What the hell is happening to our babies?

[SeanMacGabhann]

and frankly it's a bit creepy to recount in such graphic detail what happened - what is it to achieve?

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

I'm with Moos. I'd managed to avoid any detail and frankly I'd rather not know. It's enough to know that there are shit people out there and incompetence at some level by professionals that needs dealing with.

[mockney piers]

OK Cassius. Go take a gun and do something about it a la Jack Ruby, money where your mouth is now you've upset moos.

No one is denying the horror and sickness of what happened, so what exactly is your point?

While you're at it kill Tony Blair who single handedly (with the help of his spineless party and GB ) dragged this country in to a war where tens of thousands of innocent children have died a horrific death; focus on that for a while, maybe I should post up some pictures just so you can really wallow in the horror, or is even the mention of Iraq too bloody bleeding heart liberal for the lynch mob brigade?

[Cassius]

No - I was saying that NO matter how much the perpetrators suffered as children (if they did so) they had a CHOICE whether or not to continue that pattern of abuse and cruelty. They - not the system commited the crime (and if I misunderstood the post which said the system was to blame - apologies). And the details are out there, I haven't had to search them out - just listen to the BBC news - and I only listed them as an indication of how low people can go.

[mockney piers]

Every youth who stabs another youth and spends the next 20 years behind bars had that choice.

The point is they still make the wrong choice!!

People make the wrong choices all the time, from being unable to give up smoking when they know it's killing them, through driving too fast in a 30 zone (kills more kids than just about anything else) through to th really nasty crimes.

Addressing the situation is about trying to fix the things that have broken in a wider sense, and putting systems in place to prevent those for whom the system has been a failure and will commit crimes.

I apologise for my outburst, but I didn't feel focussing on the gory details was helping a discussion on such an emotive subject.

[DaveR]

It's easy for any debate on such an emotive issue to get polarised, and the important detail gets obscured. It has been widely reported that at at least one multi-agency meeting the police pushed very strongly for the child to be taken from the parental home (there were at least twop investigations into possible assaults, it seems) but were over-ruled. That decision, it seems to me, ought to be examined very closely, and I'm sure there are others that warrant similar scrutiny. The fact that social workers generally have good intentions and very difficult jobs to do deserves to be recognised but is not ultimately an excuse for failure, whether it be individual or systemic.

PS - david_carnell, I'm afraid you lose on the tax fraud vs child death sentencing challenge. The most recent case is Hening, reported at [2008] 1 Cr. App. R. (S.) 54. 15 years imprisonment upheld for VAT fraud. The longest sentence for direct tax fraud to my knowledge is 10 years.

[Cassius]

I don't weep over much - this I did. I fully understand that crimes are committed in the heat of passion/drugs/alcohol. This is different - this is NOT one crime, this is many many crimes perpetrated over many months committed against a totally innocent victim. This is why there is heat and passion and anger about it. It is hard not to want an eye for an eye in such a case even if the inner voice tells you that makes you as bad as them. The saddest thing is that this is just one case that has been highly publicised, due to the final tragic death of the child - how much other abuse is going on?

[jumpinjackflash]

david_carnell Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I want the people who tortured and killed

> > this child to die a horrible and slow death

> > spitting blood. I truly hope that when they get

>

> > to prison the other inmates feel the same way.

>

> I'm finding this quite disturbing.

>

> What you are effectively calling for is the

> physical abuse of another human being or

> state-sanctioned murder of criminals. Either way,

> the unsubtle glee with which it is being proposed

> leaves a rather unpleasant stench. There is no

> doubt that the people responsible and convicted of

> this, most appalling of crimes will deserve, and

> receive, harsh sentences. But calling for these

> sorts of vengeful, sadistic acts is not any sort

> of advert for civilised society.

'civilised'? you say. Because what those evil lowlifes did was really bloody civilised. Whatever happens to those scumbags in prison is justified as far as I am concerned. i'd be surprised if they last 2 weeks inside given the media coverage this case has received.

[Cassius]

"'civilised'? you say. Because what those evil lowlifes did was really bloody civilised. Whatever happens to those scumbags in prison is justified as far as I am concerned. i'd be surprised if they last 2 weeks inside given the media coverage this case has received."

Maybe that is why their identities haven't yet (as far as I know) been released.

[microbite]

PS - david_carnell, I'm afraid you lose on the tax fraud vs child death sentencing challenge. The most recent case is Hening, reported at [2008] 1 Cr. App. R. (S.) 54. 15 years imprisonment upheld for VAT fraud. The longest sentence for direct tax fraud to my knowledge is 10 years.

Thanks Dave, I couldn't be @rsed looking it up myself, but knew it would be out there.

[david_carnell]

jumpinjackflash Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> 'civilised'? you say. Because what those evil

> lowlifes did was really bloody civilised.

> Whatever happens to those scumbags in prison is

> justified as far as I am concerned. i'd be

> surprised if they last 2 weeks inside given the

> media coverage this case has received.

Now, who was it who said "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"?

[Keef]

Cassius, just to clear up, I was saying it was the system not the individual to blame outside of the immediate people involved. It was in response to

So no-one (apart from the parents + friend) is at fault then? you can't seriously be saying that

[Cassius]

Hi Keef - yes I realised that after I posted - it is such an emotive subject and there are so many posts to be read so quickly I jumped to the wrong conclusion.

