PERSONAL SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Archive for the ‘Under 18’ Category

I read with sadness and anger that another teenager had committed suicide due to being bullied. This included ‘cyber bullying‘ and the report made a big deal about how the bullying never stopped. When the girl got home it was there on her social network page. OK, this is where it gets a little hard for me to follow. If the bullying was going on online… why not close the account? Why not change name and password? Why not simply stop going online? Sooner or later the bully would get the hint and lose interest.

I am sorry, it is a tragedy for sure but the biggest tragedy has to be that the girl valued her social network more than her life. She would rather kill herself than go without her Facebook or whichever social network it was. This is ridiculous! Don’t blame the social network or the internet, don’t even blame the bully. If the bully intended her to kill herself, then charge him and take him through the courts. If the bully was just another mental midget, troubled teen with issues, then that is sad but the choice to end it all was hers, nobody else’s.

Which makes me think that some people are predisposed to dealing with stress and pressure that way, rather than fight back, confront the bullies or simply switch off the computer. It is sad, no argument but I think we need to keep things in perspective and not get too wound up, too ‘you poor thing’. We are tending to get softer and softer as we conquer more and more of the every day risks life has for us. We will never totally eradicate all risk and that is a good thing because danger is the best instructor there is.

The simple precaution of counting heads before leaving a venue would have prevented a 5 year old boy being left in the toilets of a restaurant while on a school excursion last month. Fortunately the little lad had the presence of mind to find his way to his grandparents home fairly nearby. What if he hadn’t been able to do that? What if he had been injured crossing the several roads and the rail crossing he needed to navigate to get there? No wonder he feels he was not important enough to be missed…

No teacher does this on purpose, but then that is the meaning of the word negligence. Whoever was in charge of the trip neglected to make sure they had all the students with them when they left to head back to school. How? How could this happen? Who was in charge? Are they still in their job?

It is simply not good enough. I accept teachers have considerable responsibility yet to be fair, they do earn a good wicket so they are compensated and if they are not happy they can take their education and experience elsewhere. Children deserve our very best efforts at all times, even the naughty ones. This has not been the case here. It is, in a word, a disgrace.

A tragic stabbing death of a 44 year old mother in Melbourne after she confronted the three teenagers that threw eggs at her house has rocked her community. Haled as a ‘lovely lady’, apparently this last egging took her over the edge and she got stuck in when her and her husband chased the three that did the deed. One, a 14 year old turned and stabbed her. She died there in the street, in front of her 11 year old daughter and with her husband trying desperately to resuscitate her.

One could say it was not worth getting killed over, why not just clean off the eggs? The holders of this view miss the point. True, it was not worth getting stabbed over, but the criminals should not have egged her house, or broken any of our laws. Yet they do and they hold these laws and the rest of us in utter contempt. We are here to amuse them, to feed and house and entertain them. They are special and deserve everything society can offer, for nothing. They got this attitude from their parents, obviously, mixed in with messages from the authorities at school who are powerless to deal with them. All because some over educated idiot with no kids and a fairyland world in their heads of how it should all be perfect pushed for the rights of the punks, without worrying that maybe they lacked the IQ, the upbringing and the common decency to understand about responsibilities.

There is no point parliament jumping up and down and promising tougher laws. The laws are already there and tough enough. If anyone had the will to enforce them. Courts seem reluctant to do this and too eager to accept social workers and psych reports and so on, anything to give an excuse not to hammer the swine. If the criminals are a minority, be they muslim, indigenous or whatever, then all the more reason not to leave oneself open to allegations of racism no matter how unfounded. The police know the offenders nearly everytime but they have to prove it. If the punk is under 14, they also have to prove the criminal knew what they were doing was wrong. Yes, even as they stab a woman in the guts with a knife, if they claim they didn’t realize that was wrong, they stand a good chance of getting off. Sometimes so called advances in psychology have gone too far and we haven’t caught up with methods of instilling decency and discipline in the offspring of society’s dross.

