EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
A lifetime in care: Hassan Sentamu is awaiting sentencing for the murder of Elianne Andam
Sources at Croydon Town Hall say that they suspect there is a cover-up over what the council’s social workers, Metropolitan Police and community groups knew about Hassan Sentamu, the teenager convicted of the vicious murder of schoolgirl Elianne Andam on the street outside the Whitgift Centre in September 2023.
It was less than a couple of hours after an Old Bailey jury handed down its guilty verdict on Sentamu last week when it was announced that Croydon’s Mayor, Jason Perry, had decided that there would be no serious case review.
Serious case reviews were established under the 2004 Children Act to investigate the circumstances of a child’s death or serious injury caused by abuse or neglect. Serious case reviews can be called when there is concern about how authorities worked together to protect the child – and while Elianne Andam, the victim, was never in council care, her murderer, Hassan Sentamu, certainly was.
Sentamu, 18, who lived in New Addington, has spent much of his life in foster homes. He received his first police caution aged 12, when he took a knife into school.
Sentamu has also attended pupil referral units and special schools. Katharine Street sources have confirmed that Sentamu was firmly on the radar of other “out-reach” groups at the time of his frenzied knife attack on 15-year-old schoolgirl Andam.
Council care: Hassan Sentamu, here caught on CCTV after his attack on Elianne Andam. He was well known to police, social workers and out-reach groups in Croydon
Elianne Andam was the youngest of 11 people wo were killed in Croydon in 2023. Three others were aged 20 or younger.
In 2021, Croydon had been labelled “London’s knife crime capital” after five teenagers were stabbed to death in borough.
Yet until very recently, Croydon’s Safer Neighbourhood Board, a police oversight group funded by MOPAC, the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, had not met formally since 2019.
Croydon Council and MOPAC at City Hall have refused to answer Inside Croydon’s questions about the borough’s Safer Neighbourhood Board, its failure to hold meetings – where police and policing in the borough might be discussed in a public forum – or its funding.
Donna Murray-Turner had been the chair of the Safer Neighbourhood Board since 2019. Last July, she was a General Election candidate for the Taking the Initiative Party. It is understood that she has recently stood down from the SNB role.
Neither the council nor MOPAC would confirm who has replaced Murray-Turner as SNB chair.
This long-term lack of public oversight just might suit the Metropolitan Police, as it has effectively outsourced much of its responsibility for community liaison to volunteer groups and organisations that specialise in “community out-reach”. In Croydon since 2021, MyEnds has been in receipt of MOPAC grants totalling at least £1.2million.
“Our research has shown that the most effective way to prevent violence in these areas is to provide leaders from these communities with resources to enhance prevention measures,” City Hall said when launching the grants programme four years ago.
Too close?: Mayor Perry (top right) at a Met Police event with council CEO Katherine Kerswell (centre), Anthony King, of MyEnds (second left), and Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (left)
“For example, to fund things like mentoring for young people, parent support, youth work, training for young people dealing with trauma and mental health and community leadership programmes for local residents.”
In Croydon, MyEnds has sought to reduce knife crime by having weekly group chats with police officers and staging the occasional football match at Selhurst Park between the boys in blue and local youth.
According to multiple Croydon Council sources, teen murderer Hassan Sentamu was well-known to the council’s children’s services department, as well as to at least one out-reach group.
So a serious case review into how this clearly troubled young man came to kill an innocent young girl in broad daylight in the town centre might just highlight serious failings with the borough’s care system and London’s policing, as well as the abject failure of their anti-crime strategies under Mayor Khan’s Violence Reduction Unit.
And yet Croydon Mayor Jason Perry has decided not to call for a serious case review.
Croydon Council refused to give any reasons for the decision.
Mayor Perry has recently been wallowing in the reflected glory of getting a “Satisfactory” Ofsted report on Croydon’s children’s services department – this after a four-year period in which four youngsters in council care committed suicide.
A serious case review might take the gloss off that Ofsted report.
The Sentamu murder verdict just happens to coincide with Perry proposing to save £700,000 a year by axing Croydon’s Youth Engagement team, a decision that could also be exposed for its short-sightedness.
“The police’s strategy is not working, and the off-loading of responsibility to these volunteer groups has not only failed, but it appears to be downright dangerous,” a council source told Inside Croydon.
