DANIEL PELKA : A CHILD OF OUR TIMES ?

While the Americans get their kicks from shooting people, it seems that the British get theirs from the abuse and murder of children.

 

Despite the repeated promises of the past, another small child has been killed and now an inquiry has determined that everyone failed and yet no one was specifically to blame; it says that "critical lessons" must be "translated into action", whatever such gobbledygook might mean in practice.

 

The child, Daniel Pelka, aged 4, suffered what is described as terrifying and dreadful abuse by his mother and her partner and yet no one appears to have either noticed or done anything about it. He was starved and beaten for months until he finally died at his Coventry home in March 2012.

 

The family apparently had contact with an assortment of state bodies including the police, social services and education services and yet no one noticed what was going on. The child is reported to have been seen scavenging for food in dustbins, and yet no one did anything about it.

 

Year after year, we hear of similar instances and, every time, we are told that lessons must be, and will be, learned and that such things must never be allowed to happen again; year after year they do. The utter incompetence of the services that are supposed to safeguard children is mind-blowing; they react to every instance by trying to impose ever greater security while actually doing nothing. They lock school gates and doors, impose meaningless and time wasting 'CRB' checks and impose photography bans on parents.

 

In the meantime, children like Daniel Pelka continued to be abused and murdered.

CHILDREN FAILED AGAIN BY POLICE AND SOCIAL SERVICES.

The criminal case involving abuse of many young girls in Oxfordshire calls into question, yet again, the worth of 'social services' departments across the country, as well as much of what our police do.

 

Once more, social workers stood idly by while children in their care were systematically abused, girls ranging from 11 to 15 being fed drugs, trafficked and raped by a gang of Asian men over a period of 8 years. Not all of the girls concerned were in the care of Oxfordshire social services but the fact that some were surely demonstrates how shockingly useless such departments are.

 

It seems that no one will lose their job over this disgrace although both the head of Oxfordshire County Council and the Chief Constable of  the Thames Valley police force have been doing massive amounts of apologising and hand-wringing in the media over the last 24 hours. They assure us, as such people always do at such times, that they have learned lessons and will do their utmost to ensure that similar situations do not arise again in the future.

 

How many times can the public be fed this drivel before they realise that it is nothing but meaningless platitudes and empty rhetoric ? This is not the first time we've had such a case and it won't be the last. Just as with the Jimmy Savile investigation, the authorities have been proven to be useless. While their staff attend endless courses on diversity, equality and stereotyping, the truth is that nothing changes. Police and social workers look for the easy options, the 'quick bust' or easy to resolve bit of domestic violence; when things become more complicated and they're confronted with major organised activities, they are impotent.

 

For anyone who doubts that our society is not just broken but beyond repair, they need only read the newspapers, listen to the news and consider how little of what is said by those in authority means anything or is ever enacted. Thames Valley police are, apparently, conducting a detailed review of this latest scandal and a report will be prepared NEXT YEAR ! Presumably, Oxfordshire social services will be doing something similar. By the time these reports are produced, the appalling events that prompted them will be fading into the distant past and nothing meaningful will ever result. There'll be more hand-wringing and plenty of drum-beating, new systems put in place and lots of promises that everything is now better. Ha, ha.

 

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".