A father accused of sexually assaulting his baby daughter shortly before her death refused to answer 69 questions at her inquest.
Paul Worthington, who denies abusing 13-month-old Poppi before her sudden death in December 2012, cited an inquest rule which allows a witness to remain silent if they are at risk of incriminating themselves and to rely instead on previous statements.
The 49-year-old answered just a handful of basic biographical questions as he gave evidence at Cumbria coroner’s court on Wednesday. He declined to answer everything from what Poppi had worn to bed on the night of her death and what she’d had for tea to what sort of pornography he had been watching on his laptop that evening.
Before he went into the witness box Worthington lost a bid to be screened from journalists at the hearing. He had arrived at the court in Kendal under a blanket, flanked by two police officers as he sought to hide from waiting cameras.
Worthington had argued that his life was in danger if media representatives were allowed to see him as he gave evidence, despite many journalists having seen him before at earlier hearings and photos of him already being in the public domain.
Poppi’s mother sat in court next to her legal team and held her head in her hands for the most part before leaving about 40 minutes into Mr Worthington’s evidence.
His lawyers had claimed that a comment underneath an article about Poppi’s death on the Sun newspaper website amounted to a “real and immediate risk” to his life. His legal team also raised concerns about an article on the Mail Online last year in which Poppi’s grandparents called for him to be castrated.
But David Roberts, senior coroner for Cumbria, ruled that the media, including the Guardian, should be allowed to see Worthington as he was questioned about what he did. They are the public’s “eyes and ears”, he said, adding, “65 million people cannot come to Kendal to hear the evidence.”
But he allowed the court to shield Worthington from the public gallery by erecting a makeshift screen using room dividers, noticeboards and cloth, fixed with masking tape. This was to stop members of the public from “ogling” him or “making faces” at him, said Roberts.
Poppi died suddenly in December 2012 after she collapsed at home in Barrow-in-Furness.
In January 2016, Mr Justice Peter Jackson ruled at the family court that on the balance of probabilities, Worthington assaulted his daughter before her collapse.
But the Crown Prosecution Service later said there was insufficient evidence to charge him. Worthington has always maintained his innocence and before Wednesday had not given evidence in public into Poppi’s death. He had previously lost a bid to give evidence via videolink.
The hearing is the second inquest into the death, and was ordered by the high court after the first in 2014 lasted just seven minutes and called no evidence.
When Worthington eventually gave his evidence behind the screen on Wednesday he initially declined to answer a simple question posed by Alison Hewitt, counsel to the inquest, about when he first met Poppi’s mother.
But the coroner said he should answer, because not all queries were incriminatory. “It is not like you have seen on TV or perhaps in your own experience when you are interviewed by police in the police station and you can go no comment all the way through,” Roberts told the father.
Worthington eventually conceded that he had met Poppi’s mother in 2009, and they had an on-off relationship resulting in three children in two years: a boy and then Poppi and her surviving twin, who cannot be named for legal reasons. Their mother had three older children with other partners.
Yet Worthington repeatedly declined to answer most further questions, repeating 69 times a variation on: “I refer to my previous statement. I rely on the right not to answer questions under rule 22 [of the Coroners Rules 2013].”
Hewitt read through two contradictory statements Worthington had given about Poppi’s death, asking him repeatedly which account was correct. Had he put Poppi to bed or her mother? Who gave her a bath? What sort of porn was he watching on his laptop that night? The questions remained unanswered.