[RosieH]

Another story in the news today was that of a baby and toddler stabbed to death, their mother held believed to be the murderer BBC - Baby and toddler killed at house

Will we have the same outpouring over these two young lives tragically ended or is the one story enough for our needs?

I'm not questioning anyone's motives on this thread: everyone is right to feel angry and outraged. But it makes me very queasy how one gory story can become the focus for an outpouring of grief and bloodlust, while many, many others are completely overlooked.

(I think I'm repeating myself - I've said something very similar on another post on here about the death of a child I think - maybe it's time to withdraw)

[Huguenot]

Great stuff from Simon Jenkins

[citizenED]

Strong argument from Simon Jenkins. (Thanks Huguenot.)

After what has been a tough, emotional week with these stories of cruelty and death it is hard to find much comfort. But, find some I have in the simple fact that the cruelty in the case of Baby P was not suspected strongly enough for any agency to take decisive action. (forgive me for not knowing the facts here, but I have looked the other way regarding any details lest I might be emotionally wounded.) This suggests, I think, that with the human heart, hope springs eternal. No individual person was able to act on their intuition and step in when it was needed. It's because no right-thinking person would ever want to believe that a parent could abuse their child. You patently cannot. You want to believe the best, you trust, you hope, that everything is OK. Your mind is unable to embrace the idea that a fellow human could be capable of such unfathomable evil.

As some posters have suggested, alas, another child will die. But we do not descend into a community of people who routinely distrust one another. Can you imagine: every parent under scrutiny, every citizen duty-bound to twitch the curtains on their neighbour, every newborn tagged with a caseload worker to prevent "it ever happening again". Shudder. And so peversely, I find a morsel of hope at the end of this: my solace exists in the fact that we naturally think well of each other. Lets keep it that way.

[microbite]

As more and more details emerge of the levels of incompetence displayed by Social Services in this matter, I stand at a loss as to how so many people can get on my case about my thoughts and feelings towards the behaviour of social services where Baby P is concerned and say they are not even slightly to blame.

[SeanMacGabhann]

For the simple reason that it's in the interests of the papers to highlight the worst possible cases - most of the incompetence you mention is people saying "yeah well I advised them to do something different and they didn't listen"

Newsflash: There isn't a single event in history where you can't find several people who say something like that. But no-body is infallible. If that same person has made a callin the past which endagered a baby they aren't going to go on the news and say "phew - I told someone it was safe to send baby x back but they didn't listen to me"

What is the extra evidence that is coming out that changes the story in any way?

I'm not saying the service can't be improved - it almost certainly can be. But claiming this is down to incompetence when we aren't in posession of al lof the facts is not on

What about

"Yet the number of children killed has fallen steadily - down 50% in England and Wales since the 1970s. Professor Colin Pritchard, an expert on child abuse, points to World Health Organisation statistics: Britain was fourth worst among western nations in the 1970s. Now it is among the best: only four countries have fewer child murders per million. Compare America, where child murders have risen by 17% since the 1970s. "Our child protection has never been better," Pritchard, of the school of health and social care at Bournemouth University, says. "Especially in the front line." And social workers are better trained. "I am awed by what these young people have to face."

for a smidge of balance?

[microbite]

I could have sworn it was three separate Doctors reported that they suspected abuse to Social Services or are they not professional enough not quite Jo Public are they?

[microbite]

People who have worked within that establishment (Social Services) are speaking of levels of incompetence within that sector, and they have worked with them, perhaps they are just disgruntled employees eh!

[SeanMacGabhann]

You want to name somewhere in public or private sector that doesn't have incompetence? or lack of funding? or both?

If you honestly believe you can do a better job then there will be plenty of vacancies as talented people will shy away from dealing with the level of mistrust and abuse meted out to them

What about the successes outlined in the paragraph above from the WHO? Is that not progress?

If the people involved are incompetent then hopefully they will be removed. It isn't for us reading our papers to make that call - we just don't have all the facts. What will probably happen (if the hysteria doesn't distort) is that further lessons will be learned (no one in any field of knowledge knows everything yet) and things will improve some more. And future incidents will happen. Some twisted broken human will have learned the system and it's new rules and devised a NEW way of tricking it. So we will learn a little bit more. And so on and so on

[Keef]

Glad you could be bothered argueing this Sean, I've lost the will. Bet a lot of people on a certain leaked list are also calling for heads to roll. Takes all sorts to make up a finger pointing blame centred society doesn't it?

[mockney piers]

I read that as a finger pointing blain for a minute there. That's a lot of finger pointing to cause that!!

I think the point is there was a lot of screaming "incompetent" and apportioning blame the moment the story was broken, long before any actual details were forthcoming, and that's what really got my goat.

Just because you may or may not have been proved correct subsequently, doesn't justify the initial outburst.

Just because Iraq might finally end up being a workable country, that doesn't mean Bush's invasion was right.

[microbite]

Glad to see it takes the big three "Godfathers" of the forum(namely Mockney, Sean and Keef)to try put me in my place!

;-)

[microbite]

Do you always work in packs and tag team off eachother?