Child protection concerns had been raised several times about welfare of Liam Fee

A number of people had expressed concern about Liam Fee’s health and wellbeing during his short life.

During evidence at the trial of Liam’s mother Rachel Trelfa and her partner Nyomi Fee, it emerged childminder Heather Farmer alerted a care watchdog over fears the toddler was being hurt by someone.

The witness, who looked after Liam at her home in Fife from July 2012 until January the following year, was in tears as she told the court she had been so worried about him that she could not sleep.

She called the Scottish Childminding Association and the Care Inspectorate over her concerns after he turned up with scratches and bruises to his face, just days after arriving with a bruised head and legs which his mother had said he obtained from falling out of his cot.

She told Trelfa about alerting the care watchdog and social services but the couple brought him back the next day. She later told them she could not look after Liam any more.

The couple then enrolled Liam into a private nursery in Kirkcaldy to attend two days a week.

He started at the Sunshine Nursery in March 2013 but staff soon started noticing bruises and recorded the incidents using paper diagrams.

Manager Kimberly Trail said Trelfa told them he was “nipping himself” and added that she thought her son had autism.

But more injuries were appearing on the toddler, including a bruised bottom, swollen lip, black eye and bruising to his ears and nails.

By June, staff had contacted social services with their concerns before an angry Fee withdrew Liam from the nursery.

Another concerned woman who knew the couple said she had contacted social workers after she saw them outside a shop in Fife in September 2013 and thought the toddler looked “deathly”.

Patricia Smith said something “felt wrong” when she spotted Liam sitting in his buggy with a blanket over his head.

“The stillness. There was something deathly about it. He was too still. It was very strange,” she said.

“I didn’t know if he was drugged or dead.”

She said the incident had happened when she was on her lunch break and on returning to her office she phoned social work.

On day 15 of the trial, the court heard from a senior social worker who admitted Liam had dropped “off the radar” for a period of time.

Karen Pedder, a team manager with child protection at Fife Council (pictured), dealt with concerns about Liam in 2013.

She spoke about a meeting with social work, police and health representatives to discuss the toddler after concerns were raised by the childminder about an injury.

A social worker and police officer were sent to the couple’s home in January that year but Ms Pedder, 45, said a ”plausible” explanation had been given that Liam had “bumped his head” and there was no criminal action taken.

The social worker who had been dealing with the case then went off sick in April and it was not looked at again until there was a contact made by the nursery in June, she said.

Questioning another witness, defence QC Mark Stewart told the court there had been “ongoing social work awareness and contact with the family” from January 2013 through to the time Liam died, none of which resulted in action being taken against the couple.

Senior investigating officer Detective Inspector Rory Hamilton said outside court that while police had dealings with the pair in relation to previous convictions for minor offences, he was not aware of any issues after they had moved to Fife.

Asked about the police accompanying a social worker to the address in 2013, Detective Supt Gary Cunningham, of Police Scotland’s Major Investigation Team in East Scotland, said it would be a matter for the local division.

Commenting on whether he thought there had been failings in the abuse not being stopped sooner, he said: “That’s not really for us to comment on whether we thought there were failings or not. There’s maybe a separate process that division could look at, but from a major investigation team stance we got brought in following the death of this child.”

He added: “Social work and the police in general have a lot of strategies in place to ensure the safety of children.

“It is upsetting and horrific when unfortunately and very occasionally these cases do surface where we see children being abused and I think everybody in the community has a focus, and should have a focus, on child protection, raising any reports when they think children are at risk.

“Then we will all be in a better position to ensure that children are better protected and we can intervene to ensure justice is done when we have individuals that do target children.”

Catalogue of abuse couple inflicted on young boys

Details of the horrific abuse inflicted upon two young boys were laid bare over the course of the Liam Fee trial.

The two youngsters, both of primary school age, were subjected to painful and degrading treatment at the women’s hands.

The court heard that among a catalogue of examples of bad treatment, the boys were:

• Denied access to the toilet then forced to take freezing showers when they wet the bed;
• Beaten, smacked and called humiliating names;
• Deprived of food as a punishment;
• One was tied to a locked home-made cage at night-time;
• Another was tied naked to a chair and left alone in the dark in a room with snakes and rats in boxes.

The evidence emerged over two weeks of evidence during the trial, in which more than 20 hours of recorded interviews conducted separately with the boys were played to the jury.

The Crown began with hearing from the youngster the couple wrongly blamed for Liam’s death, who was questioned by a female police officer and a male social worker on various occasions in the weeks after the toddler died.

The interviews started when the small boy dressed in jeans and a T-shirt walked in and sat on a sofa, tucking his legs up beside him.

The two adults spent a great deal of time building up a rapport with him.

As would be expected with many young children speaking to adults they do not know, the conversation started with him replying in one-word answers, mainly “yes” and “fine”.

He came out of his shell to talk about his favourite toys and movies but retreated again when they started to ask him questions relevant to the case.

Then, slowly, details of the horror of what he endured emerged.

The jury heard the boy tell how he was not allowed to get up to go to the toilet during the night, which sometimes meant he would wet the bed.

He told interviewers he would then ”have to get a shower, a cold one” as a punishment, which would leave him ”shaking”.

The boy said he would then have to stand on a towel in the corridor of the house and would have to drip dry there, sometimes without even a vest on.

Nyomi Fee would show she was angry by calling him ”dirty boy”.

He later told how he had been tied to a locked home-made cage during the night.

The boy told police his hands and feet would be bound with cable ties to the makeshift cage constructed out of a fireguard and bars.

He told how his hands would swell up and was called ”pudding hands” by Fee.

The child also described how he would sometimes be naked in the cage and had his hands tied behind his back on occasion.

At other times he would be tied to a cot with a dressing-gown cord and coat belts.

The same boy also said he fell unconscious when Fee put her foot on his neck as he lay on a floor. She also smacked and punched the child during the attack.

The trial further heard how the boy tried to flee on three separate occasions from the Fees’ house, and had even made a rope out of bandages to aid his escape.

“I tried to run away because of bad treatment,” the boy said.

Later, it was the turn of the second boy, who said he was banned from going to the toilet in the night but given cold showers “for 15 or 20 minutes” if he wet the bed.

One day he spent the whole day in a cold shower, drip drying in between.

In the video interviews, the boy said Fee tied him naked to a chair and left him alone in a room all night in the dark, with snakes and rats in boxes.

The boy, who said he is scared of the dark, said the snakes included a boa constrictor which he was told “eats naughty little boys”.

He said he “felt unsafe” with both women and was “scared” of being punished when he stayed with them.

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