“The council knows that a serious case review into Hassan Sentamu would expose the shortcomings of their children’s services, and very possibly the police, too.
“It’s a cover-up.”
Read more: MP Jones ‘deeply concerned’ at council cuts to youth service
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Sorry, it is appalling to hear that there is no investigation into the failings of the council’s responsibility and duty of care to people with issues with mental health and knives in Croydon “is it a cover-up.” answers are needed.
You are right – it IS important. But I feel we all, as a community, share some responsibility for society’s ills. It’s natural to want to blame our institutions whenever something like this happens .. because it’s not us. Parents have a huge responsibility too but often fail.
And there you go, once again, missing the point entirely…
Money, public money, our money, is being given to members of drug gangs, who can’t get out of the drug gangs, so that they can mentor young people on how to avoid getting into drug gangs. It’s policing by WhatsApp. This is a policy that, apparently, Mayor Perry is intent on extending, rather than have a properly funded council team of properly trained staff who understand and ensure proper safeguarding.
We won’t know what the police, or social services, or the funded “outreach groups”, knew about Sentamu unless there is some kind of special case review. And if Perry won’t call one, you have to ask: what has he got to hide?
You hear of acts of aggression and violence even at primary and early years level now and these have to be reported as matters of safeguarding to the appropriate Social Services Council Team. I would think the underlying issues that finally are expressed in such shocking acts will share such antecedents. The only meaningful way to deal with this is to intervene with a comprehensive framework of steps that probably will mean some form of last level incarceration to hopefully prevent such outcomes. Very little chance of this in our world where people such as Perry think a bit of public relations with some charity outfit who most people will never have heard of (before even any chance encounter) will stop the outcome of a dystopian society that has been well underway for the last couple of decades. Afraid such cases will only go on occurring and they will also occur across all levels of society too. Perhaps when only this realisation occurs that something will happen to stop it.
I always get the impression that social services, school teachers, police and others don’t effectively communicate about the children about whom they have concerns.
I wonder why there is no central database holding details of young people of concern – such as Sentamu and Rudakubana, as well as those in possible danger such as Sara Sharif. Every interaction with each young person would be recorded. The database would be accessible to police, social services, schools and other organisations responsible for the welfare of young people. If AI were added into the mix, it could flag warnings based upon the information recorded even if no one was actively reviewing each case.
A register of children out of school is in the Bill that the Tories voted against due to concerns about reduced freedom for Academies
What does Councillor Ola Kolade, the Cabinet Member for Community Safety, have to say? He’s on the Safer Croydon Partnership and the Safer Neighbourhood Board. And is paid handsomely for his extra responsibilities. Even if he does no extra work to earn it
Is that the same Ola Kolade who was caught out telling lies – by a bishop?
https://insidecroydon.com/2018/05/03/tory-candidate-in-norbury-caught-out-lying-honest-to-god/
Statutory requirements
When a child dies, in any circumstances, it is important for parents and families to
understand what has happened and whether there are any lessons to be learnt.
The responsibility for ensuring child death reviews are carried out is held by ‘child death
review partners’, who, in relation to a local authority area in England, are defined as the
local authority for that area and any ICBs operating in the local authority area.
The lack of oversight and vigilence of various authorities and services in safeguarding vulnerable (including potentially dangerous) young people, particularly in Croydon, is deeply disturbing; but I also think it’s extremely important right now to remind everyone in the wake of Elianne Andam’s murder and the similarly horrific and heartbreaking murder of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar, in Southport, that however repulsive Sentamu and Axel Rudakubana’s actions were, we must always avoid rhetoric and attitudes that stigmatise and demonise children in care and/or those with a history of mental health and neurodivergent issues, the vast majority of whom pose NO harm to others (and, if anything, are far more likely to be *victims* of violent crime).
I’m not remotely suggesting anyone has displayed those attitudes here whatsoever, but I do worry when I read articles which (fairly and reasonably) highlight an offender’s time in care, a difficult family background, removal from mainstream education and/or mental health issues, because there’s always a danger that others make unfortunate, unreasonable and incorrect assumptions/generalisations as a result. The far-right race riots of last summer demonstrated what can happen when certain people allow false assumptions and generalisations (either in conscious bad faith, as certain politicians have done, or in complete ignorance) to thrive.
So, as I say, just a note of caution, whilst continuing to commend the vital and powerful journalism (speaking truth to power, as is the case here) we see on IC.