Sex offender who allowed lover to abuse child is jailed

A convicted child sex offender who let his partner’s baby son die of abuse in his own home was jailed for two years and three months yesterday.

Scots-born Paul Husband, 33, watched as two-month-old Rhys constantly wailed in excruciating pain as his mother Claire Biggs, a crack addict, inflicted a catalogue of sickening injuries.

Husband only called for help once before Rhys died with 13 fractured ribs and a broken shoulder and wrist.

Rhys’s tragic death had chilling echoes of the cases involving Baby P and Brandon Muir after Biggs, 27, repeatedly escaped the attention of social workers in London.

Husband, originally from Mastrick in Aberdeen, was convicted of indecently assaulting a former lover’s child in Scotland when he was 18 – but his criminal past was never checked after he moved to the capital.

It emerged in court that Husband was caught rubbing himself against a 10-year-old boy. He was convicted of lewd and libidinous behaviour but his criminal past was never properly checked by Newham Borough social services after Biggs moved into his flat with baby Rhys.

It is thought Scottish police had not put the conviction on the Police National Computer and it was only after the death of Rhys that the truth emerged.

Sentencing him, Judge Lindsay Burn QC said: “The jury has convicted you of cruelty to a child in that you failed to get Rhys medical help when it was obvious that such help was required.

“They acquitted you of causing any of the injuries which put Rhys in need of such help. They were satisfied that Rhys’s mother was solely responsible for injuring him.

“Certainly on one occasion you failed to get Rhys the medical help you knew he needed for the distress he was in.

“Rhys was a tiny baby and his distress on more than one occasion must have been considerable.

“The baby was vulnerable and you were acting in a position of trust, acting as his father although it is true that you did not have any experience of looking after children.”

Husband, who was also disqualified from working with children for five years, could be freed within a year because the sentence takes account of the 66 days he has already spent in custody.

Rhys had come under the care of Camden and Newham boroughs in London. Biggs’s first child was taken away at birth but she was allowed to keep him Like Baby P’s mother, Biggs avoided health and social workers’ checks on her newborn by using temporary addresses, including women’s refuges, and repeatedly missed appointments with health visitors. But still no-one in authority identified the little boy as being at risk.

Baby P, who died when he was 17 months old, was killed in August 2007 while in the care of his mother and two men in Haringay.

Biggs and Husband were convicted of child cruelty in February following a trial at Inner London Crown Court.

Biggs, who lived with Husband, a former homeless drug addict, in Plaistow, east London, was jailed last month for eight years after being convicted of child cruelty.

Husband, who has 15 convictions for 31 offences and once spent three years in prison for robbery, was found guilty on the basis of wilful negligence.

Biggs, then 19, came to the attention of social services when in 2001 she became a mother for the first time.

A hospital social-work team considered, but never implemented, child-protection measures after she became pregnant with Rhys by another man, before meeting Husband.

On May 8, 2006 Biggs made a 999 call to say her son had stopped breathing and her partner was “trying to bring him back”.

He died in Newham University Hospital from a “large number” of broken bones caused by severe force on three different occasions.

Judge Burn slammed the probation report for its “serious flaws”.

Heroin addict Robert Cunningham, 23, is serving 10 years in prison after being convicted last month at the High Court in Glasgow of the culpable homocide of 23- month-old Brandon Muir, a case which prompted a review of child protection in Dundee.

Brandon’s grandparents had contacted social services because they were concerned about their prostitute daughter Heather Boyd’s relationship with him, but said their concerns were not taken up.