Unfit to parent: the families of David Morley’s killers

Tuesday, January 24th, 2006

There are a great many people in the world who are unfit to be parents. Some time ago on my blog I related the story of the gay man D Morley who, after surviving the London nail-bomber’s attack on the Admiral Duncan bar was beaten to death by a savage band of roaming teenagers who filmed the attack, and others they committed on the same night, on their video mobile phones.

The fact that these sick kiddies – the youngest being fourteen – were found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder was bad enough, but the sentencing announced yesterday was woefully inadequate to the idea that justice should be seen to be done. Twelve years is nothing for the violent taking of another person’s life for the purpose of reinforcing your own ego, filming the act and then passing the video around as a form of currency. Those members of the gang who were old enough to go to prison will be out in less than half the time their sentences imply, no doubt for ‘good behaviour’ and with the help of sympathetic counsellors who will cite their hard lives, the fact that they were brought up on council estates, that their mothers didn’t show them love… and so on, and so forth. It makes me sick to the very core of me how people find it easy to make excuses for the most appalling of crimes. At the very least, a twelve-year sentence should be what it says it is: a twelve-year sentence. I’m not advocating a lack of compassion, just a system which makes sense to people, and is perceived to be fair. Of course we need compassion but we need to direct it towards the victims of crime primarily and that isn’t happening much in our society right now.

I was brought up on a council estate; I was born in a house my parents rented from the local council. I didn’t leave that estate until I left home and even now my parents, who have since bought their home, still live on the same street and I visit them regularly. There is no shame in living in a council house or flat; not everyone doing so is a benefits scrounger, chav hoodie or has served time for violent crime. My postgraduate status alone – yes, some council house kids have brains, gasp! – is sufficient to demonstrate the appalling stereotyping of council house tenants which goes on in our society, mainstream and accepted and evidenced in TV shows like Little Britain.

The truth of the matter is, you don’t have to be working class to be rough or irresponsible, lazy or conniving. Many of the new wave of youth criminals are supposed to be middle-class, brought up in homes their parents own (which, it seems, confers status as far as some are concerned) and yet they roam the streets at night, terrorising pensioners and anyone walking alone, all dressed in the same nasty striped tracksuits, chewing gum, smoking, spitting, swearing, drinking, sniffing glue, taking drugs… Flat caps and a working class lineage are neither required nor in evidence. But there is a uniform, a look. Are we turning into a dual-fascist society, where the young operate one implementation of fascistic behaviour and the media, the government, another?

So what’s gone wrong? Why are we seeing sick, twisted teenagers making the headlines in this country every day? Blaming the parents is something I once saw as a simplistic response to a situation which was probably very complex. My views have changed. I don’t see the situation as being that complicated anymore. I do blame the parents, though not in all cases – just those where it is obvious some honest, occasionally tough, love at home would have made things different. If children are spoiled, if children are undisciplined, mollycoddled, protected from criticism when criticism is justified, shielded when they do wrong, presented with parents on a daily basis who lead by bad example, then they are only going to be more and more trouble not only within the family framework but outside it. We are all individually responsible for what we do, that’s true – but what if we have never been shown a different way to behave, a different life to live? I ask you, what then?

From The Guardian website comes a shocking example of the reprehensible behaviour not only of D Morley’s killers but the families of those killers:

Police had to protect Mr Morley’s parents as they left court yesterday after relatives of the defendants hurled abuse at them. One man drew a finger across his throat as a threat before police moved in to break up the group.

I can understand parents being distressed by their children’s bad behaviours, but how could any parent justify violence against the families of their children’s victims? This speaks volumes about how the killers developed their taste for assault and – let’s call it what it was – murder. Put simply, they were brought up by people to whom murdering queers and beating up the homeless are not only acceptable but commendable actions. As The Smiths song goes, Barbarism Begins At Home…

categories: in the news, lgbt, rattle bag