A teenage girl murdered at her home was beaten around the head with a metal spike in what police have described as

A teenage girl murdered at her home was beaten around the head with a metal spike in what police have described as a "vicious and ferocious attack". Thirteen-year-old Billie-Jo Jenkins was found dead by her foster father when he returned with two of his other daughters to the family home in Hastings, East Sussex, on Saturday afternoon. Billie-Jo, described by neighbours as a "caring, loving girl", had been painting the patio doors when she was attacked.Detective Superintendent, Jeremy Paine said: "The awful thing that confronted him and his daughters on their return is almost unimaginable."This was a vicious, ferocious attack on a young girl in her home."A post-mortem examination carried out yesterday revealed that the teenager died from severe head injuries resulting from several blows to the skull.The murder weapon is believed to be an 18-inch metal spike found by the killer in a store room in the back garden. It was discovered by police lying next to Billie-Jo's body.There were no signs of any sexual attack and the house had not been broken into.Officers are conducting house-to-house inquiries in the area and will be speaking with Sion and Lois Jenkins, their four daughters, aged 12, 10, nine and seven, and Billie Jo's natural parents, who live in Barking, east London.Detectives are also trying to track down a man in his 40s with prominent birth marks or scars seen near the family's home on Saturday. Neighbours have told police he was acting strangely and asking around for accommodation. Police say the attack will have left the killer's clothes blood-stained and covered in white paint.The Jenkins family have been experiencing problems with prowlers since Christmas.. The right of consenting adults to inflict pain for sexual pleasure will be decided by human rights judges in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

The case has been brought by three British men who were jailed after the notorious "Operation Spanner" case in a group of consenting sado-masochists inflicted sexual torture on each other. The campaigning group Liberty has backed their case, arguing that their convictions are contrary to the Human Rights Convention which safeguards against interference in the right to private life.. Members of the first all-women expedition to the North Pole donned Arctic kit yesterday for their final training session on gale-swept Dartmoor. A hike across the high moor from Princetown was followed by an exhausting session of pulling tyres attached to waist harnesses - preparation for hauling 120lb sledges for hours a day in temperatures as low as -45C. The women are members of the 20-strong McVities Penguin Polar Relay, chosen from 60 hopefuls after a series of tough SAS-style tests on the moor last autumn The expedition starts on 13 March.. Bodyguards of a senior BP executive in Colombia threatened to ``skin alive'' a protester campaigning against the company, an MEP claims.

Richard Howitt, Labour MEP for Essex South, says the Colombian army and paramilitary groups have oppressed people who have protested about BP's operations There have been death threats and assassinations. After interviewing and tape-recording community leaders and pressure-group representatives during a visit to the oilfield region of Casanare, he is demanding BP review its relationship with the Colombian army. ``I believe BP managers must know or should know about human-rights violations carried out in the company's name, and with what appears to me to be the direct collusion of some of their staff,'' he said. The company rejects this, and says if it found any evidence of staff or contractors involved in illegal acts it would dismiss them and pass the information to the Colombian prosecutor- general. What Mr Howitt and BP can agree on is that it is working in a dangerous and complex social and political environment in Casanare, in the foothills of the Andes north- east of Bogota.The discovery of oil in the late 1980s attracted many poor people and two rival guerrilla groups who use kidnapping, extortion and drug dealing to finance their campaign against the government.The army has come in to guard installations. Reports from rights organisations including Amnesty condemned the army for arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings of suspected guerrilla sympathisers.The army has also had links with covert right-wing paramilitary groups which use death threats and assassinations in their undercover war with the guerrillas.BP, which has invested pounds 1.3bn exploiting Colombian oil, makes payments to the Colombian Ministry of Defence to provide boots, uniforms, food and shelter for the local soldiers.

The company said 17 of its contractors had been killed by guerrillas. BP also hires a UK firm, Defence Systems Ltd, to help with security in Colombia.BP and its local contractors have faced strikes, protests and blockades from local people in recent years, including a strike by security guards.The main grievances have been that communities have not received enough of the new oil wealth, local people have not been given a fair share of the new jobs, contractors are paying unfairly low wages and the environment has been damaged Some strikes have ended in violent clashes. The judicial authorities are investigating the killings of four agitators in a town, El Morro, two years ago.Mr Howitt visited Colombia as part of a parliamentary delegation in autumn and alleged BP had an improper relationship with an army which carried out illegal actions.Challenged by BP to visit the Casanare region, he did so this month, and returned with tapedtestimony which, he says, vindicates his claim. In one testimony a labourer with a BP contractor says three guards of Phil Mead, a BP associate vice- president and its most senior manager in Casanare, threatened him outside a meeting called in protest at the lack of employment.

There is no suggestion that Mr Mead personally knew of the incident.``They started telling me bad words ... that I should stop fucking around, otherwise they would skin me alive,'' reads the translation.Asked if the threats were made by Mr Mead's guards, the man said: ``It is true that they were security guards of Phil Mead He is a good person I have spoken to him. The bad thing is the Colombian people who surround these people.'' The threats, he said, were repeated by men in a car which he knew to be hired by BP security staff. In another testimony, a former council worker said that at an angry meeting at an oil well where local people were demanding work a BP community affairs officer telephoned the company's Central Production Facility ``About an hour later the army came in. They had helicopters ...they saw about 50 people and realised we weren't armed.