Tracey Connelly, the mother of “Baby P”, has asked the Parole Board to release her from prison again, after being recalled for breaching her licence conditions for a second time.
Connelly, 45, is being held at HMP Low Newton in County Durham, where she has become a regular member of an informal group known as the “Friday Club”. The group of about eight women meet for cake, crisps and fizzy drinks, while styling one another’s hair, applying make-up and discussing the events of the week.
Her latest bid for freedom will centre on whether the board believes she has genuinely changed, or whether she has become adept at presenting the answers expected by prison and probation staff.
Connelly was sentenced in 2009 after admitting causing or allowing the death of her 17-month-old son, Peter, who was beaten to death by her boyfriend Steven Barker and his brother Jason Owen in August 2007.
Peter had suffered more than 50 injuries, including a broken back, damage to his fingernails and toenails and a torn earlobe. His body was found in a bloodstained cot in the family home in Tottenham.
The property was described as being in extreme squalor, with flea infestation and human and animal faeces on the floors. Peter had been on the child protection register for eight months and had been seen 60 times by police, health professionals and social workers from Haringey before his death.
Connelly was given an Imprisonment for Public Protection order, with a minimum term of five years. Unlike a fixed sentence, the order meant she could only be released if the Parole Board was satisfied that the risk she posed could be safely managed in the community.
She was first released in 2013, after serving six years including time on remand, but was recalled 18 months later for breaching her licence conditions. The breaches involved secret online relationships and encouraging another resident of her accommodation to engage in inappropriate behaviour.
After several unsuccessful parole applications, she was released again in 2022, despite opposition from the then Justice Secretary Dominic Raab. At that hearing, she said she had known “deep down” that Barker was abusing Peter but had wanted to believe in what she described as her romantic fantasy.
“I wanted my Prince Charming and unfortunately my children paid for that,” she told the panel.
She returned to prison in August 2024 after forming an online relationship with a married man, failing to disclose it to probation officers and deleting messages and intimate photographs. Connelly said she had been embarrassed that the man was married, but supervisors were concerned that she had concealed the relationship despite knowing that honesty about her personal life was a condition of her release.
Connelly tells Parole Board she would avoid children
At her latest hearing, Connelly described herself as a “terrible mother” and accepted that she could be manipulative. She told the panel that she would avoid children if released and would not enter a relationship with anyone who had children, even after her licence restrictions ended.
“I was crap with my own children,” she said. “I don’t want to be around other people’s children because I know how bad I was with my own.”
She said she hoped to find love but did not want to live with a partner. “I want a relationship. I just don’t want to live with someone again. I want my own space. I want my own home,” she said.
Connelly also promised to be open about future relationships, including relationships involving BDSM, sex clubs or threesomes. She told the board that she would contact police and end any relationship if she discovered that a partner had a sexual interest in children or had committed offences against them.
“I would never sit back and watch that happen again,” she said.
A prison insider described Connelly as manipulative and said she understood what officers, psychologists and probation staff expected her to demonstrate if she wanted to be released. The insider also alleged that her relationships with other women in prison and secret love letters had previously breached prison rules.
“The concerns are much more complicated than that,” the insider said. “They involve trust, honesty, emotional dependence and whether she can be relied upon to make sensible decisions when nobody is watching her.”
Connelly has been a member of the Friday Club since an earlier period at HMP Low Newton, where she was held between 2015 and 2022. The insider said she was part of the main group but not one of its leaders, and suggested that associating with other prisoners could offer protection because women inmates strongly resent those convicted of offences against children.
Peter’s father, now 62, said in 2024 that he could never forgive Connelly for her role in their son’s death. “It will never go away,” he said. “That’s why I can never forgive her, and I never will.”
Former Metropolitan Police detective Jon Wedger, who interviewed Connelly two days before Peter died and alerted authorities to the danger he believed she posed to the child, has said he does not believe she can be rehabilitated. His assessment of her character is disputed only as an opinion in the account before the board.
Asked why she should be trusted not to breach her licence conditions for a third time, Connelly said: “I can’t give you a magic answer as to what’s different now.”
The Parole Board must now decide whether her latest admissions and assurances demonstrate a sufficiently reduced risk for her to be released into the community.
