When a murderer hits the headlines, it is worth looking to see what were his or her childhood experiences were. Very often there was a break-up between the natural mother and father.

So it is with Raol Moat, the alleged killer currently on the run. Today the newspapers have some details of his background. Poignantly the mother says that he was happy as a young child but then he changed. The photograph of him at the wedding of his mother to his stepfather when he was 13 shows him with no smile on his face.

These details are from the Sun:

His mother remembered him as a gentle, asthma-stricken child who gave no indication that he would grow into the menacing man mountain who has "declared war" on all police.

But by the end of his teens, Moat had changed, she said.

He had never known who his real father was and simmering tensions between him and his mother and stepdad erupted into furious rows when he was 19.

Josephine said: "It was horrible. He started having a go at my husband."

Moat finally left home at the age of 24.

Of course it is not possible to prove that he would have he would not have gone wrong if he had grown up with both his natural mother and father. Similarly it is not possible to show that he would have stayed the right side if only his mother had not re-married. But the overall statistics relating family breakd-down to crime are strong. And many times, when I have gleaned from the papers the family background of killers, they turn out to have come from broken families. The killers of Jamie Bulger, for example, were - as detailed in The Welfare State We're In.

The newspapers never highlight this common background of the majority of killers. And couples who break up when there are children involved often tell themselves that the children will be all right. They say to themselves, 'well, the children would have been much worse off if we stayed together arguing like mad'. The keeness and ability of human beings to justify themselves is impressive.

It is as if they were not capable of changing their behaviour. In fact in many cases they could. But they would find it more of an effort and not what they are currently inclined to do. If, indeed, they were unable to divorce or live apart, they would be obliged to find a better way to live together.

There was a time when more people had moral codes and consciences that more often induced them to question the morality of what they were doing. They tried harder.

The truth is that every time a marriage breaks up when there are children, those children are hurt. And many of the times when the parent who looks after the children remarries, the children are hurt again.

Generally, if they are young, the children don't say much at the time. They wouldn't. They are often silent victims. But they are being hurt.

Of course only a tiny minority go on to become murderers. Only a minority become delinquent. But these kinds of outcomes are the extremes - the tips of icebergs. Underneath there are hurt people whose pain does not show so obviously.

The Sun story is http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article3045636.ecehere.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime • Parenting

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