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Shrine to Salma ElSharkawy at Miller's Dale in Derbyshire |
Salma's final days as a lonely, frightened girl, longing to be back home in London
Roisin Gadelrab and Richard Osley discover shocking new evidence about Salma ElSharkawy’s stay in Derbyshire
MISERABLE, and miles from home, Salma ElSharkawy reached for a packet of painkillers and made a half-hearted attempt at an overdose.
By all accounts the frightened 12-year-old didn’t take many tablets but there was enough of a scare for her to spend a night in hospital.
When she was returned to her care home in Derbyshire, she put her head on her pillow, looked up at the ceiling and wished she was back in London and with her friends in Gospel Oak.
A month later, she was killed in a car crash, unaware at the time that she was potentially on the brink of getting her wish and being reunited with her father for the first time in two years.
Investigating social workers were paving the way for her return to Camden and, privately at least, were willing to concede she would be better off with her father.
While the contents of Salma’s secret diary were still being kept under lock and key by the authorities this week, a New Journal special investigation has retraced the final weeks of her life in and around the sleepy town of Buxton in the Peak District.
Visiting the places she stayed and talking to the people she met, reporters have found:
• External social workers were becoming more and more convinced that Salma should return to live with her father.
• Salma tried to stab herself after learning she was going to be taken 200 miles from her family and friends in Camden to the ‘Adventure Care’ unit near Buxton.
• She complained of loneliness and being kept away from other children while at the care home.
• Salma struggled to sleep in the care home, often choosing to stay on the floor rather than her bed. In the last four months of Salma’s life, she lived in a converted stables cottage run by Adventure Care Limited in the mining village Stoney Middleton, close to Buxton.
She was educated alone with no contact with children her own age, a world away from her inner-city upbringing in Gospel Oak.
Salma, a pupil at Haverstock School in Chalk Farm, sought sanctuary among her favourite horses and buried her troubles in art therapy classes but those who knew her best suggest what she really wanted was some friends of her own age.
The New Journal has found mounting evidence that Salma was desperately unhappy in the custody of Adventure Care, once running away but returning on her own, another time refusing to enter the building until after midnight. When asked about her stay, Camden Council, who paid thousands of pounds a week to place her there rather than choosing a foster home closer to Camden, said her care was still under investigation.
Regardless of their unenlightening press statements, it is now becoming increasingly clear that Salma was largely having a wretched time.
On one occasion she smashed a window to enable her to speak to a passing child.
Her father Walid ElSharkawy said she was told not to speak to them, adding: “She was living with adults, she was socially deprived.”
Salma often complained of headaches. Medics put this down to stress. In all, she is thought to have been taken to hospital four times, three times with headaches and a fourth after downing a handful of pills.
Her father said her court-appointed guardian believed this was Salma’s way of getting to know the area so she could run away again.
Friends said she had never wanted to go to Derbyshire in the first place and was tricked into coming out of hiding after running away from a foster placement in Camden.
She was forced into a car, tears rolling down her cheeks and driven straight up the motorway. The breathtaking views across the Peak District that rolled past the windows will have hardly registered with her.
Some sources have suggested that when she was first told that she would be sent to live in the countryside she tried to stab herself, one incident in several where she drew attention to her depression through self-harm.
The New Journal has revealed previously how she tried to jump from a balcony.
Friends and family say Salma’s last few weeks in Buxton were a mix of loneliness, despair and a desire to return home.
What is for sure, and it is unlikely that Salma would have had an inkling of it, was that after two years away from her parents, social workers were making a stronger and stronger case for her return to Camden.
An independent social worker went as far as recommending Mr ElShark-awy be given a full parental assessment, increasing the chances of her being placed with him.
It wasn’t until two weeks after Salma’s death that Mr ElSharkawy received the final report.
It said: “Mr ElSharkawy presented as a loving father who was devoted to his daughter and eager to do his best for her”, adding that he had “made a great effort to establish a welcoming home for his daughter” and had enrolled in parenting classes. Had Salma not died, the author said, she would have recommended Mr ElSharkawy be given a full parenting assessment – bringing him one step closer to regaining custody of his daughter.
He said yesterday: “I was given a ticket allowing me to see Salma on July 7. That was the day Salma was buried. The hope had gone by the time the report arrived. She would have flown in the air if she had known that I had passed the assessment. We were looking forward to it so much. Salma would have definitely come back.”
Opinion is split on whether sending children from Camden to somewhere as remote as the Peak District is a wise move. Some social workers in the borough believe it can break a cycle of behaviour and is a good emergency resort.
But you don’t have to probe too far before eyebrows are raised.
Salma’s mother Mary O’Sullivan said: “Salma told me she was lonely. She would say come and see me. I thought she might be a bit nearer. All her friends were here (in Camden).
“We needed Salma to be safe but I thought she was only going to be there for two weeks. It was so far away. I went there a couple of times. I had a nice meal with Salma and we had a nice time and the lady was very nice.”
Even neighbours of Adventure Care’s headquarters, on an anecdotal level at least, were unsure of the wisdom of parachuting troubled kids into a place which must seem like the middle of nowhere.
“They take these troubled kids from Manchester and other cities because they get in trouble and have nothing to do,” said one, who has seen a string of children come and go. “Then they bring them up here where there’s even less to do.”
Salma was taken away from her parents in 2005 at the age of 10, shortly after her mother asked Camden’s social services for help with her care while her husband was working abroad.
She would regularly abscond from her foster carers, at first running to her parents. When she realised the police would find her there, she would sleep in stairwells of housing blocks. Possibly the borough’s youngest roughest sleeper at the time, she reportedly still tried to attend classes at Haverstock.
Mr ElSharkawy is campaigning to be given Salma’s secret journal – currently in the hands of police. He spent the last week taking his demonstration around Camden and will be moving to the Town Hall later this week.
Yesterday (Wednesday) he took an application to the Royal Courts of Justice asking for an injunction to ensure Camden Council maintains full transparency when looking into Salma’s case. Mr ElSharkawy has even vowed to spend the next year knocking on every single door in Camden asking people to sign a petition demanding Camden’s social workers get more training and are more accountable.
Those close to Salma said this week that while friends were back home, hanging around Queen’s Crescent and talking on their mobile phones, the lonely schoolgirl was telling people she would “die of depression” if she remained in Buxton.
Mr ElSharkawy said: “I was just a stone’s throw away from getting my daughter back. If they had moved a little earlier, Salma would be with me now. If they used their hearts from day one, Salma would never have gone to that place.”
See also
Silence on adventure centre
A tragic accident in tourist beauty spot
What the council said |
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