A court called him an innocent man, wrongly convicted of hurting his daughter. Eleven months after she was sent home to him, she was dead.
A Conviction, Then a Reversal
In 2007, Ben Butler was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to his infant daughter, Ellie, after she was taken to hospital with head and retinal injuries consistent, at the time, with shaken baby syndrome. Ellie went to live with her maternal grandparents while Butler served time for the conviction.
In 2010, the Court of Appeal quashed that conviction, ruling that new and evolving medical evidence meant the original verdict was unsafe — specifically finding there was "no rational basis" for a jury to rule out an unknown, non-abusive cause for Ellie's injuries, and that the trial judge's directions to the jury had contained serious errors. It's worth being precise about what this ruling actually meant: it wasn't a finding of Butler's innocence. It was a finding that the original conviction couldn't be considered safe given how the relevant medical understanding had changed since the trial. That distinction mattered enormously, and in the years that followed, it was largely lost.
A Court's Decision to Send Her Home
In 2012, a family court judge, Mrs Justice Mary Hogg, went further than simply acknowledging the quashed conviction. She formally declared Ben Butler the victim of a miscarriage of justice and ordered that Ellie, who had spent nearly five years living safely and happily with her grandparents, be returned to her parents' care — a decision made over the strong objections of Sutton Council's social services, who had assessed Butler as presenting a high ongoing risk.
The judge's ruling didn't just return Ellie to her parents. It also directed that agencies be formally notified of Butler's exoneration, a step that later reviews concluded had effectively stripped social services of any real power to continue monitoring or intervening in the family's situation going forward.
Eleven Months
Ellie went home to her parents, Ben Butler and Jennie Gray, in late 2012. On October 28, 2013 — eleven months later — she died at the family's home in Sutton, London, from catastrophic head injuries that forensic pathologists would later compare to those typically seen in high-speed car crashes.
Butler and Gray's account of what happened shifted as the investigation progressed, but ultimately centered on a claim that Ellie had suffered the injuries accidentally — first suggesting she'd been hurt playing with the family's dog, later that she'd fallen from a stool while imitating a children's television character. The pathologist who examined Ellie's injuries was unequivocal that this explanation didn't fit what he found.
Prosecutors alleged that Butler and Gray spent time after Ellie's death covering up what had actually happened — cleaning blood from clothing and constructing a story about an accidental fall — before placing the 999 call reporting an emergency, by which point investigators believe Ellie may already have died. Ellie's younger sibling was reportedly sent into the room under the pretense of fetching a slice of cake, and can be heard on the emergency call telling the operator that Ellie "won't wake up."
Trial and Conviction
Butler and Gray stood trial at the Old Bailey in 2016. Gray ultimately admitted to helping cover up evidence after Ellie's death, telling the court she had done so believing she was protecting an innocent man — testimony that, given everything that followed, sits uncomfortably alongside the outcome. She visited Butler in prison 190 times while he awaited trial.
On June 21, 2016, the jury convicted Ben Butler of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years. Upon the verdict being read, Butler shouted that he would "fight for the rest of my life," insisting he would appeal. Jennie Gray was convicted of child cruelty and sentenced to 42 months for offenses connected to covering up Ellie's death, including perverting the course of justice.
A Reckoning for the System That Sent Her Home
Ellie's death triggered a formal Serious Case Review by the Sutton Safeguarding Children Board, published the same day as Butler's conviction. Its conclusions were blunt: the family court's 2012 decision to exonerate Butler, combined with the order directing agencies to be informed of that exoneration, had a profound and damaging effect on how — or whether — any agency could continue protecting Ellie and her sibling from that point forward. The review found that Butler's legal exoneration, paired with the judge's characterization of him as a victim of a miscarriage of justice, had effectively handed full control of the situation to the parents, with local authority assessments and warnings sidelined in favor of an independent, court-appointed social work agency.
The review also highlighted a deeper, troubling pattern: that professionals had become so consumed by the legal and procedural questions surrounding Butler's exoneration that Ellie's own welfare, and her clearly expressed reluctance to leave her grandparents, were never properly centered in the decisions that ultimately determined her fate.
Notably, the judiciary — including Mrs Justice Hogg, who made the original decision to return Ellie to her parents — declined to cooperate with the review or provide any independent account of the reasoning behind that ruling, a gap the review's authors specifically noted as limiting how fully the case could be understood.
Where Things Stand Now
Ben Butler remains incarcerated, serving his life sentence with a minimum 23-year term. A 2018 coroner's inquest into Ellie's death affirmed that, while the agencies involved had made errors, those failings did not amount to the direct cause of her death — responsibility for that rested with her parents.
Ellie Butler's case remains one of the most cited examples in British child protection policy of how a family court ruling, made with the best available legal and medical understanding at the time, can have catastrophic consequences when it overrides the accumulated concerns of social workers, police, and a child's own extended family. The case prompted lasting calls for reform in how family courts weigh historical risk assessments against new legal findings, and for stronger safeguards when a previously convicted parent seeks the return of a child.
Sources
Murder of Ellie Butler — Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ellie_Butler
Against All Warnings: Ellie Butler — Morbidology
https://morbidology.com/against-all-warnings-ellie-butler/
Report: Sutton Safeguarding Children Board – Ellie Butler Serious Case Review — Care Appointments
https://careappointments.com/features/reports-resources/98388/report-sutton-safeguarding-children-board-ellie-butler-serious-case-review/
Murder of Ellie Butler — Grokipedia
https://grokipedia.com/page/Murder_of_Ellie_Butler