Can any one explain how parents can subject their own child to torture?

[Elasticwoman]

I'm sure every one has heard the shocking news about the couple who have just been sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison for subjecting their 4 year old to gruesome abuse which would have killed her had the parents not been found out.

Every now and again these terrible cases come up. Usually the culprits are not the natural parents eg in the Climbier case.

I am sure it is very rare, but I can't understand why any one would want to inflict wanton cruelty on a defenceless child. I can understand the impulse to smack if provoked, but deliberately to scald her hands??They could have left the child in foster care if they didn't want to look after her.

How can people have children and not love them? Am I being naive?

I agree with you totally. I cannot understand how someone can harm a child in this way, whether they are blood related or not. It is such a coincidence that I have started reading Dave Pelzer's a child called it and the lost boy I cannot comprehend what that child went through and survived. My friend's youngest daughter has cerebral palsy and she is so loved and protected, it breaks my heart - that poor little girl.

I saw this story yesterday, it breaks my heart, they are evil bastards and deserve the same treatment inflicted on them IMO, see how they would cope with boiling water poured on thier hands and given no relief, that poor poor child, thank god she is now safe, though the emotional scars will never heal

These stories really upset me and so I don't like thinking about them too much but the only way I can possibly imagine that anyone cold treat a chlid like that is if they had no concept in their minds at all that a child is a real person with physical needs and emotional responses. I think they merely saw the child as something to do with what they pleased, to vent their nastiness and messed-up emtional pain on.

THe thing I can't imagine is giving birth to a baby, all the amazing love and overwheming sense of protection that most parents have when they first hold their nnewborn....what must happen to go from that love to such awful degradation? Or maybe the love is never there in the first place...

I don't know, it breaks my heart even to think about it. I'm glad for the changes that have happened since Victoria Climbie's death, the Every Child Matters thing and so on...I just hope that it means that fewer cases like this will come up.

Roseylea, your explanation might cover neglect or thoughtless behaviour - but this sounds like deliberate infliction of pain and suffering. People do terrible things often out of fear - but what is there to fear about a 4 year old with cp?

Totaleclipse, the culprits probably have suffered terrible abuse themselves in the past and will no doubt be in danger of reprisals in prison.

Maybe it's because they (the parents) hate themselves and therefore hate the child as an reflection of themselves - therefore all they have to give the child is hate.

What an awful state of mind to be in.

I think you are too kind to the bas###ds, they are evil, pure and simple. No matter what somebody has been through it does not excuse or explain this kind of behaviour.

Spot on Daisy, my thoughts exactly.

There's no way on earth I would excuse this kind of behaviour.

There are always reasons why people do things, though, for good or evil, and usually people who do commit atrocities are almost totally un-self-aware - which is why the more we can understand ourselves and others, the better people we are likely to be able to be. IMO anyway.

No, no I can't explain that.

I can't even see why anyone would do it to any animal - cockroaches excepted.

I cry when my children have to get vaccinations.

But saying they are 'evil' doesn't explain anything does it? It's too easy. I really really want to hear their justifications/explanations of their actions because I simply don't understand.

The problem is that people who do these things I'm quite sure would be nowhere near intelligent enough to articulate their feelings or the processes which led them to such dehumanisation.

Or actually - now that I think of it - which is worse? A highly intelligent pyschopath who is 100% aware of his or her actions and the pain inflicted on others (a la Harold Shipman), or a damaged person who damages others unawares? Maybe I am trying to excuse them by removing some of the culpability by saying that these people are not consciously in control of their actions but driven by unarticulated but powerful forces which are bigger than their ability to mange them.

Maybe I'm just a woolly liberal...

Expat I always try not to cry for vaccs as well! And last week when the doc told me that dd had tonsilitis!

Don't think Harold Shipman was trying to inflict pain, just death. He wanted control, I think, and didn't care about other people's rights.

I have no idea why parents or anyone would want to torture. Except to say it won't the first time this has happened or even the last.

