Several “very stark” failures by probation services led to a dangerous man being categorised as low risk before murdering an entire family, an inquest has found.
Damien Bendall was found to be responsible for the “brutal and savage” murders of Terri Harris, 35, his pregnant partner; her children, John Paul Bennett, 13, and Lacey Bennett, 11; and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, 11, in September 2021.
However, there were “several very stark acts or omissions” by both the probation service and individuals that “accumulatively” contributed to the deaths, Peter Nieto, the senior coroner for Derby and Derbyshire, ruled, including clear signs that Bendall posed a serious danger to women and children.
Bendall, 33, murdered each member of the family, as well as Connie, who was there for a sleepover, with a claw hammer and raped Lacey during the attack at their home in Killamarsh, Derbyshire.
The brutality of the crime was such that he was sentenced to a whole-life order in December 2022, meaning he will die in prison.
Bendall had previous convictions for crimes including robbery, attempted robbery and grievous bodily harm and was serving a 17-month suspended sentence for arson when he carried out the murders.
The inquest was told that Bendall was given an “entirely inappropriate and dangerous” curfew that meant he was confined to the address of Harris, who he had been with for a few months.
While he was being fitted with the electronic tag, he told the fitter from a private contracting service: “If this relationship goes bad, I will murder my girlfriend and the children.” But these comments were not fed back to the probation service, even though they “should very clearly have been”, Nieto said.
The inquest also heard how the probation service was understaffed and workers felt stressed by unmanageable workloads.
It was told that, because of a flaw in how information was passed on in the probation system, there was no record that Bendall had been accused of violence by a previous partner and that he had been designated by Wiltshire police’s child sexual exploitation unit as having a “sexual risk of harm to girls”. Instead he was wrongly categorised as a low risk to partners and children.
One of the probation officers in charge of his case, Aisha Fatima, previously told the inquest that if she had known she “wouldn’t have allowed Bendall to reside at the address with Terri Harris and her children”.
Fatima had only worked at the service for six months and would not have been given his case if he had been correctly assessed as posing a high risk.
On Monday at the conclusion of the inquests into the four deaths, Nieto said: “In my judgment, there are several very stark omissions and also a very large number of individual acts or omissions that accumulatively contributed to the deaths.”
He added: “My conclusion is unlawful killing, contributed to by acts or omissions by the designated state agency for offending management in the course of Damien Bendall’s offender supervision and management.”
The probation service accepted 51 separate failings at Chesterfield coroner’s court, and accepted a catalogue of missed opportunities and lack of scrutiny concerning Bendall’s supervision going back several years.
Bendall’s history of serious and violent offences dating back to 2004 and of allegations of domestic abuse against a former partner and inappropriate contact with a vulnerable child were missed, due to a “failure to demonstrate sufficient professional curiosity”, Nieto said.
“That was an important piece of information to be prominently recorded in the probation report. If it had been, it appears to me inconceivable that Damien Bendall would not have been considered to be high risk to children.”
At the conclusion of the inquest, the probation service said changes made “can never undo the terrible loss or assuage the grief of those whose lives will never be the same again”.
Kim Thornden-Edwards, chief probation officer, said: “I am deeply sorry for the unacceptable failings in Damien Bendall’s supervision and the devastating impact these have had.
“We have already taken action to address the serious issues identified, including mandating domestic abuse checks, recruiting thousands more probation officers, and improving information-sharing. We will further urgently review our next steps in light of the coroner’s findings to ensure we have taken every action to keep the public safe.”
• This article was amended on 24 October 2023 to add a comment from Kim Thornden-Edwards received after publication.
