WE MUST STOP THE MADNESS
NO father should ever have to sit at a table, cradling an urn holding his son’s ashes, and talk about the day a family’s happiness was destroyed.
As our special report today on the ever-widening consequences of the stabbing murder of Gold Coast teen Jack Beasley demonstrates, the impact has been far-reaching.
Jack’s father Brett has shown enormous courage in speaking out about the effects on the family and friends, and of how the Beasley family wants desperately to salvage some good – if there can be anything positive in this shocking tragedy – by setting up a foundation to educate kids about the madness of carrying a knife and how a single act of violence can ruin so many lives.
His message – and the way he chose to deliver it – is powerful.
It takes to a new level what the Bulletin and so many Gold Coasters have been campaigning for – action to come down hard on violent youth crime and to stop bash gangs using the heavy and light rail systems as a getaway vehicle when they commit their offences.
One-punch campaigns appear to be falling on deaf ears. There is a grieving dad in Brisbane working hard to get the “onepunch can kill” message across to kids, but coward-punch incidents continue to maim or kill innocent parties. On the Gold Coast, kids are using knives more and more.
The softly-softly handling of juvenile offenders who end up with a slap on the wrist and are sent on their way to offend again is a failure.
For the sake of families like the Beasleys – Jack’s broken parents Brett and Belinda, and his elder brother Mitch – and for the sake of the witnesses trying to deal with images of the stabbing seared into their brains, the madness has to stop.
It must end too for the frontline police, paramedics and hospital emergency teams who have to deal with such horror, almost on a daily basis. How does it affect them?
It has to stop before the next innocent youth is followed, goaded, bullied and punched or stabbed to death, never to be part of a family’s future.
Mr Beasley tells of receiving the urn and its precious ashes on Christmas Eve. For his family, that spelt the end of the joy of the festive season, possibly forever.
That stupid moment of violence in the heart of Surfers Paradise also dealt a massive blow to the families of those alleged by police to be responsible. The ripples from that single incident keep widening.