The picture of a perpetrator

As a rookie reporter, this journalist received an assignment to talk to the parents of a convicted criminal.

AN intern in the office asked me a few months back about my most memorable assignment so far.

I haven’t been asked that question for a while, but it didn’t take me long to come up with an answer.

The assignment from my then editor was to talk to the parents of a person who had been convicted of manslaughter and also causing grievous hurt to two children, in a southern state of Peninsular Malaysia.

The case attracted nationwide attention back then, which was the late 1990s.

Being a rookie with less than two years’ experience on the job, the assignment certainly weighed on me.

I had to track down the parents’ home, located in a Felda settlement, but more than that, what kept going through my mind was how my presence would be received. (After all, I wasn’t exactly there to congratulate them on their son’s achievements.)

Although I could not imagine how they felt, I kept thinking of the young victims’ parents too.

Being the pre-Waze and Google Map era, the photographer and I drove down from Petaling Jaya in the morning, following road signs and asking people for directions along the way.

I remember that the people we approached were all very helpful, which wasn’t unusual in smaller towns and villages. As advised by my more experienced colleague, we paid a customary visit to the head of the settlement.

We spent some time asking him what he remembered about the perpetrator, especially when he was growing up, before he pointed us towards the parents’ house.

Then, still feeling apprehensive, we made our way along the bumpy, untarred road towards the house, not even knowing if they would be in.

After calling out a few times without any response, we assumed they were not home. As we were about to turn back, we heard the door open.

We introduced ourselves, and then I started a conversation, choosing my words cautiously so as not to offend them.

The mother did not say much, and had a faraway look in her eyes. As for the father, he politely answered my questions, speaking rather softly, often pausing as if to find the right words.

We found out that their son had left home when he was a teenager and lived with a foster father in another town.

After thanking them for their time (and in my heart, grateful that they had not chased us away with brooms), we made our way to the neighbouring town to look for the foster father.

It was by sheer luck that we stumbled upon him, an elderly man in his 70s. My memory fails me here but I remember vaguely that we were walking in the street and asked one passer-by whether he knew of the man, and then he just pointed him out on the street. The septuagenarian was a more open about his foster son, and told us what he knew about the troubled man whom he had taken in. With his recollection and that of his sisterin-law, whom we managed to meet later, I had enough to put a story together.

This assignment has stayed with me through the years, and I will always be grateful to the editor who gave me the opportunity to do the story.

It was, undoubtedly, an experience that will stay with me for a long time.

From The Vault is a fortnightly series that takes readers behind the scenes of memorable interviews and assignments our journalists have experienced.