This was a television news item
which I heartily wish I had not seen. I will never forget the heartrending cry
of that poor child, unlike anything I had ever previously heard and which I
never, ever, want to hear again. Where was his mother? How on earth could
anybody, especially a family member, cause gratuitous pain to a child? How
could anybody film violence, especially that done to a child and post it on
Youtube?
Yet, across the world, there are
those adults who choose to inflict unbelievable suffering on children. In this
country, just in the last few weeks, we have heard of a mother found guilty of
beating her 2 year-old son to death. Birmingham Crown Court heard that little
Keanu Shuttleworth had 37 injuries at the time of his death, the result of
months of abuse. Baby P and Victoria Climbie have now become household names,
and for all the wrong reasons. For sure, child protection services hold
enquiries and sharpen up their activities, but, all too often, it is too late
for the child in question. Why was it, for instance, that people noticed 4
year-old Daniel Pelka was losing weight and seemed abnormally hungry, yet
believed his mother’s story about ‘eating problems’ and did nothing to stop the
child starving to death?
Violence takes different forms.
Society has a responsibility to treat people with the respect and dignity that
they deserve. In order to uphold human rights, the media has a duty to inform
us of abuses at home and abroad. It is right, for instance, that the world
knows of the brutality of sharia law
and is aware of the beating and assassination of the 14 year-old boy who joked
about Mohammed when some jihadists demanded a free cup of coffee from his
kiosk. Did a boy have to be murdered over a drink? Is that not violence which
should never be repeated and should not the perpetrators receive the full
weight of the law? If the media can help to create a culture of decency, then
it should have every freedom necessary to achieve that goal.
Yet there is also a limit to the
way in which a news item should be transmitted: there is such a thing as
gratuitous violence. A recent BBC report from Syria appeared to be made whilst,
nearby, three men were flogged with an electric cable for attempting to steal a
taxi cab: in the background, listeners could hear the sound of each lash. Does
news have to be so graphic?
The most prevalent form of
violence today is so subtle that some people constantly argue for its
continuation, declaring that access to pornography is a ‘right’, personal and
does no harm. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre's (Ceop)
annual report says that, in 2012, the organisation received 8,000 reports of
the sharing of indecent images of children and that the total number of images
and videos had doubled to 70,000 on previous years. Ceop also found that there
has been a 70 percent increase in the number of female victims under 10 years
old.
The National Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) reported that “17,186 sexual crimes
against children under 16 were recorded in England and Wales in 2011/12.” How
many of those crimes also involved pornography? Do those who use and distribute
such materials realise that, whether or not such resources are explicitly
violent, they are degrading? Do they ever stop to consider that the users and
disseminators of pornography are doing violence to basic human decency and
dignity? Where pornography is regularly accessed, how can individuals have a
clear and unclouded understanding of what normally constitutes a good and
respectful relationship?
An estimated 90 per cent of boys
have seen pornographic images before they are 18 years old. Further, approximately
80-90 per cent of Internet porn users only access free online material – which
means that youngsters can easily download sites without having to worry about
the impact on their pockets. As a result, an estimated four out of five 16
year-olds regularly access pornography online. That is a frightening number of
young people who witness degrading images which inevitably impinge on their appreciation
of what it means to be a mature, responsible and caring individual.
One young woman recently admitted
that she enjoyed watching pornographic films, sometimes with her boyfriend, but
complained that she also had a problem: in spite of his expectations, she could
not do with him the things that they saw happening on videos – and yet she did
not appear to associate her reluctance to be ‘adventurous’ with an underlying
desire for a relationship which is also wholesome.
A short time ago, a man admitted
that he only stopped his viewing of pornography, when, after several years of
silent tolerance, his wife insisted that “enough was enough”. It was only when
he tried to halt his activities that he realised that his initial interest,
which he had hitherto considered ‘normal’, had grown into an addiction which
was very difficult to terminate. The effect of explicit material is insidious
and potentially disastrous for a marriage and for family life.
The murderers of Holly Wells and
Jessica Chapman, April Jones and Tia Sharp had all accessed child pornography
before selecting and killing their victims. Yet there are those who argue that
to restrict such materials is an abuse of their “right to information and
freedom of expression” under the Human Rights Act! There are obviously
different understandings of the meaning of the word ‘abuse’!
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that ‘The dignity of the human person
is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God’. Jesus put it more simply. He said that we should
love our neighbour as we love ourselves. In fact his statement has two meanings
since ‘as’ can mean both ‘because’ and ‘in the same way and to the same degree’.
St
Francis de Sales declared, “Nothing is as strong as gentleness, nothing as
gentle as real strength.” Blessed Mother Teresa expressed it differently: “I
have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more
hurt, only more love.”
