13-Month-Old Baby Murdered By Abusive Foster Parents After Being Taken Away From Mom By Child Services

A woman from the U.K. opened up on Thursday regarding the death of her baby in the hands of a foster mother months after the child was taken away from her by social services, with the foster mom being convicted of murdering the baby.

Laura Corkill spoke in an interview about how social services took her baby from her due to her past as a victim of abuse, and how they put her child, Leiland-James Micheal Corkill, up for adoption to foster parents Laura and Scott Castle, according to the BBC.

Corkill, who had undergone visits from social workers for months while pregnant in an attempt to convince them to allow her to keep her baby despite her past as being a victim of abuse, found out the day after she gave birth that her child Leiland-James would be taken from her by social services.

Although allowed to see her child weekly while she attempted to go through the proper processes to get him back, social services reportedly put her child up for adoption, which Corkill maintains she was not informed of. Corkill was also supposed to meet Laura Castle before the adoption, but social workers reportedly gave “excuse after excuse” to prevent them from meeting.

Castle received Leiland-James in August 2020, and she reportedly started abusing him physically and emotionally, expressing distaste and even hatred toward the child to her husband Scott, although these texts and her abuses were hidden from social workers at large, the Guardian reported.

She did express to social workers that she was not bonding with Leiland-James and that she didn’t love him, and eventually, by December 2020, the Child Looked After Review supported not moving forward with Castle’s adoption of Leiland-James.

In January 2021, Castle lost her temper at Leiland-James after he reportedly would not stop crying, and violently shook him to death. She was convicted of murder and child cruelty by May of this year, and will be serving a minimum of 18 years for her crimes.

“What we know now, from the trial and this review, is that Laura Castle deliberately and repeatedly misled and lied to social workers about vitally important aspects of her life, including her mental and physical health, her alcohol use and debts,” John Readman, Cumbria county council executive director, said.

“Why did they place him there? Why did it take them so long to pick up on it? They should have canceled the adoption order,” Corkill said about Castle.

“I lost count of how many times I asked for my baby back. It's as though I've been wiped off the face of the earth. When he came home, it was in a wooden box,” she concluded.