To be profoundly saddened by this story

[Changeditforyou]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12565699/Police-rush-scene-incident-outside-busy-Croydon-shopping-centre.html

They tell us to help our daughters to protect themselves from male violence by thinking about what they wear, how much they drink, how late to stay out, where they go…
Are we supposed to add to the list ‘not rejecting a bunch of flowers in case you get stabbed to death’. This is horrifying.

I’m so so sick of male violence. It feels everywhere and inescapable. More luck than anything that your daughter isn’t the one. This poor girl and her family.

"The failure happened years before that". Exactly.

If community organisations; schools and the police have to deal with young men or women carrying knives then that means the parents/ family have failed.

The broader issue is a failure of parenting. I wish we would stop making excuses. The 'media' and 'society' do not bring up your child - you do. You teach them the difference between right and wrong. It is your responsibility.

Every parent needs to play their part else it remains a faceless, hopeless cycle of abdicating responsibility and blaming the people left to pick up the pieces, like the police and schools and media and society ... and of course, the government and funding.

OP totally agree that this is profoundly sad, the loss of an innocent young life and the parenting that blames everybody but themselves for their children walking around with knives.

(Of course, we all acknowledge that even the best parents can land up with mentally ill or criminal children - but, on average, children are a product of their parents moral and belief systems.)

Thank you. A lot of jobs in outreach and charity work rest of the idea you can do something. After years in criminal justice I came to the view that a lot of these people were deeply self serving. If they did not succeed and the terms of success were opaque then there was no real impact on them.

I question their value. They get public money or grants.

Of course every parent needs to play their part but you are deluded if you think this will ever happen. Parents are people, people often have issues such as: addiction, abuse, neglect, mental health etc,. There are many people that are not able to parent and that is where the state has a responsibility to these children to protect them from their chaotic, neglectful, abusive homes. It is too late when you have a 15 year old with a machete which may be a result of bad parenting but these parents won't ever play their part or care that we expect them to raise their kids properly and show them right from wrong and these kids will also be parents one day and the cycle continues. Society and the state have a responsibility to step in to protect us all from the product of "bad parenting"

Society and the state have a responsibility to step in to protect us all from the product of "bad parenting"

That's all true but realistically by the time the state gets to see what's going on and get the chance to step in, it's probably a bit late to have much of a success.
If the basic preparation for school hasn't been done in the home, then the child already starts with a huge disadvantage which often follows them their whole life.

Sure start centres were great for that. Supporting young children and new parents.

That was exactly my thinking.
Premeditated act of callousness and violence because she didn't want to be in a relationship anymore.🤬

It wasn't the ex girlfriend, it was her friend who stepped in to defend her. So very sad.

Maybe it's a good thing to say to girls, you don't need boyfriends. You don't need to date.

You know it's absurd that girls need to engage with this.

I'm not saying it would have saved anybody; but thinking about this. They were very young.

Male violence is a plague

Well police officers are strip searching black children in schools and making them take out their tampons searching for imaginary drugs.

we should not normalise the state traumatising black children. Why don’t your offer up your kids instead.

My own mixed race kids? Yeah, sure, if I thought they were carrying weapons then they'd be dragged by me to the front of the queue to be searched.

I support measures like stop & search to help prevent the senseless deaths of children by knife welding thugs.

There is literally no glamour on top boy. They have money they can’t use, their community is in tatters and everyone the know is ruined by drugs, leaves or dies. Then they die.

its quite stark and depressing

Lol. Stop and search has less than nothing to do with whether you have a weapon or not as it’s not based on any actual evidence.

you don’t even have a dogs understanding of the insane racial profiling that goes on with S&S with your mixed kids.

maybe open a book, so if god forbid your kids are subject to a cavity search on the side of the road you’ll actually be of use rather than thanking officers for giving your child ptsd

Never mind funding, this is the inevitable consequence of Theresa May making it virtually impossible to Stop and Search.

It's really not.

I work in schools including one where a violent attack on a girl could have killed her. She was stabbed by a boy who she didn't want to be in a relationship with.

The parents were given no support at all. The boy did a couple of years in youth offending and then went home. There was community pressure on the girl's parents and family to just let it go.

I found it appalling tbh. She very nearly died and all of the focus seemed to be on supporting the perpetrator and his family. It has to change. Girls have to stop being made unsafe by nothing more than simply living alongside and interacting with boys.

@MidnightOnceMore

I don't see any mention of the parents here. Maybe that's why we are where we are. The most important influen ce isn't even mentioned.

Also, Top Boy did not have a happy ending for the major characters. No glamourising there.

There are no state imposed restrictions on women’s freedoms or behaviours in this country (that don’t also apply to men) so to equate an enforced lockdown of men for 24/7 (utterly unenforceable and completely pointless) with the list of instructions you seem to think women are subjugated by IS bonkers. I don’t know about you but I go out when I want, drink what I like, smile at whomsoever I choose, and have never felt the need to go home clutching my car keys between my fingers. I lived in London for many years too, through the 80s and 90s, frequented places like Ladbroke Grove, Brixton and other crime ridden hot spots and yes, I received unwanted attention from men, some of it menacing and unpleasant but I was able to stand up for myself and I don’t harbour a grudge against men as a result or think they should all be locked up. How enforcing such a punishment on perfectly decent boys and men who have only ever treated women with respect is going to help the situation I really cannot imagine. Some perspective needed I think.

It's quite clear you've never spoken to someone who has been traumatised from stop and search

Really? That’s very misandry of you. I find that comment very offensive.

You are lucky that you were strong enough to stand up to the unwanted attention of men.
Also, you could aim a bit higher. It would be a better society if individual women didn't have to rely on standing up to unwanted male attention and could peacefully go about their business without it.

This all day long.

The issue here is that we live in the age of internet where boys are easily exposed to far to much far to young. It is now widely reported that teenagers are actively watching porn regularly…. Hardly the thing to teach them about true relationships or respecting women!!!

It starts with parenting and, sadly, there is a lot of that lacking these days. Role models are a huge thing, particularly for teenage boys and the media and different strains of media available are not always the best examples.

I am also sorry to say it, but I am quite sure some people have children because they think it’s the done thing in life, not because they want them or understand the responsibilities that come with bringing up a child to be well rounded in all aspects of their lives. It’s about teaching, interacting, understanding and overseeing what they are exposed to. Paying attention to their friend groups and who they are with, etc. What are they watching? Who are they texting? What is their language around certain subjects? It takes time, patience and commitment as many of you on her know and give to your children, which is why you find this so abhorrent and cannot understand it, but not all families are like that!

Men/boys in and of themselves are not the issue, it’s the tools we give them to work with when they are young and the lack of policing of what they are being exposed to that is the real problem, both at home and how parents place restrictions on the accessibility of content, but also thanks to media outlets not policing their content too.