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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