I think I have managed to make myself thoroughly depressed by reading the Press today and watching television about miscarriages of justice belatedly righted. Largely about the Rachel Nickell case, but also Babysitter not guilty of murder.
There has been a lot written about police incompetence in both cases, incompetence that is tantamount to criminal in itself. I won't add to those words. Too easy to jump on the bandwagon, be wise in hindsight, not really know what was going on. I don't mean that public servants should not be hold accountable. I just don't think that they should be put on trial by tabloid newspapers and their ignorant semi-literate commenters.
The Rachel Nickell case seems so very long ago, and yet I remember it so clearly. She was just about the same age as me, living really not very far away. By chance, she had been at the same school as a friend of mine. The day it happened was Bowling Night. Someone said that someone they knew, and I knew of, was a friend of hers. I have subsequently realised - especially with the connectivity of the web - that such connections are commonplace and not significant but perhaps at the time they took on a deeper significance. It struck me last night that I have never been to Wimbledon Common (except a brief visit as a child). I wonder if subconsciously I chose to avoid it, deeply subconsciously thinking her killer was still on the loose.
Reading about the Nickell case, and particularly about the way that Colin Stagg was framed and his life destroyed was the way the tabloids crucified him. I have seen no apologies from any newspaper about their despicable campaign of hatred, as they brayed for blood. Last night's TV programme included footage of some ghastly Mirror journalist who almost admitted he had got it wrong but clearly had no regrets and indicated no desire to apologise, yet he, like his colleagues on supposedly rival newspapers, made money out of vilifying an innocent man and agitating a mindless mob. I don't think any of them would have been happy unless Colin Stagg had been hanged and possibly drawn and quartered, preferably in public and with live coverage on downmarket telly (Channel 501). Add in Suzanne Holdsworth, convicted without a shred of evidence and plenty of exculpatory evidence. I think that anybody who still supports capital punishment is not only fundamentally immoral but also thick, for who amongst us can really guarantee that we or those we hold dear will not be set up for murder irrespective of our innocence?
And yet the tabloids keep on braying and apportioning blame, usually with very little knowledge and even less insight. A few disparate thoughts - in one thread in the Guardian someone asked why the murder of Samantha and Jazmine Bissett didn't get the media coverage at the time, and someone responded that it coincided with the second day of the trial for the murder of Jamie Bolger.
Then I look at a couple of current cases, Baby P's mother and Karen Matthews, as well as Robert Napper and god knows how many other 'evil monsters' eg Michael Stone (who killed Lin and Megan Russell) - what these perpetrators all have in common was that they had a really shit childhood, growing up in 'chaotic families' as we're supposed to call them now. I am not being some woolly liberal and trying to claim that this somehow excuses their behaviour (although I do ponder how possible it is to apportion blame to someone who is so deeply disturbed as to be totally out of kilter from normality). And Martin Narey of Barnardos pointed out that Baby P, had he lived, would almost certainly have turned into one of those 'feral teenagers' within ten years, had he lived.
Most of the halfwits commenting in the Daily Mail try to make some party political point using their oh-so-predictable shorthand, which only encourages the no less halfwitted David Cameron to make party political points, claiming that they were victims of a 'broken society' caused by a Labour Government, conveniently forgetting that the ghastly mothers were also victims of a broken society, being 'in care' under Tory Governments. It's too simplistic to go into party politics, there are fundamental problems in society, where far too many children are growing up in conditions really beyond the imagination of the rest of us, and while many just have miserable hopeless lives, others grow up to be the 'monsters' so easily villified by the sensationalist newspapers who are themselves without scruples or ethics.
