3 year old injured by crocodiles - man arrested

[DecisionTime123]

So I assume the man deliberately placed the child into the crocodile enclosure. Psychopath? Sounds similar to the man who threw the boy off the Tate?

(And also, not connected but these places are shit for the animals and should be shut down)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czx50n2vj74o

(& apologies if thread already started?)

You can have sympathy for both. It is not either/or.

He has LD. There wont be justice because he wont understand what he has done. He could not even be questioned after arrest.

I rest my case.

Yes this. I supported children and young adults with behavioural and complex health needs for 14 years and loved it. But as I moved into middle age it became more of a detriment to my physical health. Because I had the experience I was often placed with the most challenging students. I wore body protection but still came home battered at times. My husband was furious. Our school employed untrained agency staff to fill the gaps and I eventually left as I felt it was unsafe. I can see both sides here but dont want to judge without the full facts. The little boy should never have come within reach of this man. There will be reviews no doubt. Out of an SEN school with a pupil role count of 150 there would have been 1 to 2 students at any one time with such high risk needs. Think 18 month old toddler in a 6ft strapping body. Thats what we were dealing with. Often these students did not partake in extra curricular trips as it was not safe.

Well there wont be a case. He wont be in court.

Reporting didn't say that. Just that he was 'not fit to interview'. That doesn't say he never will be or that it's because of the severity of his disabilities.

To be fair, some articles did say that. Depends where you read them.

Also, he was not remanded in custody. That says a lot too.

We'll see. That's far from clear yet so I wouldn't post as if it is. You've said 'there's so much we know' but are not posting in accordance with that yourself.

The Guardian report doesn't say it, and I might have expected it to. Can you link to any of these articles?

Lots on FB, mostly local paper type things.
But it is all speculation.

On top of all this, let us hope the little boy is recovering. I have not seen much in the way of updates about that.

Today they said that he was critical but stable. Hopefully he will continue to remain stable.

OK so not actual journalism: 'all speculation'. Let's not take that as informed or accurate, then.

I think most crap on SM from papers etc is speculation anyway. They just want clicks , so post anything to get people riled up. And it works... as had been seen in this case.

This is a horrendous situation. We don't know the level of impairment of the perpetrator or what capacity he had to form intention, but we do know a three year old child is in hospital with serious injuries.

This was a safeguarding failure on the part of the organisation providing care to the perpetrator. Harm has been done to a little boy as a result of the way this man's care was delivered. There will be an investigation that may identify what errors were made, but that will not undo the harm to the child on what should have been a family day out.

Regarding the man's current location, the police's wording on the matter has been unhelpfully vague. They couldn't have done better to raise public ire if they'd been trying. The man will not be free to roam around. He will have been "bailed" to his usual address which is going to be some kind of residential care home. It will be no comfort to the family of that poor child, but that man is not going to be leaving that care setting. The care setting manager, their line manager, the man's social worker, and adult social services at the local borough council and so on are going to be having emergency meetings all weekend assessing his mental capacity and documenting that previous community hours arrangements are unsafe. He is going nowhere.

In the midst of all this, I'm concerned that the existence of many different types of learning disabilities and neurological conditions are being obscured by the most threatening presentations. For every dangerous individual with violent impulses, there are tens and tens of harmless people with moderate to profound learning disabilities who are being accompanied by carers outside for their own safety, because they will walk into traffic otherwise.

I have been out today with a gentle 50 year old man who can't read or write and has no understanding of money. He loves posting letters and he gets excited at being reminded he can press the button on pelican crossings. He likes fish and chips, spotting planes in the sky, dressing smartly and watching reruns of Neighbours. His learning disabilities have limited his entire life, but they haven't made him violent. Frankly, he poses less risk to the public than my neighbour's cat.

Well exactly, is speculation not information and yet you were posting it and initially claiming it’s the latter before being called out on it.

It is just an awful thing to have happened... for the little boy, the zoo, and the man involved

The man wasn’t “involved”, he, allegedly, was the person who made the awful thing happen. He wasn’t an innocent bystander caught up in it. He instigated it.

My sympathy is with the poor little boy and his family, as well as the zoo.

Yes I think it’s a bit like a dog attack - maybe he can’t be questioned because he’s not responsible, but it does so much harm to lots of perfectly gentle people with LD to pretend they’re all equally unpredictable and therefore all liable to attack a child. I don’t believe that, just as I don’t believe dog owners who claim their dog was perfectly gentle and well behaved until he suddenly attacked a child.

