And another thing…

LAST year I wrote this post about the savages who were responsible for the terrible death of “Baby P”, now acknowledged to have had a name: Peter.

If you want an example of how out of touch some on the left have become in recent years, you only need to read some of their reactions to my statement that it was okay to hate the “people” who had committed this terrible crime. Hatred is a natural reaction and in the circumstances of Peter’s shameful existence and death, an unavoidable one. Grudgingly, I will accept that they must also have justice, but they don’t need our tolerance or our understanding. I have absolutely no doubt that all three individuals had their standard excuses for their behaviour all rehearsed before their trial: they’d had hard lives themselves, so they had no choice but to torture an innocent child to death, yes?

The sentences handed down were pathetically lenient and said a great deal about how much we value the lives of children today. So I’m glad that the attorney general has chosen to intervene to look again at the sentences. I hope it will mean that their stay in prison will be very much longer than they had expected.

Because prison isn’t just about rehabilitation; it’s also about justice and it’s about punishment. These people have to be punished and society has to be satisfied that the punishment is severe. The very notion that the “lodger” could be out in three years is repugnant. Read Guido’s description of the sadists’ behaviour if you have the stomach for it.

Meanwhile, if you fret that a Labour MP should be following the “tabloid agenda” of stirring up hatred against the killers, I’m sure there are plenty other worthy sites that will discuss how awful it is that society isn’t more understanding of this kind of murderous, psychopathic and unutterably cruel behaviour.

REGULAR readers will know that I’m no apologist for abusive or cruel parents.

But when I heard the investigating officer in the Shannon Matthews kidnap case describe her mother, Karen Matthews, as “pure evil”, it did give me pause for thought. Clearly this pathetic woman is unfit to look after a dog, let alone a child, and Shannon will surely be better off away from her influence. Matthews and her disgusting accomplice, Michael Donovan, deserve every minute of the jail sentences they will undoubtedly be given.

But “pure evil”? A gift to newspaper sub-editors, I concede.

That evil exists in some people, I have no doubt. But isn’t there a risk that by describing someone like Karen Matthews – a pathetic, stupid, cruel, greedy individual – as “pure evil”, we run the risk of devaluing the term? For if Matthews is evil, how do we then describe the sadistic child murderers who brought Baby P’s life to an end?

…but incredibly powerful and unarguable, nonetheless.

AS I’ve proudly pointed out in the past, I’m no lawyer. So can someone please explain to me why a court would have granted a gagging order against the Haringey social worker, Nevres Kemal?

If she has something relevant and important to say, why is she being prevented from contributing to a public debate that is in full swing? The public are angry – and rightly so. Now is not the time to start preventing people from telling the truth. The political consequences for any local authority, or indeed any government, would be utterly incidental to the importance of getting to the truth about what happened to Baby P.

And I hope the courts will, later today, lift the injunction on naming Baby P’s “mother” and her partner. My understanding of the law, as far as it goes, is that such individuals’ names are withheld when there is a risk that a child might be identified. But when the child – these people’s innocent victim – has died, there is clearly no reason for them not to be named. And the least persuasive reason for not naming them would be “for their own protection”.

I GENUINELY don’t understand the pressures that social work services are under. The case of “Baby P” in Haringey is so distressing and awful I find it hard even to watch any of the news reports. But I know that social workers are often in an impossible position – damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Having said that, there can surely be no excuses for the appalling failure of care in this case. And I am left asking the same question that I always ask whenever such a case emerges: why aren’t very young children living in threatening situations taken permanently into care and adopted to caring, loving couples?

There are certainly plenty of such couples, childless for one reason or another, who could offer these tragic children the love and protection to which they have a right. So am I wrong in assuming that social workers tend to give the benefit of the doubt to biological parents in such cases? I ask this as a genuine query, because this isn’t an area I’m remotely expert in. Someone who physically abuses a child, or who allows someone else to physically abuse their child, or who is leading a chaotic lifestyle as a result of drug use, has no moral right to continue to be that child’s parent, and any legal rights to be a parent must surely come under scrutiny.

When I worked as a press officer for Strathclyde Regional Council, the social work department came in for a huge amount of criticism from the media when it removed a baby from a family in Glasgow’s west end and adopted the child to a couple living in another part of the region. How dare social workers play God? screamed the front pages. Return the child to its proper home, they demanded.

Having learned of some of the appalling circumstances of the case,  I felt this was one of the few occasions when social workers had undoubtedly done a good thing, the right thing. The real tragedy was that the biological parents were allowed to retain care of their older children.

Baby P was in the care of brutal, evil monsters, one of whom happened to be his biological mother. No doubt there are those who will offer apologia on their behalf: they were ill-educated, poor, socially excluded. Undoubtedly there was drug or alcohol misuse involved.

I don’t care. They have no excuses for their monstrous behaviour. Whatever punishment they have to endure, it cannot be enough.

Social workers playing God? With all respect to the Almighty, it was He who decided that children can be born to, and be in the care of, witless imbeciles barely capable of looking after themselves, let alone a vulnerable  child. If social workers choose to remove such children – permanently – from such a situation, then they would not be playing God: they would be doing a far, far better job.