Pure Evil

I suppose I shouldn’t really comment on this dreadful case in Austria where a man kept his daughter imprisoned in a dungeon for 24 years, but reading about the case is almost too awful to bear, and difficult to keep quiet about. It’s hard to imagine a punishment for this man that could be severe enough to bring retribution for his evil behaviour. Whenever I read about cases like this I begin to see an ugly facet to my character – I start turning green and bursting out of my shirt. I remember that when I read John Fowles’s ‘The Collector’ I was boiling with rage at the end.

One of the most pernicious acts of cruelty is to deprive someone of their childhood; it’s theft of the most spiteful & malicious kind. Because not only did this man imprison his poor daughter for so long, he apparently fathered six children with her. But there’s more – three of those children were kept imprisoned with her, and so there’s a girl of 19, and two boys aged 18 and 5 who, until they were released recently, had never even seen daylight. What sort of monster could do this? How could you not want to see your own children doing what all children should be able to do? These poor souls have never known the joy of running free, of climbing trees, of splashing in the river with the sun on their necks; never felt the pride of bringing home their first clay ornament from school; never felt the thrill of a first secret kiss; never known the mixed feelings of fear and exhilaration of attending their first school disco.

It’s impossible to imagine what these children have endured. To be robbed of the very best years of their lives in such a callous and pointless manner, and to be deprived of all normal social interactions, must leave them so psychologically damaged that it’s hard to feel they would ever properly recover. The ogre who did this is apparently a ‘respected’ member of his community and whose neighbours, suspecting nothing, regarded as a normal, decent family man. I can’t think of a punishment horrible enough for him. To want to seek revenge is (we are told) an insidious desire and one which lowers us to the same level as the beast within, but when I read about acts that are this evil I find it hard to contain myself. He deserves to be bricked up inside a wall and made to starve to death.

I’m sorry – I’m ranting, and this isn’t what you came here to read, I’m sure. There is nothing that I – nor anyone – can do about this sort of thing, and there’s effectively nothing that the law can do to prevent it happening to other children in future, so wasting energy by ranting about it is, I suppose, nugatory. There’s an adage somewhere that says we should only worry about or concern ourselves with the things we can change, and not about the things we can’t. I can’t stop monsters like that hateful man emerging, but putting these events out of my mind almost seems like abandoning those poor children. I think it was Liv Ullman who said that once you are a parent to one child, you are a parent to all the world’s children. This is why I feel so angry. Anyone who has known the sheer happiness of cheering on their child in an egg-and-spoon race, or of waking up on Fathers’ Day to a (badly made, but proudly presented) breakfast in bed, would feel the same.

Tomorrow, I hope to have something happier to report.