The appalling murder of an innocent child is likely to repeat itself. I deeply desire that influential figures in the legal and media fields would cease stating, when such incidents occur, that it will never happen again. They certainly understand that it will.
The pattern remains consistent. A child is spotted somewhere, bearing bruises and in distress. There might be a brief flurry of attention from social services. Then, tragically, the child is killed, and an uproar follows.
A not exhaustive list includes cases like Maria Colwell, murdered by her stepfather in 1973; Heidi Koseda, who starved to death in a locked room in 1984; Tyra Henry, who passed away after being brutally beaten by her father, also in 1984; Kimberley Carlile, who was starved and fatally beaten in 1986; Doreen Mason, who perished due to neglect in 1987; Leanne White, beaten to death in 1992; Chelsea Brown, battered to death in 1999; Victoria Climbie, who died following months of horrendous abuse in 2000. Their names remain in official inquiry documents and media exposés.
There will, alas, be others. I offer no explanation beyond the bottomless human capacity for evil, which much modern thinking pretends does not exist. And I offer no solution. I am not even sure if there is one.
It is easiest to blame failings among social workers, but the social workers did not do these crimes. They just failed to spot them in time, as many humans fail in many ways. Those truly to blame were the adults who beat, starved and burned their helpless victims.
But I am worried by the way such cases tend to be used to increase the intrusive power of the state. Does it do any good, in practice? Might it do some harm? Last week, after the frightful trial of Sara Sharif’s killers, there was a sudden chorus saying that home-schooling ought now to be more tightly restricted in this country. This makes little sense.
It seems odd to conclude that home-schooling, of all things, should be held to blame for what happened to Sara Sharif, pictured
Sara’s parents – pictured, her father Urfan Sharif – had been known to social services since 2010
Teachers spotted that Sara was bruised, several times, while she was still attending school. Somehow this did not save her. Her killers pretended to home-school her only in her final six months on earth.
Her parents had been known to social services since 2010, and concerns about Sara’s welfare were expressed within a week of her birth. It seems odd to conclude that home-schooling, of all things, should be held to blame.
Yet the trial judge, Mr Justice Cavanagh, declared that the murder of Sara ‘starkly illustrates the dangers’ of the existing automatic right of all parents to educate their children at home.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson pretty much immediately announced a Bill to block parents from home-schooling – if the child is suspected of being at risk of significant harm. This looks like the thin end of a very thick wedge to me.
And the Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, said the proposed legislation must go further, as it would not have helped Sara in its current form. In fact the English education establishment has been muttering about restricting home-schooling since Ed Balls commissioned the Badman Review of 2009.
I have mixed feelings about home-schooling. Some of it is quite brilliant, and in the USA it has freed multitudes of children (and their parents) from terrible ‘progressive’ state schools. Many of them go on to achieve very highly at college and beyond.
Some of it is just a fancy name for truancy. Some of it is a justified response to the chaos and bullying in Ms Phillipson’s dreadful schools. But, without the escape route it provides for those who don’t like state schools but who can’t afford private fees, we would be much worse off.
JK’s charming sleuths look as baffled as me
I cannot make any sense of the plots of J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike detective books and TV series, which she wrote under the name Robert Galbraith. And I find them more than a bit dark. Yet I can cheerfully watch them because of their co-stars, the captivating Holliday Grainger and Tom Burke, playing private detectives in modern London.
Holliday Grainger as Robin in the new Strike drama The Ink-Black Heart
I realised during the latest series, The Ink-Black Heart, that neither the sleuths nor I had the faintest idea what was going on, that characters appeared and disappeared without much reason, and also that I didn’t care.Â
I just enjoy watching it, though is Denmark Street in London, where their office lurks, ever as uncrowded these days as it looks here?
One mystery I would like to have solved is what has happened to their clapped-out Land Rover, a vehicle which sort of symbolises their ramshackle relationship? Has it, in fact, finally broken down?
Since I first heard it more than 60 years ago, one of my favourite bits of the Bible has been the one where ‘there ariseth a cloud out of the sea, as small as a man’s hand’. In a short time this has become a storm in which ‘the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain’.Â
I have found that events are often like this, a tiny, seemingly trivial beginning, swelling speedily into something vast.
This is more and more so with the campaign to reopen the case of the nurse Lucy Letby, whose convictions for murder and attempted murder seem to me to be gravely unsafe.
There is much, much more to come in this effort, which has united former foes. But last week I felt a deep shift. Thanks to the efforts of dozens of committed experts, working without reward to discover the truth, I think the tide of national opinion is going to turn during 2025.
The real Blitz, covered by bike
Last week in the Daily Mail I reviewed the new film Blitz, in which the bombing of London is turned into a backdrop for a load of old propaganda.Â
It impelled me to rummage in the attic for the ancient tin hat, pictured, crudely daubed with the word PRESS, which my late father-in-law, David, as a 15-year-old local newspaper writer, wore as he tore round London on his pushbike, reporting on the actual Blitz.Â
The tin hat that Peter Hitchens’s father-in-law David wore as a 15-year-old local newspaper writer during the BlitzÂ
Perched each night on the roof of his parents’ Bloomsbury block of flats, he watched the bombs fall and pedalled furiously to be first at the scene.
On one occasion he had just left a phone box after dictating his story, when the box itself suffered a direct hit. If you don’t find that exhilarating, I can’t help you. Happy Christmas.
