Sad

Watching the news seemed once like a place to be informed, a place to keep up with current events and affairs. Partly this is true now, though sadly as the world become more hostile (toward one another) and externally displays rage, the news has become somewhat of a spoiled side salad to my dinner.

I get home around 7pm, cook my meal and naturally switch on Ch4 news. I like to see John's wacky ties, though I also like his journalistic capabilities as well.

As I was preparing my meal tonight, a very sad and disturbing story caught my attention- it was the South Yorkshire case of the two little boys (who are brothers), essentially torturing two other little boys, aged just 9 and 11.

The torturers were known to police, they've had a criminal record since they were ten. Living in foster care and under social workers guard, they'd seemingly slipped through the cracks when they led the two boys away into a field. They stamped on them repeatedly, threw bricks at them, then forced them to perform sexual acts on one another. They then left them for dead.

The youngest lad eventually managed to leave the field to raise help.

The trial begins for the torturers who are now aged 12 and 10, under the adult judicial system.

Of course with this level of controversy, a case like this breeds opinions far and wide. Why weren't the boys properly supervised? Why weren't they in gaol, considering their previous convictions? Why weren't they closer assessed, and why weren't their obviously perverse backgrounds noticed before?

Hats off to foster carers, they are one of the silent hero's who deserve honorary medals (not celebrities, politicians and the like), though tell me, who is raising these children? Their parents, the very people who bought them into this world, where are they? Obviously not fit to raise children, I refuse to believe these two brothers had anything less then a hellish childhood, the result being them taking it out on the world. Were they abused as children? It's likely. Sexually abused? More than likely, given how cyclical abuse is.

It breaks my heart that children, so fresh and innocent, can be broken so young and left to suffer the consequences for their inevitable actions when all goes wrong.

I'm not blaming the 'system'. Too many people point the finger at social services, but there must be thousands of cases similar. Under paid and over worked as the saying goes. Under staffed is the outcome.

I know there are good people in this world. Equally, there are bad people. I'm an optimistic person and I really want to believe that with love and guidance, these boys can perhaps make amends in their young lives- though it would take time.