Bottom line, these punks should not have egged the woman’s house. They are the criminal swine and their parents need to accept part of the blame also. Even if the woman ‘over reacted’ it will never excuse murder. I would not be surprised if some do-gooder called for a ban on the sale of eggs to minors. So next time they throw tomatoes and before we know it, the Fruit and Dairy (Restricted Sale) Act 2012 as Ammended will be law!

In the UK a 17 year old ‘ladette’ on a binge drinking session pushed a 34 year old woman to the floor and stamped on her face twice with her stiletto heel. She caused the woman’s optic nerve to snap, leaving her blinded for life in one eye and suffering anxiety and panic attacks. The attacker, jailed for 33 months, will have her baby behind bars in a month or so’s time.

This is yet another example of how vicious and dangerous the female of the species, particularly the 15 to 25 group, can be. Do not underestimate the danger of these vicious sluts. The large amounts of alcohol consumed by young people in the UK and elsewhere is a serious social problem, but not a new one. In the mid 18th century the alcoholism among the poor in London was a major factor in shaping the policy of transportation which led to the founding of the colony at Port Jackson (Sydney).

Here in Sydney we have a similar problem but not to the extent it is in England. The message is clear: Stay away from the places that serve alcohol until dawn unless you wish to risk becoming involved in violence and potentially lethal arguments over nothing. It reminds me of the ephibephobia (fear of youth) that was engendered by Anthony Burgess’s novel, ‘A Clockwork Orange’. (1963) While Kubrick’s movie a decade or so later missed out on the final chapter where the protagonist realised the error of his ways and renounced violence, it was nonetheless a damning indictment of how young adults and teens can become lethal savages.

William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ was another literary example of how we humans can resort to very primal beasts if the circumstances allow the breakdown of the thin facade of civilized behaviour we normally present. Why we think girls are any less savage than boys I don’t know. It is wishful thinking that may have held some veracity at one time, but women have always been the crueller of the species.

While a man will often feel some compassion for his opponent once he has neutralized the risk he presents, not so the woman. The native North Americans would hand the prisoners over to the women for torture as they were far better at keeping them in agony for as long as possible. No pity and a quick death from them, they wrought their revenge and I can understand this. After all, the women were the ones that suffered the most when the men fought, especially if their men lost. Payback is a very base human instinct.

But they had a reason behind their cruelty. Not so these vicious, spiteful spoilt bitches or their equally waste of space boyfriends. Is it a generational thing? Do we blame the parents? Is it the fault of society and consumerism and instant gratification at light speed thanks to technology outpacing cultural change? What do you think?

An 8 year old girl, playing in her front yard in Cabramatta was dragged into the street by a passing man. She managed to flee after kicking him in the shins. Good for you Miss! It shows that sometimes a kid can inflict sufficient damage to affect her release. Sadly, too often their attempts fail and sadder still when they offer no resistance whatsoever.

My two eldest girls have been told they can’t hit a schoolyard bully back after they are assaulted, self defence is not an excuse apparently. I have yet to take this up with the school but I have printed off a declaration for them to keep in their school bags. My instruction to my girls is to try and ignore the bully, then walk away and if that doesn’t work and they hit first, then hit back harder. I have taught them how and where to hit, palm heel strike under the chin or on the nose.

The declaration states “I was assaulted and I was in fear of my life. I acted in self defence. Contact my father…” and my name and numbers. Below that I have reproduced the NSW Crimes Act 1900 Sect 60E Assaults At Schools; Sect 61 Common Assault…; Sect 418 Self Defence When Available and Sect419 Self Defence Onus of Proof.

My children are citizens, deserving of the full protection of the law. ‘Any person’ includes 12 year old bullies from dysfunctional homes as much as any hardened criminal. I realise they are not considered criminally responsible under the law but my daughters have the right to protect themselves if assaulted and the law of the land outweighs the Education Department’s desire to keep their liabilty and premiums manageable.

If they won’t stand up for themselves at school when assaulted, why would they defend themselves against a child molestor? While I understand the message needing to be sent regarding schoolyard violence is one of zero tolerance, countermanding the rights of the citizen to defend themselves is not the answer.

