R (Worthington) v Senior Coroner for Cumbria [2018] EWHC 3386 (Admin)
When public funding for deserving families at inquests is so hard to come by it is mystifying how the Legal Aid Agency can make a decision to spend their limited funds on an apparently unmeritorious challenge to inquest conclusions by one who was involved, in the most appalling way, in the circumstances leading to the death of the deceased.
In the Worthington case, the acknowledged motivation of the abusive father in bringing his challenge was to try to hide his actions in the lead up to his daughter’s death from those who might look at her Record of Inquest (ROI) in the future, yet his claim was brought with the benefit of public funding.
Poppi’s death
The account of how Poppi Worthington met her death is an extremely sad and disturbing story. Poppi was 13 months old when she died at her home. When Mr (now Lord) Justice Peter Jackson considered this case in the family court proceedings in 2014 and 2016[1] he concluded that in the hours before Poppi’s death, the Claimant, her father, had perpetrated a penetrative anal assault on her, either using his penis or some other unidentified object. Poppi died shortly afterwards from a cause which the Judge was unable to ascertain.
The fresh inquest held in 2017[2], revisited the issue of whether Paul Worthington had sexually assaulted Poppi prior to her death and, if so, whether that had caused or contributed to her death. In a detailed document of over 100 pages the Coroner set out his reasoned factual findings on the extensive expert and factual evidence. He concluded that Paul Worthington had anally penetrated Poppi in his bedroom and then left Poppi to sleep beside him in such a position that her breathing was compromised, either due to the position of the bedclothes, her position within the bed, or overlaying, or a combination of all three. The anal penetration had not caused her death. Rather, the Coroner concluded that Poppi had died from asphyxia resulting from obstruction of her airways whilst she was asleep in her father’s bed.
The Judicial Review claim
Paul Worthington specifically accepted that the Coroner was required to make a finding of fact as to whether a penetrative assault had occurred. He did not challenge that finding. Indeed he could hardly have done so given that a High Court judge had twice previously come to a similar conclusion about his despicable abuse of his baby daughter.
Mr Worthington’s complaint was that the Coroner had recorded in box 3 of the Record of Inquest[3] that:
“…at some time after 2.30am, [Poppi] was taken from her cot to a double bed where she was anally penetrated. She subsequently went to sleep in the double bed with an adult sleeping close to her… her ability to breathe was compromised by her unsafe sleeping environment…”
Mr Worthington judicially reviewed the Coroner’s conclusion. His case was that the words above in italics trespassed into the wider circumstances of the death in a way that was not permitted in a non-Article 2 inquest. As the anal penetration had not caused Poppi’s death, he argued it could not be relevant to “how” she died, and so should not have appeared on the Record of Inquest.