to think that Hamzah Kahn's father should be sent down alongside his mother?

[Bogeyface]

Hamzah's father, after his ex was found guilty of starving their 4 year old to death, said that he would "have to live with that for the rest of my life".

Live with what? With the fact that he did fuck all? His son lay dead for 2 years and his father had no clue, yet makes out he is a loving dad. If he was so loving he would have seen his child, seen the state of the house and the state the (his? sorry, I dont know if they were all his) other children were in. But he didnt. The 2 years between little Hamzah's death and his discovery should not have gone unchecked by any good dad, but in this case it did. At the very least, he would have gone to court to gain access, involved CAFCASS, social services, etc. But he did nothing.

Amanda Suttons stepfather says that she wasnt helped by the social services, which clearly she wasnt, but he puts the blame firmly at their feet. What was he doing? Was he offering to help look after the kids? Clean the house? Did he report her for help? No. He did nothing.

Seems to me that a lot of people who this little boy and his siblings should have been able to rely on preferred to look away.

AIBU to think that his father is just as culpable in his death as his mother?

Again, no, I'm not joking.

Thanks for the recap of what happened to the children, but I was aware.

I just don't think locking her up, certainly for that long, is going to do her any good. But I agree that detaining her under the Mental Health Act would have been a more sensible route.

I hold AH responsible. But I'm also interested in the circumstances that resulted in Hamzah Kahn's death. If we don't try to understand them we learn nothing to prevent a repeat occurrence in the future.

If you look at many of the high-profile cases involving child death it becomes apparent that domestic abuse between the parents is a feature. Baby P is another example. Indeed, 75% of child abuse cases (all abuse, not just murders) involve domestic abuse between the adults. But it's not as simple as abuser turns on child. Instead, a desensitisation towards violence and neglect seems to pervade the whole family. There is a total dehumanising process for anyone not strong enough to place themselves at the top of the pyramid. At its worst you end up with cases like this. Where someone who was once a victim herself becomes as bad as - if not worse than - the person who abused her in the first place.

Obviously there are more factors at play, such as social isolation and deprivation, but the link between domestic abuse and child abuse really needs to be made much more of IMO. AH may have been predisposed to MH issues. She had an inter-racial relationship. Alcoholism played a role (again, very common in DA situations) but IMO Mr Khan bears some culpability for AH starving her son to death, because he was part of the problem that created the environment in which this happened.

Yes, good post Dahlen (as always).

I find my temper is worse now (after 8 years with an abusive man). I have to work on it. I do. I am. But I'm not an alcoholic and I only have two children and I got away and I have support and I have a future to look forward to but I do understand that in some hopeless circumstances the abusee (?) could end up perpetrating abuse too. Especially if there was no effort made to work it through, protect the children etc..

I have been thinking about this and I think that if a father willingly abandons his children and then abuse takes place, he should be prosecuted for not fulfilling his duty of care.

If there was a risk of prosecution, I bet there would be a lot less dead beat dads!

Being a shit/absent father should be enough imo.

The MHA is not a catch all for child abuse. Unless she has a diagnosed Mental Illness requiring involuntary admission to a Forensic Unit (alcoholism and inadequacy not being one of them) then the use of the MHA is entirely inappropriate and an abuse of it.

I wonder if some people suggesting MH issues is because 99% of us cannot conceive of ever doing that to our children. I feel guilty if my kids have sandwiches twice in one day instead of a cooked meal if I am not very well! So logically we have to assume that she must be ill because otherwise you have to accept that a normal (albeit very troubled) person decided to starve her son to death. Its very hard to get your head around that, and I think thats why the MHA has been mentioned.

BUt I agree that it wouldnt be appropriate in this case. If she was genuinely mentally ill then she would have starved both the twins but she didnt, she picked the one she had "taken against" since birth.

From what I've heard he was abusive to her which may have contributed to her being unable to cope and becoming an alcoholic, but clearly she should have sought help as well.

Very sad Awful.

Also I could be wrong about some things, my thoughts are only from what I've seen on the news

Looking at the state of the house as featured in photographs, I'd say it's a fair certainty that AH was suffering from some sort of MH problem. The state of someone's living environment is a well-known marker for MH.

That doesn't excuse her actions unless she was ill to the point of psychosis - i.e. divorced from reality. But again, it is a factor.

I think what's sad is that they were all living in that house, in those conditions, for some considerable time with no one noticing. That shows a great deal about how secretive and isolated this family had become and how accepted that isolation was in their community and later by the authorities.

Bogey You raise an interesting point. Many people feel comfortable w/ the idea of people like AH being 'Other', 'Monsters' or Mentally ill because then they cannot be 'like us'. If we can dehumanise them, then we can isolate, punish and attack them ourselves with word or deed and save our own consciences.

