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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It sickens me that more & more of this stuff is happening in our society. People think they can get away with anything these days. The justice system cannot cope.
hi rodney, i will keep this anonymous for the moment but the brother who found her is a student at my school, and i spent the majority of yesterday councilling his mates and friends.
Some keys to remember here though are that this is not normal. we cannot let it affect our lives beyond the initial grief and pain. The perpetrator is already in custody and this will not happen again.
It is also important to remember that our children will react not to the story itself, but to our reaction to the story. If we suddenly are overcome and making new rules and showing fear and worry, then our children will be feeling very vulnerable that us, the adults are afraid. We must remain in control, perhaps keep a closer eye than before, but otherwise it must be life as normal….
this is an horrific tragedy yet it is rare and out of the ordinary. we must keep it in perspective and de-escalate the issue.
Well said. Your points are very similar to those I was making to a colleague this morning.
I would never want to dismiss or downgrade the severity of the incident but we must remember that it is an extremely rare occurence. We can’t let this incident be the motivator for teaching fear to our children.
Kids need to be able to take risks in life and we need to be wise in deciding which risks we will allow.
Rodney, you said “Somehere that was considered safe, the local shopping centre…”.
I’m sorry, but when was the last time the local shopping centre was considered safe? You have no idea of the background of people that congregate there. 99.99% of the people are most likely to be “normal”, however as we have just seen it just takes one person who isn’t.
How many paedophiles gather at shopping centres, just waiting for a chance.
The world is changing, and not in a nice way. We don’t need to teach our children fear, but we do need to teach them to avoid strangers and look with distrust at anyone that approches them for no reason. Of course there are obvious exceptions to this.
Anon above said “The perpetrator is already in custody and this will not happen again.” Bad news. It will happen again, just not with this person. It also may not happen for a while. It may not happen in Perth. However the thought has been planted in peoples heads, and a copy cat will emerge.
I have 2 daughters, and I do not let them out of my sight at any time in public. Am I wrong to be suspicious about the people around me? I don’t believe so. As we have seen, it only takes 1 person a very short time to mess up peoples lives.
You’ll notice I said ‘considered’ safe and not simply ‘safe’.
We have always been very protective of our kids at shopping centres and in fact wherever we are. A lot of the time our protection is something that just happens silently, at other times we will explain the need for extra care to our kids. I make sure that I tell our children that the vast majority of adults would never hurt a child but that we still need to be careful.
Hey Rodney, I was reading about this terrible event today. Thanks for putting up a thought-provoking post.
Thomas
Scott raises an important issue in the first post when he mentions people “thinking they can get away with it”. What we need here is for the judge and jury or whoever has the power to dish out some serious justice and send a clear message that people can’t get away with this.
Locking the offender away permanently might not rehabilitate him in any way, but it might just make anyone else thinking of undertaking such a crime think twice.
Hi Rodney, very thoughtful post. I agree that life is certainly a matter of balancing risks with being able to grow and to learn independence. It’s a tough one.
I agree with the poster who talked about not letting things escalate and using adults’ reactions as a guide for children. (And isn’t this true for all of us when faced with any situation?)
Most parents I know are careful of their kids’ safety but also want them to experience life. I know my father let me take more risks and have more independence than most kids and for him, and me, it paid off. No repressed memories uncovered yet!
These days, it seems to me, when something bad happens to a child the reaction from the public is “Where were the parents? Why weren’t they watching? Why weren’t they more vigilant??” Our reactions can very quickly and easily slide into a seige mentality and a mob mentality. Yet who among the mob would want it to turn its beady, inquisitive eyes on their own behaviour and choices?
Poor Sofia and her family have been the victims of a ghastly crime, but panic and a child-killer version of “reds under the beds” just isn’t, in my view, a helpful response for any of us.