Contaray to popular belief the parents of special needs children are NOT special people. They have a mixture of emotions including love, joy, anger, frustration and resentment. For example having a special needs can often me that at least one of the parents can never work again. They may find that their live plans and hopes for the future have changed.

The majority of parents with special needs are fanastic parents. However daily life is often a struggle. There is a little girl in my son's class who isnt potty trained at five years old and has limited speech. Her mother is an excellent mother, however she is suffering from severe depression. There are lots of services to help the child, but very little to help the parents.

My own son had physio when he was younger to help his walking. I used to get angry with him when he completely and utterly refused to cooperate with physio. I never hit him, but I did come close.

It is probable that the parents simply weren't up to the strain of caring for a disabled child, because they were damaged themselves. Ghastly business. Bear in mind also that some people in the past - and sometimes in the present - have inflicted hideous tortures on their own children for what they would claim to be good reason: usually some or other superstition. A percentage of the horrible things done to poor VIctoria Climbie were supposed to be some kind of "exorcism" as her carers claimed to believe she was possessed - "exorcisms", while not that common, do go on and while sometimes it's a matter of people exercising their sadism, sometimes the peope who assault or kill their relatives are doing so out of some sincere belief that they are 'helping'. After all, plenty of otherwise loving parents still routinely cut off bits of their children's genitalia for superstitius reasons.

I think they are obviously 'wired' differently as they must derive some sort of satisfaction out of it. This wasn't parents lashing out as things had got too tough. this was people who specifically set out to cause another human being pain - chillingly one they had produced!! The fact that the child was originally put up for adoption due to the violence that these two carried out towards each other says it all about the people they are. Its obviously an accepted part of their life. Look at Hindley/Brady and the Klombie case - and that of the 'muti' killings (for vodoo rituals) that go on. These people think in some cases that what they are doing is acceptable or they have total disregard for the individual they are doing it too. I found this story disgusting and was semi happy to discover that the child she is expecting she will never be able to have contact with. Having said that I just hope that child gets a proper start with some deserving parents rather than lost in the system otherwise they have the satisfaction of knowing they've managed to destroy another childs life without having met them.

A few hundred years ago a child with cp would have ended up in a mental asylum. Inmates of long term mental asylums used to be horribly abused, just like the romanian orphanages.

Parents of non special needs children have been know to abuse or even kill their children in horrible ways. Unfortunately child protection services are very over stretched.

I don't know the answer. I can't understand why anyone would ever hurt a child or anyone for that matter. I think people like that must be very disturbed.

I think some evil, twisted bastards react to dependency or vulnerability with hate. They see people who need special consideration as targets for abuse. Akin to the way that some people are attracted to the caring professions as a chance to abuse elderly/disabled/young people. Or people are attracted to care work as it's a good, reliable wage (in some areas) and resent the people they look after.

I am not sure I would call them evil but they are acting in a way we dont understand because it is so very different from our own hardwired protective and nurturing instincts towards children.

In this case it is made so much worse because the child in question had special needs. I do think though that it is a modern phenomena to nurture these children in many ways, although there are examples in the past where people with special needs were seen as just that special.

Examples like this where adults inflict pain, torture and often kill children are particularly difficult though and I am inclined to agree that these people are sick as well. Of course that doesnt ever defend them.

What I don't understand is why the parents didn't let the adoption proceed. The process was started, and then stopped - so the parents must have expressed an interet in keeping her. My ds's best friend at school is adopted. His natural parents were inadequate but not overtly cruel and agreed to give him up for adoption.

Whatever made these parents think they could get away with this? They knew that what they were doing was unacceptable, because they tried not to let social services see the child. Did they think they could hide her for ever? She would have died soon if they had not been found out, and they could hardly have hidden that.

It did take a while though for social services to take action.

I just think these people must be full of hatred, for whatever reason - bad upbringing, lack of intelligence, just plain nasty bullying personality.

I actually think it is very common for parents to not love their children, either because they have not been set a good example themselves, or because they are not intelligent enough to question their actions and motives.

Is there really a correlation between intelligence and morality?