Last week was a week of excitement and exhilarating feelings. A break from reality we all need sometimes. But it wasn’t a break completely sheltered from reality. Every morning the hotels we stayed in dully provided us with the daily newspaper, either the Irish News or the Irish Times. Of course, when you travel with a toddler you can’t really have a proper read, you just scan the titles. Just to keep yourself up to date with what is going on around you and in the world.
Well, on Wednesday morning this title caught my eye, a story of horrendous neglect and abuse in a family with five children, aged between two and nine. I managed to read it through actually as it was succinct and cold, a mere rendering of appalling facts. Children left hungry, improperly dressed and NEVER toilet trained, not even one of them…It took my mind a while to get around the physical facts in order to begin to assess the psychological damage those things alone would have inflicted on those children. Of course, it didn’t stop there, there was also sexual abuse and everything else you can imagine going on…
But what shocked me to the core was the statement the eldest boy made when taken into care: “I am the worst boy in the world.” It made my mother heart weep and moan at the indescribable loss this boy had suffered; not only the physical beatings, the lack of food, the fear he must have lived with forever but above all, the deprivation of dignity, of self-worth and value at the hands of those who were supposed to offer them to him and more freely!
The parents unsurprisingly went to jail on various accounts. The mother got 18 months only because she had had a history of abuse and crass neglect herself.
As a mum who believes I am here to provide the best upbringing possible for my little girl, I would tend to say:” I would have never let this happen to my children. I would have got up and fled. I would have started over on my own.” OR WOULD I? Would I have the courage to turn my back to life as I knew it, have the clear head to see reality for what it is and take the decisive step? Would I step into the daunting, blank unknown??
I am sorry for those kids and for their mum who didn’t know and couldn’t do better by them. I am sorry they were robbed of everything they were in God’s plan and purpose in such a horrific manner. I’m no fool and it’s been a while I stopped believing in fairy tales and happy endings. All I can hope for them is that they will be given a chance, a real chance, wherever they are, to pick up the pieces and start rebuilding their lives.Walk down the path of recovery and win all the battles that lie ahead…
Mama's Haven 
The world will be a different place if every child is loved,Oana. I do hope and pray for those poor souls and I also, like you, do believe, that they deserve a chance. The main thing is that you are a fantastic mother and every child that you get in contact with knows that.That’s all we can do-be the mothers we want to see in the world!
I did read today another horror story about another person , who I can not call “mother “, that have left and locked up her 2 kids in -30 degrees cold, because one of them wet themselves. And to top it up she went out for a jog. One of them died, I couldn’t read the rest of the article…It made me sick literally. Even now.
Then you go and look at all those so called women’s magazines-everybody there is naked or nearly.Look good,go for a jog ?????? get naked , buy make up , but not even one word on how to love a child , which is the most important value you have as a person.
Unfortunately Iva, people give very little value to human life and more to personal image…I heard that story myself and I think it was a similar scenario. A woman who allowed the hole in her heart to take over the importance of her role as a mum…I am sorry for all those poor babes, they are innocent.