It is not my fault if the bully comes from a broken home, has substance abusing care givers and no proper adult role models. My children are not there as some kind of therapy for the poor child. Charity begins at home and I believe in making sure first you are not a part of the problem, then seeing if you can help with the solution.

Sadly these bullies believe there is nothing adults can do to them so they flaunt this, abuse and assault even adults and then threaten them with the law if they take action. The ‘parents’ are little better educated than their primary school offspring and prone to resorting to foul language and physical violence themselves when confronted, it is all they know. All they understand is ‘might is right’. They neither respect civilized behaviour nor do they practise it. Hence the only appropriate response is to retaliate in a way they do understand, sadly that all too often means physically.

That said, if I ever find any of my kids  bullying and starting fights they will know the meaning of the word punishment. They know their parents will not stand for them sinking to the level of the kids they complain about. As for fighting, I believe when it is the most appropriate response then you fight like a savage, get it over with and win. Otherwise just curl into a ball and let them do as they wish… and that  is not our way, never has been, never will be.

Photo Courtesy Guillaume HERBAUT

A gang of six young females attacked two men and two women after the four refused their demands for money and cigarettes in Ipswich, QLD the other day. As the assault began a van with another two females arrived with the two women joining in before they all drove away leaving the victims injured and missing at least one wallet. It does not pay to underestimate the female of the species, especially when she is ‘mob handed’, ie: in a gang or group.

I guessed upon reading the first few lines that the women would be indigenous, we have a similar problem where I live with gangs of female Koori’s begging for cigarettes and money down at the local shops. If you refuse they have been known to turn on you. They can inflict very serious injury yet it is difficult for many of us to react with sufficient force in the first instance to dissuade them from escalating from verbal taunts to actual violence. Yet by the time you realise it is really happening it is often too late.

Of course it is not all one sided.  In Albury-Wodonga in 2008 there were a series of attacks on Koori teens by white teen gangs, purely based on ethnicity or race. Aboriginal community elders called for calm and restraint from their young people and the point was well made that we all bleed red blood. So, was the Ipswich attack racially motivated or simply a criminal act? It is all too easy to play the race card when there is a visual identifier in place, such as physical appearance that clearly identifies those involved as being of one ethnic group or another.

While the Albury attacks most likely were racially motivated, the Ipswich ones I would presume were only partially fuelled by skin colour. It is easier to hate those who are visually different to oneself, the greater the differences the easier it becomes. Being so visually different has been a survival aid since time began. If that other human did not look like you and your clan then there was a good chance they were from somewhere else and quite likely a threat. All very well 40,000 years ago but times have changed.

Times have changed for our indigenous citizens too, albeit not always for the best. However the status quo is what it is and we can’t turn back the clock to 1769 and send Cook off somewhere else. What we can do is listen to the words of Wiradjuri elder Nancy Rooke, “We’ve got to live in this world, we’ve all got to get on.” That goes both ways.

There is NO EXCUSE for assaulting other people. Race is not reason, nor is religion or orientation or any other ‘difference’. However, this is not a fair and just world and I suspect while there are human beings inhabiting it, it never will be fair or just to any great degree. So be aware other people may not like you or who they think you are. In the Cronulla riots of 2005 an Indian man, a Sikh complete with turban, was set upon by the ignorant crowd of thugs because they mistook him for a Muslim. In his mind he is not a Muslim and so was not at risk but he failed to take into account the fact that thugs are pretty thick to begin with, hence they run in packs and are easily riled.

I do quite a lot with the indigenous community in my area but I still give gangs of young ones a wide berth because I know they have the capability if not the intent to harm and they might think I am just another ‘white bum’. Being proactive and aware does not mean you are stereotyping or racially profiling, just prudent. But keep it to yourself or you run the risk of an assault of a different kind.

A report today of a teacher assaulted and seriously injured at the local high school has me thinking about my own experiences with that school’s ‘kids’. I prepared a 20 page supporting document to have my daughter attend an ‘out of area’ school next year when she goes to High School because of the fears we hold for her if she were to attend this school. I have seen the police form a skirmish line and drive mobs of school kids milling about the forecourt of a petrol station at a nearby campus of the same college. We know the kids that go to this school because she has had several years of primary school with them and the good ones are few and far between.

