All Those Children... (From The Argus)
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All Those Children...
7:35pm Tuesday 1st December 2009 in Blogs
I was prompted to write this by a comment made to me by a complete stranger this week. Whilst lunching in a café with Baby we were playing, laughing, cuddling and singing together, an old gentleman next to me came over and said how lovely it was to see a mother enjoying her child. He then showed me the article he was reading – another sensational story in a red-top about the mother who had left her four young children alone to go drinking. We chatted for a bit about how upset these stories made us and how incredible it was people could treat their innocent babies in such a way. He shook his head sadly and said: “I feel sorry for all those children…”
All those children… because obviously behind every shocking tabloid story about what this or that parent has done is the sorry tale of sad, neglected, abused children. We were living in North London when the Baby Peter story broke and with a baby son myself of the same age and colouring I found the whole sad affair incredibly distressing, as did everyone. In fact I think it nearly broke me. I could look at my own precious baby and see his scared response to any minor pain or upset, then times it by a million and then get a picture of what that tiny child went through. It didn’t bear thinking about, but for a long time it was all I could think about. Baby got a lot of kisses and cuddles during that time, half of which were meant for one who was dead.
Seeing that I had a similar aged baby people came up to talk to me in the road about it, rather like this old gentleman this week. For a while there was anger and hatred and misery on all of our streets, even to point you couldn’t turn a corner without seeing another homemade poster pinned to the wall encouraging people to seek revenge against the perpetrators. I am now unable to read anything about the case, see his picture or those of his abusers, and I’ve been the same with all similar stories since. I have considered counselling to discuss why I have been so affected. Its like I have this horrific knowledge and I don’t know what to do with it or where to put it?
This knowledge of child abuse is a weight, an impotent weight that we carry around, we know it happens, but what can we do about it? If Social Services can be so deceived in such cases what hope is there? There are many who continue to campaign and charities who work tirelessly to ease the burden and thank goodness for them, I do take comfort in this.
I first started donating to the NSPCC about ten years ago after I had laughed at a TV ad depicting a cartoon boy being beaten up – the violence was almost comedic – but when it cut to the boy becoming real and I understood this was happening in real life and maybe even to the child next door I was nearly sick. I continue to donate and I feel like I am doing something. But its small. I also try to smile at as many children and babies I can in the street and shops, I think you just don’t know what life is like for them at home and maybe a smile is a flash of comfort and understanding? Probably silly.
I’m not the best parent in the world by any means. I shout, I get frustrated, but since becoming a parent I understand violence towards children even less, I just can’t make the jump from exasperation to raising my hand to him. Like most parents my instinct is to protect and not harm. Sadly it seems that instinct is missing in some. Reasons why parents or carers abuse children are many and varied I imagine? And the levels and types of abuse of course are all different. Some would probably consider me raising my voice abuse?
Obviously I have a media tainted view and no knowledge of the Social Services and the complexity of reporting cases but sometimes it seems simple to me: Social Workers should have real status, be feared as well as respected. When I was younger I remember a visit from ‘the Social’ was viewed with derision and not much to worry about. If they had the power and pay befitting the work they did maybe more would be drawn to the career and less would escape them.
Plus, surely departments should work better together? If a known violent offender joins a new family they should be told (even if its cruelty to animals because as we all know this is a huge indicator of a progression to abuse of minors) sorry but I don’t care about their right to anonymity – let the new family decide. If a family or child is considered at risk they should be checking benefit and postal records too to see who is claiming from or using that address, who else is hiding in the house?
And in communities, should we all be doing more? Not just doctors, health visitors and social workers but shopkeepers, bus-drivers and neighbours. Imagine how Peter’s neighbours must feel knowing that one night they might have turned the TV up to drown out the crying instead of calling someone to help? But its hard, who wants to get involved? I’m as guilty as everyone who ignores what might be a cry for help. I saw a toddler in a pushchair a few months ago shopping in Churchill Square, he had a black eye. I was so conflicted, part of me wanted to follow the family home and make a note of their address to let the authorities know what I had seen, part of me reasoned he had probably got it from knocking about with his brother or from a simple accident. Of course I did nothing. But it’s haunted me for a while now, what if the next big child abuse story is once again just up the road from me? What if this time I had seen it and had a chance to do something about it – but didn’t? What on earth am I going to do with that knowledge?
