“My 12-year-old son, Darren, is failing at
school. He can’t learn, steals, and he plays truant. I am at my wit’s end
because last week he drove a stolen car on to the pavement, knocking a toddler
off his trike. Luckily, that child was only bruised. He could have died and, as
far as I am concerned, that is too close to James Bulger’s experience and
nothing to do with joy-riding. His headmaster says he needs a short sharp shock
but that is ignoring the fact the fact that I left my ex-husband ten years ago
because he physically and sexually abused Darren. If I try to keep Darren in he
just laughs at me and walks out. My family say he should be locked up. No-one
wants to do anything about him.”
Ms C
It is very difficult for a parent to
acknowledge that damage has been done to her child. Parents usually hope that
their own painful life experiences and inner disturbance are adequately dealt
with and they want to provide the best environment they are able to for their
child. Very few parents intend to hurt their child. One father who physically
abused his toddler commented, “It was when he was crying. I could not bear the
sound. I stopped being a father and went right back to a memory of my own
father beating me for crying when I was tiny”. With treatment, this father was
able to be rehabilitated with his family.
We do not know what experiences informed the
behaviour of Ms C’s ex- husband. However, we can see a dangerous
trans-generational cycle in the process of being formed. Darren was abused by
his father at 3 or under and here he is behaving in a way that can endanger a
little child. Ms C is right to acknowledge the serious “joyless” implications
of that for the toddler. Dr Eileen Vizard, who has pioneered an Adolescent
Abuser project, comments “ Darren will have learned that there is no reason to
have respect for someone else’s body and he has identified with the aggressor,
his father. Through this identification he sees a toddler as a disposable item
and repeats an aspect of what was done to him. The targeting of toddlers by
child offenders for any abuse is particularly worrying as it suggests a level
of encapsulated early trauma that would be difficult to access. It is made
harder by Darren’s lack of a good male figure to identify with and requires
highly skilled long-term treatment. “
Treatment is the missing ingredient in all
the current political discussion about young offenders and from Ms C’s letter
it sounds as if it is missing in Darren’s current situation.
Dr Estela Welldon, President of the IAFP
comments, “ Unfortunately, all too often, understanding the offender is seen as
condoning the crime or excusing the criminal. On the contrary, the object of
treatment is to help the offender to acknowledge his responsibility for his
acts and thereby to save the offender and society from the perpetration of
further crimes. The more we understand about the criminal mind the more we can
take preventative action. However, because the offender hits out at society
this naturally causes a reaction and it is hard to look behind the action at
the cause”.
Faced with disturbed and disturbing behaviour
it is not surprising that Darren’s Head Teacher reacts angrily and wants him to
experience a “short sharp shock”. Having to deal with children who play truant,
steal, joyride and have lost a capacity to learn depletes the energy of many
teachers. Indeed, it is not just teachers who lose heart. In the wake of the
James Bulger tragedy there is a communal wish to find a simple answer in either
locking such children away or punishing them. There is a hope that such action
is “doing something” about such awful events. However, all too often we find
that the children who engender such desires in us, like Darren, have actually
been the victims of long-standing sustained knocks and shocks and further ones
simply repeat the process.
Peter Wilson, Director of Young Minds, says.
“To properly do something about it, we have to pay attention, as Ms C has, to
what people have actually done to children. No child forgets about being hit,
abused or neglected. Children are not robots and they remember and it comes out
somewhere. They need a chance to have better relationships, new experiences and
a chance to think about themselves with people who have some understanding of
what it is all about. Locking them up is just further abuse as far as I can
see.”
Psychoanalyst and Forensic Psychiatrist Dr
Chris Cordess is equally concerned at the limitations of “lock-up” policy. “
The research on locking up juveniles shows very clearly that it has negative effects
and produces more criminals. Nor can teachers be expected to cater to the one
disturbed child when there are the needs of the whole class. They need to turn
to Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Services through the Child Psychotherapy
Trust. Unfortunately, for the small number of children where residential care
is needed- there are few places and even these are being cut. Peper Harow is a
prime example of this. Serious young offenders have nearly all been abused
children with adverse environment and we do not provide properly for them.”
It is very noticeable that just at the moment
when we are aware of the need for some therapeutic residential provision that
offers treatment, a world-renowned therapeutic community for disturbed
adolescents like Peper Harow could be closed for lack of funding and similar
therapeutic communities with specialist schools like The Mulberry Bush have
current vacancies because districts do not want to pay for needed treatment.
Ms C left her
husband and cannot seem to stop her son leaving. It is possible that as well as
the abuse, Darren has feelings about the loss of his father that have not been
dealt with. At the moment it seems as if we as a society are just leaving him
and his mother to whatever knocks and shocks come their way with no opportunity
or help for understanding and breaking the cycle of disadvantage.