Jasmine Beckford

Jasmine Beckford weighed just 23lbs when she died from a savage blow inflicted by her stepfather
that dislodged her brain.
For the final months of her life he had kept her chained to a bed in a tiny attic. Her death was
finally attributed to brain damage although the pathologist found she had 40 other injuries covering
her face and body, including 20 broken bones. Some of the injuries happened in the days before she
died on 5 july 1984. Others went back months.Following their trial at the Old Bailey in spring 1985,
Beckford was jailed for ten years for jasmine's manslaughter while her mother, Beverley
Lorrington, was sentenced to 18 months for wilful neglect and cruelty.During her brief life Jasmine
had suffered leg fractures, broken ribs, burns and cuts- all at the hands of her stepfather Morris
Beckford.Beckford, who was born in jamaica in june, 1959, arrived in Britain as a nine-year-old with
two of his sisters, to be reunited with his parents. By the time he was 13 he had been accused of
stealing from his own home and was being beaten by both his parents. After attention by the Police
and NSPCC both of his parents were prosecuted for ill-treatment and neglect -the teenage Beckford
had been forced to sleep in an outhouse without a bed. Beckford was sent to a special school where
he met fellow pupil Beverly Lorrington. She was born in November 1959 in London. Her mother had
deserted the family when Beverley was only six months old.Beverley later claimed that her childhood
was a miserable succession of beatings by both her stepmother and her father.She began living with
Morris Beckford when she was 19 years old and several months pregnant with jasmine, who was not
Beckford's child. jasmine was born on 2 December 1979 in London and given the name jasmine
Lorrington. Shortly afterwards her birth records were changed at the insistence of Morris
Beckford.Two-and-a-half years later Beverley gave birth to jasmine's sister, Louise
Beckford.When she was only five months old, Louise was admitted to hospital with a broken arm and
eye haemorrhages. Doctors warned that her injuries were non-accidental.Three days later,
18-month-old jasmine was taken to the same hospital with a broken femur. jasmine was discharged from
hospital after six weeks. Two months later Morris Beckford was found guilty of assaulting Louise,
causing actual bodily harm, and given a suspended six-month jail term and a £250 fine.Five months
later, in April 1982, a case conference of professionals in Brent decided that both jasmine and
Louise, who had been with foster parents, should be returned home on a trial basis.Between April and
November 1982, Beverley spasmodically took jasmine to a day nursery.between january and june 1983,
she attended nursery school - but on increasingly irregular occasions. Her last recorded attendance
was 9 September 1983. The couple's third child,Chantelle, was born shortly before Christmas -
seven months before jasmine was to die.At 5.30pm on 5 july 1984 jasmine was dead on arrival at
hospital.That day, Lorrington had returned home to find Beckford carrying jasmine's lifeless
body downthe stairs. jasmine had been dead for some time. She had 20 broken bones, including ribs,
pelvis and pubic bone. She had cuts, bruises, grazes and cigarette burns over most of her body. She
had multiple fractures of her left leg and she was little more than a skeleton through lack of
food.At midnight the following day her parents were charged with her murder. Morris Beckford
immediately admitted killing jasmine.The postmortem results ran to seven pages and revealed an
appalling catalogue of abuse. The pathologist found dozens of injuries sustained through slaps and
hard punches only a day or so before her death - including the fatal brain injury. Although she was
three feet five inches tall,there was barely an inch of her body that did not carry evidence of
injury.It became clear that, after breaking her leg, Beckford had pinned jasmine to a bed with
body-building weights to stop her moving. He had then stuffed weights into jasmine's leg
warmers in a crude attempt to straighten the damaged limb. When she had cried out in pain he had
punched her so hard that he had left knuckle marks on her forehead. His idea of medicine, for a
child so obviously in distress, had been to administer rum and water or Guinness.When he eventually
hit her so hard on the head that she died, he had tried to revive her by giving her an electric
shock from a piece of flex attached to a plug.When that had failed, he refused to call an ambulance
and, instead, loaded her body into his sister-in-law's car to drive her to hospital. Please
remember Jasmine, and all other children who have died in similar circumstances. RIP ANGEL XXXXX