Comments(7)
Jo Chipchase
says...
10:32pm Tue 1 Dec 09
As a mother of two beautiful little boys, these cases make me feel sick and it's almost impossible not to think in terms of it happening to your own child.
I remember watching a documentary called 'Bulgaria's Lost Children' in November 2007 when I was heavily pregnant with my second son (not an easy time, for various reasons). I couldn't get my head around the fact that parents would knowingly abandon their children to exist in such awful conditions, and that neglect of that scale could occur within Europe. After the programme ended, I felt deeply depressed: a feeling that did not lift for two months afterwards, while some of the most upsetting images from the documentary still come back to haunt me occasionally, as do the unpalatable details from UK cases that have hit the headlines, such as Baby P.
I agree that the Baby P case showed a failing of the wider community: people may not want to "get involved" or may be frightened of the perpetrators but I've always found it hard to believe that the neighbours would not have heard screams night after night and could not have made anonymous phone calls to the police. The "not my problem" attitude has gone too far and the horrible thing is that I can imagine decent people, my own family even, saying "don't get involved with those people - let someone else do it and keep away". Sad but true.
anubis
says...
6:26pm Wed 2 Dec 09
There is no shortage of suffering in human life … a large proportion of it the consequence of human actions. Also with a doctorate in 'psychology' (but well retired!!) I share with your first respondent the need to 'go deeper' than assume the offenders are not themselves most likely to be products of the world they inhabit.
Like you, Alice, masses of people demand more conscious, competent and professional social workers, in the field, with stricter means for identifying developing problems, especially where the ‘victims’ are children, before they become 'actual' -- but almost always, when it comes to the final crunch, there just isn’t the money available for proper training and deployment of more and better personnel within the social care system! (Well that’s what we are told!)
Why this insufficient funding? Could I be touching upon a more fundamental social problem, usually avoided within our PC ‘polite society’? Could it be that those who ‘manage’ our social system, use their media influence/power to ensure essential economics are never publicly discussed? As we all know two subjects should never be discussion in ‘polite society’ – politics and religion. (as yet another story regarding the Catholic Church and child abuse is uncovered in Ireland, perhaps we can guess why.)
It’s difficult to pinpoint exact total expenditures – as a minimum, this country spends more than £4 million pounds every minute on building and deploying armaments and personnel throughout the world. We manage to find the money to train and equip thousands to occupy other lands -- we could train and disperse an awful lot of social workers in five minutes of ‘war preparation’ expenditure! Currently the two hotspots are Iraq and Afghanistan, where we’ve battled for two centuries – neither country ‘threatened’ the UK -- the fact that much sought after oil rich regions are located in the ‘war zones’ is purely co-incidental.
When we consider the ‘abused’ children in our homeland, they are of course but a tiny minority of the millions of kids, starving, beaten, prostituted and murdered throughout the third world in countries whose unelected governments spend aid monies granted to them (for food and medical supplies) for the purchase of military hardware – much of it manufactured in Britain, France and the United States. These are surely the ‘larger scale’ problems – generally ignored by those who save their concern for the occasional child abuse scandal that makes the popular press. Don’t misunderstand me – this is not to belittle your specific concern for ‘baby Peter’, or the wider child abuse within today’s Britain.
Each of the wars to which I refer, past and present, serve to brutalize those who serve in the forces. We read of the crimes against civilians perpetuated by other nations, but only rarely (and many decades later!) of similar crimes by British and their allied forces (rarely mentioned unless you read Leonard Mosley, for example, regarding the British occupation of Germany in 1945) or the sometimes relatively better documented accounts of American crimes in Vietnam. While you remember baby Peter, (and indeed you should!) I remember the American massacre of the population at My Lai; exceptionally(!), twenty six GIs were put on trial for the mass murder and routine rape of this small defenceless village, only one of those charged was found ‘guilty’, Lt William Calley, who commanded the unit, which had conducted itself in a similar way for many months in many villages. Calley was convicted of personally ‘only’ shooting one victim, a two year old child walking away from him. He was subsequently pardoned by President Nixon and is now a respected shop owner on the High Street of his hometown.
