Are you a parent of children? Yes? Ever tortured or raped or murdered any of them? Well, I should think not. But never mind, you might just as well have done according to David Wilson, professor of criminology at the University of Central England. For, if you want to know the cause of violence against children in Britain, the answer - his answer - is deceptively simple. It's parents. But surely he must mean some rather than all parents? You'd think so - except that Professor Wilson concludes by saying:
Eunice Spry is no different to the rest of us - she merely reflects a culture which has increasingly become, at best, intolerant of young people and at worst child-hating.Some details of the case are here, and they are horrific. All the more reason not to indulge in so fatuous a statement as that this monstrous woman is no different from 'the rest of us'. I'd say she's different from rather a lot of the rest of us. And I assume that the academic discipline David Wilson professes in contains intellectual resources which would have enabled him to make his point about parental violence against children without the absurd overstatement and the slur on all those who love and cherish their children.