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A FATHER WHO killed six of his children by setting the family home ablaze will have to live the rest of his life facing “hatred and hostility” in Britain, his lawyer told a court today.
Mick Philpott, 56, and his 32-year-old wife Mairead were found guilty on Tuesday of the manslaughter of the six children in a deliberate house fire in Derby, central England, on May 11 last year.
They will be sentenced Thursday, judge Kathryn Thirlwall said after hearing the defendants’ lawyers speak in mitigation at Nottingham Crown Court.
Prosecutors said the couple had set their home on fire in a bid to frame Philpott’s 29-year-old former live-in girlfriend and claim custody of her five children – four of which he fathered.
She had left the house three months earlier, taking her children and leaving just six youngsters for whom Philpott could claim welfare payments.
He was supposed to have rescued the children through a bedroom window, but the petrol-fuelled fire spread faster than he expected and the window would not open.
Philpott, who fathered 17 children by five different women, has already served jail time for the attempted murder of a previous girlfriend.
He achieved national notoriety in 2006 when his “layabout” lifestyle, funded by hefty welfare handouts that were more than double the average wage, hit the headlines and earned him the nickname “Shameless Mick”.
Philpott’s lawyer Anthony Orchard said in mitigation that despite his faults, “he was a very good father and loved those children”.
“There’s no evidence at any stage that he deliberately harmed any of them.
“He will have to live with the hatred and hostility of the press and the public for the rest of his life,” he added. Philpott fathered five of Mairead’s six children, who were all killed in the blaze. They were aged five to 13.
Her lawyer Shaun Smith claimed all the evidence showed that she was “an extremely good mother” but her husband had dominated their relationship.
“Her grief is overwhelming,” he told the court. “She will be forever known as a child killer.”
Third defendant
A third defendant, Paul Mosley, was also found guilty of manslaughter by the jury following an eight-week trial. The court heard that Mosley, who denies any involvement in the fire, joined Philpott for sexual encounters with Mairead before and after the blaze.
Newspapers vilified Mick Philpott on Wednesday, with some blaming his lifestyle on generous welfare payments.
Philpott, who claimed he had not washed for 12 weeks before the fire, was reported to be recouping £60,000 (€71,000 euros) a year in state handouts.
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Why was my comment deleted Journal.ie?
The Ukraine has one of the highest rates of HIV and drug resistant TB in the world.
@icaniwont: yeahhhhh!!! Let’s not help people if they’re sick.
@icaniwont: it’s just Ukraine, not The Ukraine. Just FYI.
@Nomad: that is recognised as a human rights violation by the UN. You neglect to mention that having HIV is commonly used to deny residency rights, work permits and travel visas. It is a discriminatory practice that does little to prevent transmission but contributed massively to discrimination and stigma.
The best way to prevent transmission is to ensure that people get tested and are diagnosed and receive access to treatment to prevent onwards transmission. The best way to make this happen is to destigmatise the process and provide adequate access to treatment which represses viral load and prevents transmission. The worst way to do that is to continue perpetrate or replicate stigmatising practices. That is what all the best practice evidence shows and you will see that the countries that have such regulations don’t have have great detection rates and do not have lower transmission rates, they just discriminate unfairly against people because they have HIV which is not the end goal or desired result of any health policy.
The best way to prevent transmission is to be celebate. The second best way is to only have sex with one other who also only has sex with you.
@Tom Mullally: Is that your approach Father Mullally?
@Tom Mullally: Telling people to have less sex has never ever ever ever worked.
You can tell god-fearing evangelicals they’ll go to hell for all eternity for pre-marital sex, and still end up with eye-watering teen pregnancy rates.
The reason is obvious: access to services. It seems covid was the primary impetus to roll out the remote testing service, but even before the pandemic, it was incredibly difficult to get appointments even in Dublin (never mind outside Dublin). Many clinics didn’t even want to see you if you had no symptoms of anything, because they were so underresourced.
Yet you get the same tired response: be absinent and you’ll be grand. Because asking people not to have sex has always worked out so well historically…
PrEP is extremely effective in getting HIV transmission rates down, but it’s still only available in a limited number of venues with limited appointment availability.
Just a case of party mad and horniness after lockdowns.
@Jensen Bhroin: sounds very similar to covid cert that was welcomed
@SquintEastwood: ahhhhh nice work there. And the level of intimacy required to transmit covid is just the same as with HIV?
If we had meaningful access to PrEP rates would fall like a stone. 56 Dean St in London has done amazing work here. From a human perspective it’s just the right thing to do and being cold-hearted, a lifetime of PrEP is less than 1% of the cost of HIV treatments and interventions.
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