Boy beaten to death by mother weeks after social services ended monitoring program

Social workers stopped monitoring the family of a three-year-old boy who was beaten to death by his mother just weeks before the fatal attack, it emerged yesterday.

Rosdeep “Rosie” Adekoya, 34, was originally charged with murdering her son Mikaeel Kular but pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh to the reduced charge of culpable homicide.

The single mother-of-five, an unemployed beauty therapist, told police on January 16 that he had disappeared overnight from the family home in the Scottish capital, sparking a search involving thousands of members of the public.

But the awful truth, revealed to a hushed courtroom yesterday, was that she had lost her temper with the son she found "hard to love" before launching a violent and sustained assault on the toddler.

Her personal internet history offered a shocking glimpse of her mindset at the time.

She carried out Google searches using the phrases, "I find it hard to love my son", "I love all of my children except one", "Why am I so aggressive with my son" and "Get rid of bruises".
Adekoya also cut Mikaeel out of family pictures she put on social media just weeks before he died.

One of the original images shows the three-year-old staring at his mother. But in the picture she shared on her “Rosie All Good” Instagram page, he was the only sibling to be cut out.

She also posted motivational messages as her son was dying. On January 12, she posted a quote from the novelist Paulo Coelho, saying: “Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once."

The second message, on January 13, the day before Mikaeel died, read: "As long as you are breathing you still have the chance for a better and happier life."

The handling of the case by social services raises disturbing questions about child care and will be the subject of a significant case review.

victorisnotamused wrote:Ah well, "there will be lessons learned".......again