When sons Vanish

Is there a mother in the country, whose heart doesn't clench a little, when the Australian media reports the disappearance of a teenage boy? Is there a family in Queensland who didn't watch, perhaps unwillingly but watch nonetheless, as developments unfolded in the search for missing teenager, Daniel Morcombe? A mother whose heart doesn't ache for the suffering etched on Denise Morcombe's face? I wonder how many prayers were uttered on behalf of this family, from pulpits and pews in Australia last weekend? They were heard in the church I attended. How many parents and siblings wonder how it must be, to be Daniel's twin brother, growing up and living with what might have happened to Daniel? Bradley Morcombe talked about his brother in 2009, about his first attendance at school without his twin, about missing him constantly. Perhaps mothers are not the only people whose hearts ache when they hear news about missing children.

While the Morecombe family continues an experience that must be excruciatingly painful, we are watching a family confronted with evil of a kind most of us can barely imagine. We are watching a family living so as to oppose it. The loss of a son and brother has taken this family into determined, effective charitable action on behalf of lost children and their parents. See the bottom of this page for links to the charity. Evil touches our lives in a variety of ways. Reading the media on the kinds of things criminals interviewed in the Morcombe case had to say about what happens to children who are snatched, abused and killed, is like looking into the face of pure evil.

Anyone with a BA including a little sociology can tell us the popular stance on childhood. It’s something we created and in the past people didn’t treasure children the way we do now. We ‘created’ childhood, as a stage of life that requires protection and special care. However, reading the pages of the Christian Bible, one finds a wealth of reference to the value of children. Jesus of Nazareth said that ‘the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.’ (Mark 10:14) That part of our heritage which is Christian includes both the reality of suffering and hardship in children’s lives, and a reason for treasuring our children. It is they to whom the ‘kingdom of heaven’ belongs,

The danielmorcombe foundation can be located by clicking on this link.

We protected the cows

The Senate committee looking at proposed changes to the Family Law Act 2006, the Family Law Legislation (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011, tabled its report on Monday. It's a report that favours change, a report that recognises the unfortunate message the current wording of the Act gives, to Australians. Under the terms of the current Act, abuse of various kinds is given a category, which includes the word 'serious'. We have inclined toward leaving abuse alone, unless it is 'serious'. Any protective parent will tell you that in the Family Court of Australia, 'serious' means 'blood on the floor in front of the judge'. How has this categorising developed?

As a community, with significant encouragement from father's rights groups, Australians are inclined to believe that women often lie about family violence. We believe that the children of abusive parents are better given to the abusive parent than they are not knowing the parent. This relates to a misinterpretation of data published by the AIFS some time ago. We also seem to think that protective parents should be punished for attempting to protect their children. At the latter point, we become the epitome of the abuser. We use children, to punish an uncooperative parent. A parent who appears 'unfriendly' about a child's relationship with an abuser, may have his or her children removed from his or her care, and handed to an alleged abuser. That is akin to saying; “If you don't smile for the man who bashed/abused you and give your baby to him regularly and look happy about it, we will take your baby and give it to him for good.” This happens. Children die of it. It's something the Senate committee wants changed. This is where the catch and the cows come in.

When the media published footage/photos and reports of cows being ill treated in Indonesian abattoirs, the Australian public and its government acted almost overnight. Live exports to Indonesia were stopped. We prefer cows we eat to be treated nicely before they are slaughtered. On the other hand, although we know that children are suffering, even dying, we have little to say. Writing for The Age, Andrea Petrie and Michelle Griffin (The kids are not all right, August 17, 2011) refer to the distress of a mother who regularly hands her child to an her alleged abuser. Each time she hands the child over, she is terrified it will be the last time she sees the child alive. This is the experience Darcey Freeman's mother had, before Darcey's father threw her off a bridge to her death. Every weekend parents across the country have varying degrees of this experience.

The Family Law Act is in the process of being changed. It's taking a while, but it's important that this time, we get it right. In the meantime, we protected the cows. We made a big fuss and government acted fast. The industry attached to bovine abuse seems to have been suitably punished. And the Family Law Legislation (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011 grinds its inexorably tedious way through the systems of governmental process. One hopes that one day it will become law. I wonder how many children might die waiting? In the meantime I suppose that at least we protected the cows.