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A vile mum was found guilty today of beating her toddler son to death after she duped social workers into believing she was a caring parent.

Rebecca Shuttleworth, 25, tortured little Keanu Williams, two, for months before fatally battering him in the two days leading up to his death.

Meanwhile she had attended parenting classes and appeared to be an “attentive” mother.

A case review is expected to probe failures by agencies responsible for child protection.

Devious Shuttleworth told doctors Keanu, nicknamed Kiwi, had suffered a heart attack after his lifeless body was found at her boyfriend Luke Southerton’s flat in Ward End, Birmingham.

But a postmortem uncovered a catalogue of injuries that suggested a long period of torture – including 37 bruises and a fist-sized tear in the tot’s stomach, the trial jury was told.

(Image: West Midlands Police)

Tests on Keanu’s battered body found he died from internal bleeding and had been repeatedly struck with a stick or rod over a 48-hour period.

The tragic toddler also had a fractured skull and bite marks over his body.

Shuttleworth had blamed Southerton for inflicting the fatal injuries on her son when she left him with Keanu for a few hours on January 9, 2011.

But a jury of four men and seven women found her guilty of murder today after almost three days of ­deliberations.

Shuttleworth, in jeans and a tracksuit top, closed her eyes and shook her head as the verdicts were read out.

She was also convicted of one charge of cruelty to another child who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Southerton, 32, was cleared of murder but convicted of child cruelty.

During the five-month trial at Birmingham Crown Court, the jury heard Shuttleworth, now of Manchester, “resented” Keanu for obstructing her life and had routinely abused him almost from the day he was born.

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The court heard Southerton called an ambulance at around 7.42pm on the night Keanu died.

He had stopped breathing and and was rushed to nearby Heartlands hospital but pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

Shockingly, Shuttleworth – who spent time in care as a youngster herself – had “extensive” contact with social services and even attended a three-month parenting course after Kiwi’s birth.

Prosecutor Christopher Hotten QC said she had used her knowledge of the care system to “manipulate social workers, teachers, doctors and care professionals to believe that she was a competent and caring mother”.

Detective superintendent Clare Cowley, of West Midlands Police, said it was “inevitable” one of the key lessons to be learned would be a need for better inter-agency communication, with Keanu already known to social workers and the police before his death.

Mrs Cowley said it was “very hard for us as professionals to understand that messages didn’t get through or the bigger picture wasn’t seen”.

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Child protection agencies will now undertake a serious case review. Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board said yesterday there were lessons to be learned following Keanu’s death.

Jane Held, the body’s independent chair, said: “While we can’t go into detail prior to the review being made public, it is clear from this trial that professionals in the different agencies involved missed a significant number of opportunities to intervene.”

A similar inquiry into seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq’s death in the Handsworth, area of the city in 2008 recommended a need for better communication.

Kiwi’s aunt Angela Shuttleworth, 26, spoke of how the family had been “torn apart” by the murder committed by her sister.

She added that it had “left a gaping hole in our lives”.

Both Shuttleworth and Southerton are due to be sentenced tomorrow.

* How our sister website the Birmingham Mail is reporting the story.