BABY P's mother and her lodger will be sentenced for their role in the toddler's tragic death.

Peter, whose blonde-haired blue-eyed image has become iconic, suffocated in his cot in August 2007, having suffered a horrific injury to his spine which left him unable to breathe.

Doctors later found a catalogue of hidden injuries including fractured ribs, severe bruising and a missing tooth. Several of the tips of his fingers and toes had been removed.

Peter had been on Haringey Council's at-risk register and was visited by social workers and health professionals up to 60 times in the months leading to his death.

They all failed to spot vital clues the toddler was in serious danger.

In court, it emerged the toddler had been subjected to months of systematic abuse at the hands of his mother, her boyfriend and a lodger, Jason Owen, of Bromley, Kent.

During the trial, pathologist Professor Rupert Risdon said Peter's broken back was the result of a forceful extension over a banister or an adult's knee.

This happened several days before the child's death, he added.

Which of the trio inflicted the fatal blow that ultimately caused his death has never come to light.

But the prosecution claimed the trio had all been part of a clean-up operation to disguise the horror of Peter's death.

Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat a locum paediatrician who examined Peter two days before he died allegedly failed to spot his back was broken.

She failed to carry out a full examination because he was "miserable and cranky", she claimed in court.

Dr Al-Zayat has since been suspended from practising medicine.

Peter's mother, 27, pleaded guilty to causing or allowing her son's death. Her 32-year-old boyfriend and lodger Owen were found guilty of the same offence in November 2008.

They were cleared of murder.

The 32-year-old, also from Tottenham, was also found guilty of raping a two-year-old girl last month and will be sentenced tomorrow. Judge Kramer, who heard the harrowing details of both cases, warned a life sentence was not unlikely.

He is being held in the same solitary cell previously used by child killer Ian Huntley.