KILLING THEM SOFTLY

There is one violent, despicable, self-indulgent and self-deluding crime that has angered me for decades.

It is when a parent – often estranged or divorced – decides to end his or her life but decides that their children could not possibly live without them. And so they slash or shoot or burn their offspring before committing suicide.

Young lives snuffed out. Never given a chance to grow to fruition. All because of somebody else’s pain and deluded sense of the world.

That issue is in the news today for several reasons. A separated young mother, Daniela Dawes, suffocated her 10-year-old son, Jason, before using a razor blade on herself in a failed suicide bid.

And yesterday after she pleaded guilty to manslaughter Dawes walked free to be paid for an interview on A Current Affair.

The judge freed her for several reasons. Judge Roy Ellis said Dawes would punish herself for the rest of her life.

He also said of the mother’s coping with a profoundly autistic son:

“This was an unrelenting, tiring, frustrating, and never-ending task that FEW people have ever experienced or are even capable of fully comprehending”.

And to that I would say “hello?” Few people? Mercifully I am on of the judge’s majority. But there are thousands and thousands of Australian parents with autistic children, Down Syndrome children, Cerebral Palsy children, Deaf children. Blind children.

And they struggle and they sacrifice daily. And they don’t kill their children because they had a bad hair day.

And going back to my earlier argument – the Judge accepted that Dawes killed her young son because she did not want to abandon him after killing herself.

Sadly little Jason Dawes had no say in the matter. No say in HIS future however limited or frustrating it may have been.

He is dead. Killed by his own mother. And she gets to go on a TV programme for money, for blood money, and to tell Ray Martin “I don’t know” when asked why she did it.

The moral of the story: If you are so fed up and so depressed and so swamped by a handicapped child put a pillow over their face or a plastic bag over their head in New South Wales. Then pray for an appearance before Judge Ellis.

And get your hair done for an appearance on – and a cheque from – A Current Affair.

Thursday, June 3, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004