I think most people are ruminating on it because they are shocked at the brutality of the case - how such torture could be inflicted on a child and reported to police, SS, school, relatives raising concerns etc and nothing be done.
On another platform someone was discussing how labelling people like Tustin and Hughes monsters and othering them as ‘not like us’ is part of the failure to address this level of abuse and who commits it. And how common it can be.
The hairdresser and her partner who witnessed Arthur’s state for example and did nothing - if they saw Tustin as ‘one of them’ and not ‘a monster’ then it was easier for them to not get involved or dismiss things, because only ‘monsters’ torture and abuse children, not ‘people like us’. Not people we like.
Abuse thrives on this kind of thinking.
And we are all capable of that kind of cognitive dissonance.
We need to change how we think about people who commit abuse : not to give them sympathy or excuses but to address the warning signs that people are capable of and committing it. Abusers - of all kinds - are people like us, people we know, like and love.
We live beside them, work with them, socialise with them, admire them. They are not some different, awful class of people we only come into contact with through news stories like this.