Child Murder

Murder is the worst crime. It violently takes away life, often for little motive further than greed or perversion. It ruins countless other lives. When a child is murdered, these feelings are amplified by the loss of innocence, of potential, and the empathy for the fear the child would have felt. You would think, from reading the press, that all our children are at a constant risk of murder. You might be wrong.

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world that doesn't worry about my children being murdered when other children are murdered. Maybe it's because of the sheer statistical unlikelihood. About 300 children die through murder, neglect or indirect abuse a year, out of a child population of around 11 million. That is too small a number to be given as a percentage.

Maybe it's because my kids are still very young and almost always in my care. And boys, who are less well represented in the media when murdered unless it's either salacious or A SIGN OF BROKEN BRITAIN. But my youngest sister is 13, and regularly goes out on her own. I can't say I worry she'll be horribly murdered too often either.

Maybe it's because I've never been murdered myself. I've been assaulted a few times. I've lived on the same street as a child who was brutally attacked by a stranger in her house. I lived in Wisbech, murder capital of the fens, for several years. I live close to female serial killer Joanna Dennehy's stamping ground, but she seemed to prefer killing men, as well as close to where poor Ross Parker was randomly murdered by racist animals.
To be honest, if I have any worries about being murdered myself, it's usually as an adjunct to a serious sexual assault rather than as a spontaneous, single crime.

Maybe it's because I'm an unfeeling monster who doesn't care about other people.

Or maybe it's because I'm cynical of the press.
Most children are murdered by their family - usually by their parents. I don't fear I'm going to murder my children. I don't fear my children's father will murder them either, or in fact, any of their family. However, parents murdering their children is so common (at least three quarters of the total, if not more, there is no definitive statistical information at present) that the national media rarely report it. Even the infamous case of 'Baby P' Peter Connolley wasn't reported in the national press until he'd been dead a year, and only then because of the social services failings around his death. Honour killings (as they're rather genteely named) are well represented in the press, but more because of underlying Islamophobia than because the press genuinely cares about children murdered by parents. It's boring. It happens every week. It's not news, unless there's some perverted sexual aspect the press can report in horrified, gleeful detail.

HOWEVER, when a child goes missing, that's a different case altogether. Think back just in the few months. Alice Gross, missing, murdered, dismembered by a man who then selfishly killed himself rather than face arrest. Zaani Bevan, killed in a murder-suicide by her mother. And now, also in Bristol, it seems poor Becky Watts' body parts have been found after being missing for a few weeks.

Going back a few years: April Jones was abducted and murdered by a neighbour. Her body has never been found. Sarah Payne, abducted and murdered by a paedophile outside her house. Madeline McCann went missing on holiday in suspicious circumstances and has never been found. Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, abducted and murdered by their school caretaker one weekend. Milly Dowler was abducted and murdered by a serial killer. Billie-Jo Jackson, going a bit further back, was murdered in her own garden and the killer has never been found. These are not the only ten girls to be murdered in the last eighteen years - far from it - but they are the poster children of violent crime. They are representative of the fears you have for your children when they step out of the front door to play. The monster lurking by the playground. The terror waiting by your back gate.

You'll note all of these victims are young. They're all female. They're all middle-class (with the possible exception of Zaani Bevan, who the press has now forgotten). They're all white. There is an actual name for this overreporting: Missing White Women Syndrome. It's in no way representative of the actual risks presented to your children.

The biggest killer of children in the UK is cancer. Not a lot you can do about that: you either get it or you don't. This is followed by accidental death, mainly through road accidents. 91 people are involved in traffic accidents every single day, resulting in death or injury. Sometimes, the press reports these, but only if they're really interesting. There are some interesting pie charts showing the change of cause of death by age of child in this report.

In short, you might be better off investing in cancer research, or teaching your children road safety from a very young age than worrying about the near-mythic creature, the killer lurking in the midst.