Don't get even, get angry

Sorry to get this blog off on a cynical note, but the retrospective hand-wringing following on from the Fiona Pilkington inquest verdict has been entirely predictable. 

It’s been most clearly evident in the tones of radio and TV news presenters – a mixture of regret, sympathy and puzzlement. It’s hard not to think of Groucho Marx's old adage about sincerity:  once you can fake that, you’ve cracked it. The presenters’ tone has been picked up by the people they interviewed, in particular, charity spokespeople (with some notable exceptions) and politicians who have, as is often the case, managed to pull off that old trick of talking a lot while not saying very much.

So who’s expressing anger at the fact that this woman, living on a housing estate in the heart of Middle England was, along with her disabled daughter, harassed to death? Well, as a disabled person, I am.

What’s making me angry – and it’s the kind of anger that creeps up on you when you’re doing something entirely unrelated – isn’t the fact that despite thirty-three calls and several visits to the house, the police not only failed to act, but failed to recognise this for what it was - a hate crime. (Although that in itself is reason enough to be angry.)

What’s making me angry is the fact that the broadcasters and their interviewees have managed to do two remarkable things by continuing to refer to the Pilkington children as “vulnerable” and as having “special needs”. This has meant that the focus has been taken away from the perpetrators and their motivation which was, plain and simple hatred of these kids for what they were, disabled people. Worse, the use of terms like vulnerable almost puts the responsibility for what happened on the victims.

Yes, they were vulnerable, but what they were vulnerable to was not the fact or nature of their impairments. They were vulnerable to the vindictiveness of fellow members of their community who despised and terrorised them for being what they were.