s services that Waddell was suffering child exploitation”.

However, care proceedings to keep him safe were not issued in spite of “the extensive history of trauma and escalating violence for a child of 15-16 years of age”.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review (CSPR) found “it was not clear that appropriate multi-agency parallel planning took place” to secure an agreement to place Waddell into foster care “as part of a longer-term transition”.

The only time he was taken into care was by order of a court between March and August 2021.

But when the out-of-county residence requirement came to an end, he was returned to a relative’s house in Northamptonshire.

“Within 24 hours of this event, (Dylan Holliday) had been killed,” the review added.

At the trial prosecutors said Waddell had been “constantly carrying knives from the age of 12” after experiencing years of violence and abuse, including an attack by his father with a machete.

The NSCP said an internal review of Waddell by children’s services “highlighted the presence of ‘adultification’ when notions of vulnerability are not afforded to certain children”.

It found that the discriminatory concept could help in analysing “why children’s services did not issue care proceedings”.

“For (Waddell) and other young people of black ethnicity, much deeper exploration would need to occur to understand these factors fully,” it added.

The report revealed that Waddell’s victim, Dylan, had also been involved with children’s services after witnessing domestic abuse between his parents linked to alcohol misuse.

It said he began smoking cannabis from the age of 11 and associating with people who had potential links to gangs.

The CSPR found that opportunities to understand the risk of harm to Dylan were missed due to “limited communication between agencies”.

It said the primary conclusion was that there was “a need for an all-encompassing child exploitation strategy”.

The safeguarding review into the Waddell case has been published at the same time as a review into the murder of 17-year-old Lewis Wenman in Milton Keynes.

The teenager was stabbed multiple times in Tyburn Avenue, Springfield, on 7 November 2020 – and later died in hospital.

The report said his killer, Alfie Pride – who was 17 and living in Milton Keynes at the time of the killing – had been under the care of Northamptonshire children’s services.

The review detailed “multiple placements”, mostly outside of his local authority, and there was “evidence of misunderstandings and gaps” between agencies.Pride was excluded from school in Northamptonshire at the age of 12 and, despite attempts to find placements in alternative specialist schools and a college, he refused to attend or was excluded.

A month before the attack the review said Pride “was presenting as very down and unhappy as he had split up from his girlfriend and lost his job, he hadn’t got the college course he wanted, and his request to live with his mother was refused”.

He was identified as a “victim of modern slavery” at the end of October 2020 and within days had stabbed Lewis Wenham.

Both Lewis and Pride were involved with Youth Offending Services, associated with gangs, and had a history of abuse and neglect, the review said.

“It was tragic for [Lewis] that they met at a time in [Pride’s] life of significant stress, when, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear there was a risk of some kind of serious incident but without any practitioners either knowing how precisely that might present itself or about the conflict between the children which led to the murder,” the review said.

Chair of the Northamptonshire Children’s Trust, Julian Wooster, welcomed the publication of the review into the Waddell case.

“We have developed a multi-agency strategy which includes a training programme with the aim of ensuring all professionals understand the level of risk a young person is at,” he said.

“We continue to work alongside our partners in the councils, police and health to recognise and address risk factors contributing to children and young people carrying knives.

“Keeping children and young people safe is at the heart of all we do.”

Northamptonshire Police Deputy Chief Constable, Ivan Balhatchet, said the report “notes the importance of information sharing across all agencies in cases where gang activity is ongoing”.

He added: “Since the events of August 2021, the police and partners have embarked on a project to introduce a co-located multi-agency Child Exploitation Hub which seeks to identify children at risk of criminal exploitation.

“This new team will ensure fast and effective sharing of information in cases such as this one.”

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