If an adult isn’t responsible for their behaviour then whoever decides to let them out in public with insufficient carers is (and/or possibly the carers themselves if they’ve been negligent.

What lessons were learned following the Tate Gallery incident? Clearly ABSOLUTELY NONE.

Still an adult male was out with inadequate inattentive carers.

I see locally the carers are big sub-Saharan men. Two per adult male. That is what is needed. It should be mandatory that a carer should be able to completely physically restrain their charge if required. Otherwise it is dereliction of duty of the care setting and public endangerment. I hope the parents sue.

Very selective freedom then, not in court but at the zoo where a 3 year old paid the price for this selection box of rights without responsibilities .

I just read that the police are investigating the carers.

Well obviously.

There needs to be personal accountability for the people who are responsible for decisions that lead to this type of incident.

It always seems to be 'lessons learned' (they arent) and 'organisational failings'. It's not good enough.

Whether that's the carers on the day, the manager that told them they had to take him, the person doing the risk assessment or someone else, they need to be held responsible.

Knowing that personal responsibility will be enforced will make people make safer decisions and consider what they're doing more carefully. It will empower people to refuse when told to do something they consider unsafe.

There needs to be recognition in the sector that because it may be common for people that they work with to be violent or aggressive and not have understanding of what they're doing, that doesn't mean it's less dangerous or harmful to the victim than someone with capacity doing the same thing. There's a horrendous disregard for staff safety in these settings, and it bleeds out into other residents, the general public and visitors through it just being regarded as an every day occurrence and not worthy of note.

@XenoBitch this entire thread you are obsessed with the man that did this; that man should be be locked up for good. Not out again in society.

A toddler could have died in the most horrific way eaten alive by a crocodile in front of his parents it really does not get much worse than this.

The boy and his family and the zoo owners wife who jumped in to save him are the ones traumatised.

The dangerous person who did this needs to be locked up. What he has done there are no second chances in this scenario.

Your views are bizarre you said the boy will have some good scars and stories to tell that is unhinged, anything to minimise how awful this situation is.

The guy responsible deserves to be demonised and normal people are appalled, he attacked the most vulnerable and innocent and threw him to crocodiles. He shoud be treated as the criminal he is whether that registers or not.

Am sick to bloody death of it all hearing bad stories, full force of the law to anyone attacking children no excuses.

Agree with this.

If you take a vulnerable mentally disabled person out with two paid carers to a strange place, there will be a risk assessment floating around somewhere.

When your autistic child goes out with their parent(s) there will not be a risk assessment.

The fact there will have been a need to have a risk assessment in the first place is the point. Who wrote it and who approved it. Was it good enough? Did it reflect this person's needs and behaviour and did it properly consider public safety? Did it properly assess the ability of staff? Were the staff following it and were they doing their job properly? Did this person have their full undivided attention and were they close enough at all times?

The fact there will inevitably be a risk assessment or there should have been one is what this entire case will eventually centre on.

That's fundamentally different to blaming anyone autistic or looking at anyone autistic as a danger.

Someone has failed. And I would put money on it not coming out of the blue. There will be a history and reasons for the need for two carers.

It is all about the risk assessment not the diagnosis.

There are lots of comments here about SEN issues in schools. We had massive problems with out son and a child who was harming other children. We had to eventually challenge on safeguarding responsibilities - which were as much for the benefit of the child concerned as our child and other children in the class. It did eventually lead to social service intervention and to the children getting appropriate medical support. But we had to really stick our heels in, understand and know the system and our son literally had to take punches without hitting back. It also helped that our own son had a SEN diagnosis too.

Once again this comes back to this point about risk assessments and legal liabilities and responsibilities and correct enforcement of them.

No one wants people to be locked up. But there are situations where actually some people do have to be removed from certain social situations for their own safety because they pose too much of a risk to themselves - the risk of hurting someone else is a risk to themselves.

We can not pretend differently. It is a failure of a duty of care to these individuals to do so.

It's likely there WILL be a court case. It may not include him being on trial. There will be a court case involving risk assessments and liabilities because there's pretty much zero chance that the parents won't take legal advice and pursue a case against the carers / carers employer.