Americans are no better or no worse than any other peoples – give their youngsters guns, train them to kill and conquer – that’s how they behave. We portray our ‘war heroes’ in plays and films – and wonder why we live in an abusive society … The Vietnam war was about minerals; in those days the public support depended upon belief in an alleged ‘communist threat’ – nowadays it’s a ‘terrorist threat’ masking the real reasons – which include Middle Eastern oil. As a ‘super-Mum’ (that’s how you present in your various postings!) surely your natural concern about the world your ‘Baby’ will be inheriting must extend beyond ‘baby Peter’ to the nature of the world we adults are creating? As isolated individuals, we can do little about either problem – but perhaps, if enough of us can explore the deeper social problems, which I have (so inadequately!) tried to raise, we just might be playing a small part in the making of a better world.
Txa
says...
11:24am Sat 5 Dec 09
The problem I find with the occasional shocking stories, that when happened, are used from the authorities as excuse to limit further the individual parents' rights and freedoms. In a period of about 15 years I've seen our local schools, from being open space where everybody was welcome, to be the replica of prisons buildings. I'm not sure what it's worse the small chance of intruders, or the school obstructing parents' access to their own children, something that it's making me very nervous.
Tim Hodges
says...
10:02pm Mon 7 Dec 09
The night he murdered/beat Maria, he or her mother pushed her to RSCH in a filthy old pushchair.Sadly she died from her injuries. What a great pity no one noticed the treatment that was being given to her.
anubis
says...
11:40pm Thu 10 Dec 09
ReluctantHousewife
says...
1:17pm Fri 11 Dec 09
Emma – what an incredibly tough job you must have at times? I agree social workers must also have an awful job too, they probably feel the impotence I describe to a far greater degree, especially when things go wrong.
And yes sadly the cycle of abuse is one that does go round and round, affecting the same families over and over again, I have tried not to paint the abusers in the case I talk about as ‘panto baddies’ because I do understand that of course, something must be horrifically wrong there.
Jo – another terrible example of society failing children. And yes sadly it seems that its not just those in power that fail them, but us as communities too. I imagine those neighbours will probably never recover because they covered their ears?
Anubis – ‘post pooper’ great term! I understand all you are saying and agree that a political view could be taken of such cases, I do address that funding is obviously a problem and of course am frustrated that money isn’t diverted from less deserving areas. But in terms of a wider picture – of course there are not enough words or time to describe ‘the suffering in human life’ and that wasn’t what I set out to do here. I can only write about what is pertinent to me. The Baby Peter case has a resonance for geographical, timely and emotional reasons – for something I could see in my own Baby’s face. And everyone here – Emma, Tim, Jo, you yourself – has described something they remembered, some story that has struck a chord with them. Something they wish they could go back and change or someone they could save.
I know what goes on in the world, I am aware of the huge amount of suffering and injustice that takes place (kids, adults, animals) at the hands of others. But I have to treat it as a backdrop to my life, with only those key, personal stories standing out. How can anyone embrace all the causes that deserve our attention? How can anyone try to make sense of the amount of pain out there?
I would love to wave a wand and stop wars, end abuse and bring peace and justice to all, as would anyone, but in reality I can only focus on the ‘tiny minority’ of cases that affect me as an individual. I’m sorry I can’t think of a better analogy but as the Doctor advises: don’t look into the heart of the TARDIS because of the amount of information contained within, if you absorb it all, it will kill you.
Until next time… RH xxx
emmalondon says...
9:29pm Tue 1 Dec 09
However, being a psychologist and having worked with both victims and perpetrators (some are both) of abuse in my career, I don't like the way the perpetrators are turned into panto baddies. It over-simplifies the issue and absolves us (society/ families/ communities) of any responsibility. There is a reason these people become bad and often it is because they have been abused themselves (in 50% of cases) so they were victims too. They need to be punished but we also need to take responsibility for putting more money and resources into preventing abuse and preventing people ending up as abusers. That kind of work would also make social work a nicer job to do. Can you imagine dealing with the aftermath of such horrors every day as they do and having no resources to prevent it? Must be horrid.
Anyway, that's me over and out. Your post really made me think! That's always a good thing