I blame the parents, totally. So many of them are dysfunctional, substance abusing and with below average IQs and more practically, low emotional intelligence. They are what the Americans would call trailer trash or ‘Wal-Polloi’. We call them ‘bogans’, ‘westies’ or ‘yobbo’s’. Social invective aside, it doesn’t change the outcomes. You can have all the sympathy in the world for them and their plight but in Australia in 2010 there is little excuse other than mental illness to explain their parenting style. Those that have parents. Most are lucky to have one and too many have ‘care givers’ or carers. Guardians is the old term. Caregiver or carer is so much fuzzier, don’t you think? Doesn’t change the outcome though.

I repudiate any claim that poverty causes such anti-social behaviour and built up anger. It doesn’t help but the facts are that these people would be broke even if they received twice the benefits or wages they get now. As the English humourist C.N. Parkinson once said, ‘expenses will rise to meet income’. For several years now we have been living on exactly the same income they do, more or less, as I was a student for 18 months, then unemployed for a few more while convalescing from my heart surgery and now we are in the NEIS stream, which is the same income as the unemployment benefit while you develop your own business. Yet we have a mortgage, superannuation, private health insurance, pay off a block of land and eat well. It is tough and requires discipline and a good budget as well as the will to say ‘no’ a lot of the time but we manage. Both our school age children are doing well with the eldest a vice-captain.

So it has little if anything to do with income level and everything to do with one’s upbringing. I was brought up well, I feel,  and so was my wife and both of us come from low income families, hers more than mine. All six kids in her family graduated high school thanks to considerable sacrifices by her parents yet they valued education highly enough to do what had to be done. In this country our education is free. Our health care is free. We can travel to school for free.  We have internet access at the library for free. We get help buying uniforms and if we have real problems we can get help on top of help! There is no excuse except, perhaps, some people are just made that way? Maybe some people are intrinsically bad. It is the only excuse I can come up with.

A 4 year old boy in the UK was found dead in a tumble dryer after a game of hide and seek went horribly wrong. While the mother was out shopping the boy was left in the care of his half brothers and half sisters. Comments on the web site where the story is located include ones that confidently decry ever leaving ‘children to look after other children’. The tone is somewhat smug and all-knowing, I wonder if the commentator has children of their own or has ever had to go to the shops and leave their children at home, alone? There is no mention of a father in the article so perhaps she is a single parent? Also we are not told the ages of the half-siblings, they might be old enough to manage in most circumstances. The reality is that there are times when you can’t take them with you and you have to do things and leave them and there are no adults available to watch them.

When I was a small boy in the 1960s my father was at work or away with the Forces and my mother had to work. My sister, 17 months my senior and I, were often left on our own for the day once we were at school age and during school holidays. When I was 5 we would wake up, have the breakfast left by my mother then travel on the bus into town to stay with her at her place of work. We spent hours in the storeroom bored stiff. It was a case of economic necessity. Even when I was 10 I was allowed to travel by train to the city with my sister and other friends and we would spend the day roaming the streets, riding the ferry to Manly and back then taking the train all the way backout to Villawood. But that was 1971. Nearly 40 years later there is no way I would allow my 11 year old and her 7 year old sister to take the bus to the local Mall by themselves. It is a different society we live in.

While accidents and tragedies can occur at home, even when parents are present, there are some scenarios where the risk is heightened. Yet how does one, as a responsible parent, prepare one’s children for life on their own, taking their chances as we all had to? When we can lose them so easily in our own homes, the thought of them out there, in public, without us…

But it has to be done. You have to give them the opportunity to experience independence and the weight of making their own decisions. Consequences. I believe we start young with letting them go to the mail box on their own like my 3 year old loves to do. Her 2 year old sister followed her out the other day and didn’t get back in through the driveway gate in time before her older sister slammed it shut. She hasn’t figured out the gate latch like the older one has, so she stood there screaming and yelling for help until I came and let her in, gave her a big hug and off she went, once more happy and content.

