Podcast: Families' relief after special needs teaching assistant from Iwade found guilty of child cruelty

Victims’ families have spoken out about their relief after a jury found a special needs school teaching assistant guilty of child cruelty.

The 46-year-old was found to have subjected four pupils to acts of physical abuse that included pinching, hitting and spitting at them.

Also in today’s podcast, a fresh appeal to find those responsible for the brutal murder of a pensioner more than four decades ago has been issued.

Esme Hoad was found dead in her home in Tonbridge in1982, after concerned neighbours reported she had not been seen for several days – you can hear from Detective Inspector Lee Neiles. 

Angry residents near Dover have made their feelings clear as lorry park developers paid a visit - with banners warning they were “not welcome here”.

Other blunt messages displayed in West Hougham included: “Truck off. Do we look like a village that will back down?”

You can hear from a teenager who was hit by a car and dragged from the pavement onto a verge as she calls for safety measures at a “dangerous” roundabout.

The 17-year-old had just stepped off a bus in Challock and was heading home from sixth form when she heard tyres screech.

And, a Kent woman has shared her story of beating the odds two decades after she was diagnosed with a rare cancer.

Demie Lawson Wood was told she had neuroblastoma in 2004 when she was just six, but says the care she received while having treatment is what has inspired her to become a paediatric nurse. 

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