A few days ago I suggested that it could have been the broken family from which he came that led Raol Moat to go off the rails. It is extraordinary, though, that in what appear to be his final words, he himself suggested his parenting background was a vital component.
This is the account in the Sunday Telegraph:
As he lay on the grass, his gun pointed at his neck, witnesses heard him tell police: “I have not got a dad – no one cares about me.”Feeling alone and sorry for himself, the man who had goaded police during a week-long manhunt had finally lost his bravado.
Cornered by armed officers at the edge of a river and with police spotlights trained on him, Moat appeared a shadow of his public image as a steroid-addicted, violent bodybuilder.Almost whimpering, the 37-year-old had become increasingly agitated during the six-hour standoff.
Witnesses recall seeing him at times rubbing his face in an obvious sign of distress.
Finally, at 1.15am on Saturday, Moat, who never knew his father and whose mother had disowned him, tucked the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger in circumstances which are now under investigation.
The tragic story of Raol Moat and his victims poses the question, "if the parenting is important, which parts of it are key?"
Is the fact that a) his father went off without ever knowing him b) that his mother chose to marry another man or c) that his mother, according this recent report 'disowned' him?
Obviously each of these things could have an impact individually and the effect of each could act as a multiplier of the impact of the others. But I suspect, though I cannot bring forward evidence for it, that a boy can do pretty well if he exclusively has to handle the fact that no father has ever been on the scene. If he is brought up and loved by a lone mother, I suspect that the results can easily be satisfactory. Indeed, the story of how the boy seemed happy and fine until his early teenage years, supports the idea. It was then that his mother got married and then that the boy began to be troubled.
I suspect that the arrival of a new man on the scene for his mother is something which often makes the situation much more difficult for the son. He is not likely to accept the authority of a male adult who has simultaneously taken some of the attention of his mother away from him and who is also not his natural father. This may seem like a cruel judgement to make - as though I were saying to mothers in that situation, "it is wrong for you to take another man - you must live alone". I realise that could be hard for many women. But I trying to understand the pyschology of the young son honestly and let the moral consequences fall where they may. A similar situation could arise for a lone father who would like to have a new woman in his life and who daughter could be deeply hurt.
One thing that happens, in some of the lone mother cases, is that the new adult male on the scene can so damage the relationship between the mother and son that the son feels profoundly rejected. That could be what happened in the case of Raol Moat. The effect appears to have been devastating for him.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime • Parenting
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There are plenty of people from broken homes who don't have the desire to rapage about with a shotgun!!
Posted by: Anon at July 15, 2010 12:22 PM
Thank you for your comment on Raol Moat, there is no excuse for what he did, that is for sure. However,in my opinion there is a bigger picture which I hope will be taken on board. Many people from broken homes cannot cope with the stress and it depends what they are having to endure during that time, every single case is different.
Posted by: Penny Snowball at July 20, 2010 03:02 PM
Typical right-wing commentary using a deranged individual to attack the "underclass."
This man was normal until he injected testosterone, a hormone that is already the root of all evil even at natural levels. He turned into a modern day Frankenstein’s monster, terrifying and pathetic at the same time. As this evil hormone wore off, so did the emotional suppression it creates, and the guilt no doubt blew his mind. To use this man as an excuse to bring back the workhouse is just SO typical of the overclass. The reality is that welfare is compensation for the outsourcing of all productive industry to slave states such as China-an act of treason by the ruling classes. Without well paying jobs in industry, getting rid of welfare will simply result in tent cities as in third-world nations such as America.
The overclass in the UK has compounded the insult to the (former) working class by destroying the apprenticeship system and now converting even low skilled work into "degree" subjects to be paid for not by industry or the state, but by the worker! Yet another massive transfer of wealth to the landlord class. The landlord caste (created by cheap credit, mass immigration and bankers bonuses) has locked out all future generations from owning property, but worse still they have successfully lobbied to make council house rents as expensive as a mortgage! Naturally, a nation of toilet cleaners cannot afford such rents without massive subsidy, but the overclass now resents the very situation they created! Add massive local property taxes to support executive style pay and bonuses to the middle class local authority clients of Nu-Labour, who were just as much the nasty party as the Tories (witness the twisted lipped sociopathy of Labour's Caroline Flint and her hatred for the "underclass") and in fact this means even those who do work are merely subsidising the landlord and bureaucratic classes. Local taxes and inflated rents/property prices are the elephant in the room. This will ultimately sabotage any attempt to raise people from poverty. My answer? Rent controls, protectionism (locking out nations that have no health and welfare provision from trade) and the end of all immigration, followed by a massive coastal land reclamation scheme in the South of England so that new family housing with gardens can be built.
Of course, outsourcing is not the only problem, automation and robotics will eventually concentrate all wealth into the hands of a tiny elite, and if they still attempt to further criminalise the underclass they created, a Soviet-style revolution will occur and they will be physically annihilated.
I'm thinking of taking up politics.
Posted by: Trevor Loughlin at July 23, 2010 09:46 AM
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Meanwhile the stable marriage of Derrick Bird's parents resulted in??
Posted by: Anon at July 11, 2010 11:35 PM