She clearly knew right from wrong because she sought to conceal. She sought to pervert the course of justice and prevent the lawful burial of her childs body. They are not the actions of somebody incompetent to plead.

The state of a persons house may or may not be a marker. it should not or must not ever be taken as literal. There are many many deviations from what you might expect.

Also, to go back to a point Dahlen made earlier, when I was in the abusive relationship, although the house was tidy and the children were clean and fed and I read to them and I loved them and brought them to play school and to all of their health appointments, I had started to shop lift. NOt proud of that. Not defending it. But it was a 'bad' behaviour that was a reaction to being abused myself. Also, I started to get incredibly angry if a stranger bumped in to me, or somebody pushed ahead of me in a queue for example. At that point, those things were almost just too much to bear, although, I'd taken worse, far worse from my x. It sounds like I'm saying 'I could go on to abuse my children" and I'm not saying that because I work hard to diffuse my anger, understand what's behind the feelings I had, I had psychotherapy, I read books about self-esteem, I had supportive family, no addiction problems......... I am just saying that I can understand that there really could be a link because if you are abused you have a lot of pain and anger and resentment and frustration and feelings of powerlessness and maybe if you're not intelligent enough to deal with them properly they have nowhere to go but towards the children. Can't believe I admitted to the shoplifting without name changing. omg.

We all have mechanisms, dysfunctional or functional that allow us to gain and/or maintain a sense of agency and power.

mignonette - I agree that her MH doesn't excuse anything because she was capable of functioning to a high enough level to conceal what was going on quite effectively - and would have continued presumably had the PCSO not been so persistent.

I think unless you accept the notion of good or evil, which I don't, you have to realise that crimes do not take place in a vacuum. There are a whole host of factors at play. None of them taken in isolation are responsible, but together they can create a perfect storm. However, when certain elements - such as DV - feature in so many cases, it is worth investigating them further.

IMO if we did more to stamp out DV we would do a lot to reduce child abuse stats as well. If we deal with CA first, however, we are always responding after the fact and not dealing with the context that allows it to take place.

I'm aware of the swirl of factors around crimes such as these as I am a RMNH working in Forensic MH. I have clients who have committed crimes such as this.

Yes DV may be a factor but equally drawing a direct line between it and CA is dangerous in terms of demonisation. We have to be careful. Dealing w/ context is going to involve such Macro factors as the way alcohol is used in this country and government pimping off of alcohol sales, the increasing poverty and gap between even the just about adequately off and the poor; sexism and gender inequality; poor housing provision; parenting and the lack of options that are available to young people; our horrendous care system and the poverty of choice available for care leavers; crap MH provision; crap substance misuse provision.....I could fill a book and I'd only just have started.

I don't think they are many who are suggesting there is any legal case for him to be tried for manslaughter.

I am still a bit puzzled why the father gets to not be responsible for the neglect of his children, though, especially when he was living there. Isn't that what we all want? Parents who both give a shit about their offspring, whether they are still together or not?

Zoe567

i also was (just got out) of a DV relationship,your points on anger etc are so very valid and am going through the same emotions and am getting support

just really to say true good points that maybe those that have experienced DV can identify with,a very complex and difficult subject to understand

There are an awful lot of assumptions on this thread. The fact is that we don't know what went on behind closed doors. Do we even know if the father was working? How many working parents barely see their young children during the week? For all we know the father was out of the house from 7am to 7pm five days a week and the mother/father fed the child properly at the weekend. Two days of being fed would not make up for five days of not being fed.

If the father was out at work all week then doctor's appointments etc would have fallen to the mother. For all we know the mother told the father that Hamzah had all of his immunisations, was seeing the GP/health visitor regularly and that there was a medical reason for his developmental delays.

We also don't know what the situation was with the DV. All we know is that the father was convicted for battery and as far as I can tell he got community service rather than jail time. Battery could be anything from him restraining her when she was being drunk and violent to him beating the living crap out of her because she looked at him funny. We simply don't know. I'm guessing though that if he had beaten the crap out of her then there'd be photos of her afterwards all over the internet.

As others have said, there are gag orders in place to protect the children involved. This could mean that the father was very restricted in what he could say in the interview. Or he could just be a self absorbed prick. We don't know.

Bogey - I just noticed your comment that if she was genuinely mentally ill she would have starved both the twins, but she didn't she starved the one she had taken against from birth. Poor Hamza RIP

• But just thinking (and I've had experience of working with the severely mentally ill) that the illogicality of her behaviour and taking against one of her babies seems the sort of thing you might well see in the extremely disturbed.