I try to give them good training to apply when life challenges them with something new. It is a sad fact of life that we all think that when the chips are down we will rise to the occasion whereas what usually happens is we fall back to the level of our training. If we haven’t been properly trained in the first place, we are well behind that 8 ball.

In the case of 4 year olds and tumble dryers, while you can’t foresee every latent hazard, you can take a few moments to survey your home and identify potential life takers. We have plugs for power points and clips for doors, keep poisons well off floor level and try to second guess our kids. It’s not easy but then parenting never was.

If, for whatever reason, you had to steal a car, do you know how to do it? Do you know how to break in and hotwire it so you can drive it away? No? Well two 8 year old boys in northern Queensland do. They skipped school, ignoring direction by school staff to return and went joyriding. They stole two cars and drove them around until finally caught by Police.

Because they are under 10 the law deems they are not responsible for their actions. I always thought it was 6 but now it is 10. So no charge, no court appearence, nothing. Pity the poor car owners if any damage was done to their cars and no doubt some would have been. The school says they have suspended the boys for the rest of the term. Oooh! I bet that taught them a lesson!

The lesson would be that you can do as you please and there is nothing the establishment will do about it other than give you time off to get into more mischief and crime. For kids who probably hate school already and have little future anyway, what kind of punishment is suspension? What kind of home life do they have where they can learn how to steal cars? Where they even have the first inkling of ignoring authority and skipping school let alone stealing and driving away two cars? Eight years old!

When I was eight I knew right from wrong. I didn’t know how to drive a car let alone break into one or hotwire it and they were a lot simpler in 1969-70 than they are today. But I knew it was wrong to skip school and it was wrong to steal anything, especially a car. What has happened to society when kids no longer have any respect for anyone or anything? When they simply do as they please and know they are immune to punishment until they turn ten. Then at that age they know the punishment will be a joke and more a badge of honour or rite of passage than anything punitive.

If you hammer the parent and her partner when they are sober and not exercising their restraining orders against each other they will either take it out on the kid or someone else because they are too dumb to work it out as to who is really at fault. And society, read this the government, tells them it is never their fault and they deserve counselling, compensation and everything else the burgeoning social services industry can flog from the taxpayer, just vote for me next election.

I can’t see things changing for the better in the short term and the more PC we get, the more we’re afraid to dissent  just in case someone takes offense… the worse it will become. What if you caught two 8 year olds stealing your car and you tried to stop them? Next thing they have the police and social services around throwing you in gaol for assault, child molestation and whatever else. You will become the heinous criminal.   So first thing, make sure your car is too hard a target and send them looking elsewhere. Next, make sure there are no witnesses when you give them the ‘talking to’ their parent/carer/guardian should have.

Recently in the UK two boys, now 10 and 11, were convicted of attempted rape of an 8 year old girl. Both boys were 10 when they committed their crimes and so were old enough to be judged as being responsible and aware they were doing wrong. I believe children know right from wrong, especially if their parents teach them properly when much younger but the law is adamant that 10 is the number.

The case might open the whole question of how these matters are tried, how old children should be to be considered criminally responsible and so on. What I wonder, after reading the report on the matter, is where the boys got the idea from? I knew right from wrong when I was much younger than 10, but I had no idea of sexual intercourse at 10. But then I wasn’t bombarded with it like kids are today.

Television, DVDs, Youtube, internet, advertising and other forms of media all have different standards of what is appropriate for children to be exposed to today than in the 1960s and early 1970s. But we can’t lay the blame squarely at the feet of the media, or their puppets, the government. The blame belongs with the parents.

Parents seem incapable of instilling discipline and self respect in their children. This is because they don’t lead by example. Their own standards of language, dress and behaviour are simply slack. This is a result of societal changes that no longer place value on certain qualities and traits. It is, though, a by-product of our shedding many outdated and oppressive  social mores.

As with most things, once the pendulum swings the other way it can swing too far before it swings back. It will return and hopefully the next generation will instil better standards, albeit adapted and altered accordingly for modern technology and our contemporary communities.

Kids are sponges. They absorb everything and that includes the bad stuff we adults do and say. Sooner or later the sponge gets squeezed for some reason and out come the bad things. Like playing mummies and daddies…