A relative of murdered schoolboy Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, six, who died in 2020 after being killed by his step-mother following an horrific campaign of abuse, says the hardest part of his death is knowing just how long he had to endure it.
In an emotional interview, Bernie Dixon, who lives in London and whose mother Madeleine is cousin to Arthur’s grandmother, told a new BBC Sounds podcast examining Britain’s ‘ghost children’ how the little boy had loved going to school, and ‘wanted to be a superhero.’
Speaking to journalist Terri White in the first episode of the Radio 5 Live series Finding Britain’s Ghost Children, Dixon said she struggled with knowing that the little boy had endured long-term abuse.
Arthur’s father, Thomas Hughes, and step-mother, Emma Tustin, were jailed for his manslaughter and murder respectively in 2022 after a campaign of torture.
Signed off by social workers shortly before his death in June 2020, Arthur was withdrawn from his school in Solihull and left in the hands of Hughes and Tustin.
Solihull schoolboy Arthur Labinjo-Hughes (pictured) was killed by his step-mother Emma Tustin in 2020. In a new BBC 5 Live podcast Finding Britain’s Ghost Children, his relative Bernie Dixon says she still struggles with knowing that the little boy endured long-term abuse before his death
The pair inflicted a ‘cruel and systematic campaign of cruelty’ against him, which included forcing him to stand for up to 14-hours a day alone, depriving him of food and water and poisoning him with salt.
Tustin was given a life sentence with a minimum of 29 years after she killed Arthur by repeatedly slamming his head on a hard surface.
Hughes was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years after being found guilty of manslaughter – but cleared of murder – for encouraging the killing, including by sending a text message to Tustin 18 hours before the fatal assault telling her ‘just end him’.
Speaking through tears, Dixon tells the podcast: ‘Regardless of the outcome and the situation of what happened to Arthur what devastates more is the amount of time he endured it. How he would have physically broke down, what he was thinking himself in those moments – and we can’t have other children experiencing that.’
Bernie Dixon, whose mother Madeleine is cousin to Arthur’s grandmother, told the new podcast how the little boy had loved going to school, and ‘wanted to be a superhero’
Arthur Labinjo-Hughes’ stepmother Emma Tustin is serving a life sentence after torturing, abusing and murdering the six-year-old boy. Right: Hughes, 29, was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years after being found guilty of manslaughter – but cleared of murder – for encouraging the killing, including by sending a text message to Tustin 18 hours before the fatal assault telling her ‘just end him’
The new BBC podcast focuses on children who’ve ‘fallen off the radar’ in the UK; figures for children not attending school full-time have doubled following the pandemic
She also recalls how she took the call telling her about the boy’s death, saying: ‘It was late at night and I’d just finished my shift.
‘Madeleine phoned and I could hear that she was really upset. She couldn’t articulate her words at first. She said Thomas’ new partner had just beaten Arthur to death.
‘I didn’t even really know what to say. What do you say to something like that?’
Portraying her family member as a fun boy, she said he loved sausage rolls and had wanted to be a footballer or Batman when he grew up, saying that he loved learning and ‘was always ready to go to school’.
The podcast focuses on children who’ve ‘fallen off the radar’ in the UK, and sees White travel across the UK to delve into why children are missing from school registers.
In February 2022, Robert Halfon, the then Chair of the Education Select Committee, estimated around 124,000 school children in the UK were out of full-time education – by summer 2022, that figure is thought to have risen to 140,843, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), more than double pre-pandemic levels.
Halfon told MPs such children were ‘lost in the system’ and ‘subject to potential safeguarding hazards, county lines gangs, online harm and, of course, awful domestic abuse’.
The first episode of Terri White: Finding Britain’s Ghost Children is out now on BBC Sounds
Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes: The parents whose abuse of Arthur shocked nation
Thomas Hughes and Emma Tustin
Emma Tustin, 33, is serving a 29-year prison sentence at HMP Peterborough after being convicted of Arthur’s murder at her home in Solihull, west Midlands, on December 3.
The evil stepmother killed the young boy by repeatedly slamming his head on a hard surface after she and his father Thomas Hughes, 30, force-fed him food laden with salt.
Details of Arthur’s cruel abuse and treatment, including being poisoned with salt, emerged during the Tustin’s trial at Coventry Crown Court and caused widespread shock, revulsion and grief.
The youngster had been subjected to months of ‘unimaginable’ abuse by Hughes and Tustin before he was murdered during lockdown on June 17 last year.
In one haunting video, Arthur was seen struggling to stand before slumping to the floor of the living room.
His father, Hughes, who was sentenced to 21 years in prison for manslaughter, is due to appeal against his sentence.
Both sentences will be also challenged by Attorney General Suella Braverman under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.
Tustin is currently housed at HMP Peterborough and Hughes at HMP Wakefield.
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