Sad lives
Was shocked today to see the front page of the Daily Mirror a picture of "Happy Slapper" Chelsea O'Mahoney with the headline: HAPPY SLAP KILLER AGED 14. Undoubtably, a young female killer is infinitely more news worthy than the gang of boys who accompanied Chelsea on their rampage. This blog isn't really about how awful that a man died and several were attacked that evening but more about the sad life of Chelsea O'Mahoney who is the daughter of herion addicts, was found wandering the streets of London alone at the age of three and had had a "particularly chaotic and fragmented life".
Daily Mirror report
BBC news report
Also in the news, the defendants in the murder of Damilola Taylor are a 17-year-old who was 12 at the time and lived in a local authority care home in south London and his brother who was 13 then and a day pupil at an assessment centre but had failed to attend on the day Damilola was killed.
BBC news story
More kids leading chaotic lives...and doing terrible things.
posted by Helsalata @ 2:45 pm
5 comments
5 Comments:
This really is sad, and people wonder why we work in the area we work in. Helen, you are such a good example, for your passion and heart for young people. You still inspire me, even though we don't work together anymore. My prayers are with you.
What could actually have been done to stop "Chelsea" from doing what she did?
Thank you for stopping by Mr Carrot! I'm unsure that there are easy solutions to the problem of kids who lead chaotic lives. My theory is that Chelsea wasn't evil. She did stupid, moronic and cruel things. The consequences of that night were as bad as they could be and she will now pay the price. I believe in the Assets Building approach which means that some kids who have horrible things happen to them are able to cope because they have certain anchoring assets that help to counteract the bad things. If Chelsea had these in her life, she might have been able to cope with the pain of having absent parents. I believe that if she'd had the intervention of youth workers in her life or older people who acted like mentors, that this wouldn't have happened. So my solution would be that the government funds more youth related programmes (not focusing on crime prevention necessarily) combined with action against poverty which isn't really my field but I'm thinking pumping extra money into schools in impoverished areas instead of making them compete with schools in "better" areas for cash.
What do you think might have prevented this?
My wife works in a similar field and I believe its an enormous benefit to young peoples lives. I respect her because I couldn't do it - I would get to irate with the world. Thats why she is calm and er - I am not.
However I also think that sometimes someone is so damaged that its going to take a miracle for the person to be repaired, something beyond human intervention. This may have been one of those cases.
Its very sad. That all said, how many times have I heard people being transformed to glory from the pit that life can offer. If it happens for one person, then hope still prevails.
And for every person who has that miracle transformation we are bombarded with stories about the one who wasn't transformed and did something awful...
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