A father who was identified by a high court judge as having probably sexually assaulted his baby daughter shortly before she died may be allowed to give evidence from a secret location after facing daily intimidation, a pre-inquest hearing has heard.
Paul Worthington, 48, has always denied harming 13-month-old Poppi, who died in December 2012, but a ruling published in January this year concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, he had assaulted her before her death.
At a hearing on Friday preceding a fresh inquest into her death Worthington’s lawyers said he had been intimidated every day since the high court ruling.
Paul Clark claimed Worthington was in “real danger” and suggested that he risked being attacked on the way to court if he was asked to give evidence.
During the pre-inquest hearing in Carlisle, which Worthington did not attend, his lawyers asked for a “risk assessment” to be carried out and for Worthington to be granted the right to give evidence from a secret location if called upon.
Clark said: “There is a possibility of real danger arising to Paul Worthington from this process. I would suggest that officers should conduct a full risk assessment in the circumstances.
“There is a level of risk and level of intimidation that Paul Worthington experiences on a daily basis.”
Worthington, from Barrow-in-Furness, has been in hiding since the high court ruling. The Crown Prosecution Service is deciding whether to charge him in relation to Poppi’s death.
David Roberts, the senior coroner for Cumbria, agreed that Worthington was at risk.
“I don’t disagree, the matter needs to be managed. It is something we need to address.”
He said he would give “careful consideration” to the venue for the full inquest, which is expected to be held in the autumn.
Roberts said he was hopeful the CPS would announce its decision soon, preferably before another pre-inquest hearing listed for 25 July.
Authorities had sought to keep details around Poppi’s death private, but legal applications by the media meant the high court judgment on the case was made public earlier this year.
The new inquest, ordered after the judgment, will look into how Poppi died and whether any government agencies could have done more to protect her.
Counsel to the inquest, Alison Hewitt, said: “The inquest must investigate and address, seek to ascertain the question of who Poppi was, but also the question of how, when and where Poppi came by her death.
“The how she came by her death has two elements which are, of course, what her medical cause of death was, and how that medical cause of death came about.”
She said the inquest would explore whether any agency knew about risks to Poppi and, if so, what steps were taken.
Although arrested after Poppi’s death, Worthington was never charged. Failures in the first police investigation meant crucial forensic evidence was not secured. It included the girl’s nappy and her bedding. A second police inquiry in 2014 sent a file of evidence to the CPS, which found there was insufficient evidence to charge Worthington.
As pressure grew on the authorities after the publication of Justice Peter Jackson’s ruling, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said one of three Cumbria police officers it investigated could be sacked if found guilty of gross incompetence. A second officer has been given management advice but a third retired and did not face disciplinary proceedings.
The CPS, which had previously refused to review its files on the case, announced shortly afterwards that it would re-examine the evidence.
Several reports into the death, including the IPCC inquiry, are being kept secret until the conclusion of the second inquest.
Poppi died eight hours after her mother had put her to bed in a healthy condition at their home in Barrow-in-Furness.
In his ruling, Jackson concluded: “A healthy child with no medical condition or illness was put to bed by her mother one evening and brought downstairs eight hours later by her father in a lifeless state and with troubling injuries. Careful assessment of the meticulous pathological and paediatric evidence has clearly established that the injuries were the result of trauma from outside the body.”
Richard Rhodes, the police and crime commissioner for Cumbria, called in Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to investigate Cumbria police after the judge’s ruling.
The detectives involved in the first investigation dismissed a report by the Home Office pathologist Dr Alison Armour, who concluded Poppi was the victim of a sexual assault by a man, believing instead that the pathologist may have jumped to conclusions. As a result, there was no proper investigation for nine months, neither forensic evidence nor the house were secured, no senior officer visited the home and Worthington’s computer was not analysed.
Previous inquiries into the death have either been cursory or heard in secret. An earlier fact-finding judgment into the death from March 2014, also by Jackson, had been kept private so as not to prejudice any criminal proceedings. An inquest in October 2014 took only seven minutes to declare Poppi’s death “unexplained”.
The new inquest, expected to last a week, will be held in public and Roberts said it would be clear and transparent.
