MORE THAN A NIGHTMARE
 
They are calling it ‘every parent’s nightmare’. It’s not. It’s even worse than that. Something so foul and so brutal that even in your worst dream you could not envisage such savagery invading your house, your lives, and taking away a precious daughter. For ever. Just try to imagine it. A Sunday night in the small Queensland town of Bundaberg. You’ve put your kids to bed. Tucked in your little eight-year-old.
 
And next morning her bed is empty. I guess you’d immediately think she’d just got up early, maybe wandered outside. But then the realty would dawn that something was terribly wrong.
 
And within hours the broken body of your little girl is found stuffed in a drain not far from your house.
 
More than one life was shattered here. Those parents’ lives will never be the same. You can only imagine the heartache for the mother of Trinity Leigh Bates.
 
And then there would be the totally irrational guilt. Should we have known something? Should we have heard something?  How could we have been sleeping when our daughter needed us?
 
Irrational thoughts for ghastly irrational times.
 
This was a crime that shocked not only the town of Bundaberg but shocked the nation. And Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson was right when he said the killer ‘ will have few places to hide’ in the tight knit community.
 
Premier Anna Bligh was understandably upset when she received the news that a missing girl was now a murder victim.
 
The messages of condolences on the Internet were constant: ‘to put your daughter to bed and discover her missing next morning must be horrific… I hope they catch this animal quickly….I cried for this child as much as I would for my own… even after many years in the military some things still  leave me speechless.. who would oppose the death penalty now?....’

Who indeed?  A person who would do this to a child does not deserve to live.
 
Tuesday, Februjary 23, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010