So the identities of the people who tortured and killed Baby P, Peter Connelly, have been released.   They are Tracey Connelly and Steven Barker.  I’m not going to tell the whole story here. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, read this Wikipedia entry (but be prepared to read some horrible things).

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog regularly will know that I am child free by choice. I don’t have the urge to coo over babies or feel the persistent womb-beat of a ticking biological clock. My blog entries will never start with “As a mother…”.

But giving birth is not a prerequisite for giving a shit.  I find it so hard process the fact that there are people out there, fully-grown adult people, who torture children. Lets say those two words one more time, so that they sink in. Torture children. Torture. Children. Most of them start out by torturing animals. Got that? They torture animals. Torture. Animals.

These are people who can look at something tiny and defenseless and make the choice to cause pain to and destroy this living thing that they not only shouldn’t be hurting, but should be looking after and protecting.

To put things into perspective, I want to share with you a few sentences from this news article:

The toddler…had more than 50 injuries at the time of death. Social workers, doctors and police failed to notice the abuse despite seeing him at least 60 times over eight months. Two days before Baby P died, a doctor failed to spot he had a broken back, eight fractured ribs and was paralysed from the waist down.

He had been punched so hard he swallowed a tooth. The subsequent neck injury that affected his breathing was probably the fatal blow. Among his other injuries, Baby P’s ears were torn, fingernails and fingertips were missing and his lips were ripped.

I can’t read those words without crying. I’m not an emotionally delicate blindly-optimistic soul who desperately hangs on to the disillusioned belief that nothing bad ever happens in the world. I am fully aware that shit happens and that there are some people out there who are screwed up beyond normal human comprehension.

But fuck…”fingernails and fingertips were missing and his lips were ripped”. Read that a few times. Take it in. Remember that what you’re reading was inflicted upon a SMALL CHILD. Tracey Connelly, the MOTHER of this child, tortured him.

Steven Barker, Connelly’s partner, had plenty of experience with torturing people and things weaker than himself, including his own grandmother and a pet guinea pig which he skinned alive. Barker’s brother, Jason, was already in jail for raping a two year old child. Raping a two year old child. Raping. A child.

I don’t work in social services or the justice system. I know that both these areas can be vastly under-funded and often are unable to protect the victims of crime. I don’t feel qualified to apportion blame. Kind of. I feel quite comfortable laying some of the blame at the feet of the doctor who didn’t notice the broken back, fractured ribs and paralysis that Peter had two days prior to his death.  I would’ve thought those things would present in quite an obvious manner, especially to someone in the medical profession.

To finish, I’d like to share with you some words from an article on the BBC’s website,

The notoriety of the Baby Peter case is such that all three convicted people are likely to be given new identities upon release to protect them from vigilante attacks.

This article, from TheTelegraph.co.uk, says of Tracey Connelly,

By claiming that she had the right to a life free from vigilante attacks or intrusion by the media, she would be given a new name, moved to a home equipped with panic buttons and provided with round-the-clock police protection for the rest of her life at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of £1 million a year.

Of all the words I’ve read about this tragic case, those are the hardest to stomach.