When I got to work yesterday morning I read the story on the front page of The West Australian newspaper. It shocked me and it hasn’t been far from my mind ever since. I keep coming back to it wishing it could be different; wishing that time could be turned back before it all happened.
On Monday afternoon an eight year old girl was brutally raped and then strangled in the toilets of a suburban shopping centre in the Perth metropolitan area. Her 14 year old brother and her uncle found her naked body in a cubicle. A 21 year old man has now been charged with the offence. More details of the story can be found here in a News.com.au story.
Part of the article says, Detective Senior Sergeant John Wibberley, of Perth’s Major Crime Squad, said the three Rodrigez-Urrutia-Shu children – Sofia, her 14-year-old brother and 11-year-old sister whose names have been withheld – had been taken to the shopping centre after school on Monday by an uncle.
At about 4pm, Sofia went to the toilet while the other three waited inside the shopping centre.
When she had not appeared after 10 minutes or so, they went looking for her and checked the male, female and disabled toilets. Both the male and female toilets were empty, but the door was closed on the disabled toilet and the occupied sign engaged.
When the boy knocked on the door, a man’s voice acknowledged there was someone inside. The brother then left and searched the car park.
When he returned five minutes later, he saw the man quickly emerge from the disabled toilet and run past him. The boy looked into the cubicle, saw his sister’s body and then chased the man.
Unsure of what to do, he gave up after a few metres, ran back to the toilet and sat with his dead sister until help arrived.
What can you say when something like this happens? How does a family recover from such an incident? How will that 14 year old boy ever find healing after finding his sister like that? How will the uncle ever forgive himself for something that was never his fault in the first place? The family of Sofia has spent most of the day today with their parish priest. The deeply religious family have been overwhelmed by the support of friends, family and the wider Perth community.
My thoughts on the perpetrator swing from wanting to see some kind of strong physical punishment handed out to wondering just how a person could act this way. What happened to this guy in the past that would fuel this kind of evil attack? What part does forgiveness play in all of this? I would certainly never exuse his actions and truly believe that he must now face the consequences of his horrific actions but what could have gone so wrong in his life for him to do this? Is there any hope of rehabilitation for someone who has done something so evil?
Where do the parents of the murderer turn? No matter how well or how badly they parented him, they can’t be held responsible for the actions of another adult. They may or may not have played a part in him acting this way but in the end they are sure to feel incredible pain over his actions. How does a parent face up to those sorts of things?
Shock and fear have now descended on Perth. Parents are terrified of similar things happening to their own children. Somehere that was considered safe, the local shopping centre, has become a scary place. It may have been a rare occurence but the horror of it all will have a continuing effect on the community.
How can we now move forward without teaching our kids to fear everyone? Surely we want to protect our kids but the last thing we want to teach our kids is that they can’t trust anyone and that everyone must be treated with suspicion. Surely we want our children to trust others but we must also teach them to be wise and careful. Chris at Life Cycle has written a very good post about this issue which I encourage you to read.
How much do we tell our kids about this kind of thing? I chose to get our kids to leave the room last night when the television news was covering the story.
The thoughts and feelings that this crime has raised continue to run through my mind and probably will for some time. Thanks for the opportunity to share some of how I’m feeling.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Technorati Tags: Murder – Family – Tragedy – Parenting
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