The importance of speaking up
THE world read in horror about the 13 siblings held captive in California recently. The plot of a Stephen King book, the most disturbing detail was that their captors were their own parents.
Ranging in age from 2 to 29 years of age, the children of David and Louise Anna Turpin were found starved and some were shackled to furniture.
The authorities were only alerted after one of the children aged 17 escaped and raised the alert.
I think what shocked me almost as much as the story itself was the comments of their neighbours.
An article in the Los Angeles Times quotes 32 year old neighbour Gary Stein as saying that the neighbours thought it was odd to see the children (who were rarely seen outside during the day) laying sod in the front yard at night.
“I thought it was weird, but I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t want to get in anybody’s business,”
Another neighbour said on the rare occasions she saw the children they were very pale. “You know something is off, but you don’t want to think bad of people,” she said in the same article.
So here are two people admitting they thought there was something untoward going on in that house, but did nothing. They didn’t speak out. Yet they were happy to speak out when the newspaper came calling.
We all saw the ad on television over Christmas about domestic abuse where a young girl is babysitting and her sister and husband comes home early. She hears him hit her sister over the baby monitor, yet choses to turn it off.
I thought it was very powerful, showing that, to quote Edmund Burke “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I realise that not all hunches may be correct. The exhausted mother snapping at a child in a supermarket may not mean she is a cruel and abusive parent.
But there are times when the truth is staring you in the face.
These children could have been saved even one day of horror by the neighbours acting on their suspicions rather than just gossiping about them.
Last year the Irish Government allocated €950,000 for the ‘What would you do’ campaign.
Launching the campaign Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald said “This campaign calls on us as relatives, friends neighbours, bystanders and witnesses to collectively say that domestic violence is not right and it must stop”.
Here in Sligo the Domestic Violence Advocacy Service can be contacted on (071) 91 41515, by email on infodvas@eircom. net or you can get more information on their website at www.domesticviolence.ie.
To report a concern you may have about the wellbeing of a child in the county, you can contact Tusla at the Child and Family Agency in Markievicz House on (071)91 55133.
The Turpin children will be affected and damaged for life.
It is sad to think that no one had the courage to voice their concerns and make that one important phone call.