For most parents, the thought of their child being hurt in any way fills them with an overwhelming and sickening sense of dread. And yet, one child dies every five minutes as a result of violence.
The omnipresent and foreboding fear we have when our kids are even a few minutes late home ensure news stories featuring small faces resonate. They sit with us for days while we think “they could’ve been mine”.
In Australia this year alone, we’ve already been plagued by horrific stories about children being hurt by the ones that are supposed to protect them.
Joey, 3
Today, a mother and her partner were sentenced to “defacto life sentences” for abusing and murdering a three-year-old who committed the crime of looking “like his father”.
The 43-year-old mother admitted to police she had thoughts of killing her little boy, known only as Joseph, because she “just didn’t connect with him”.
“Don’t get me wrong I did love that boy … but there was a part of me that hated him … because he looked like his father, because he’s his father’s child,” she told police.
Tyrell Cobb,4
Yesterday, Matthew Scown walked free from prison after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his ex-partner’s son.
When handing Scown his sentence, Justice Martin Burns said Tyrell would have been “in extreme pain” and “very, very ill” when he died.
“Every movement would have caused extreme pain,” he said.
The little boy had total of 53 bruises and 17 abrasions on his body at time of death.
Scown, 34, appeared to be laughing and smiling as he left the Supreme Court.
Zaraiyah-Lily Headland, 5, and Andreas Headland, 3
In July, a father a father used his children as “weapons” to break his wife’s “heart into 50 million little pieces” by murdering them.
The bodies of Zaraiyah-Lily Headland, five, and Andreas Headland, three, were found inside their Perth home on October 20 last year.
On the night he killed his children, Jason Headland told his wife: “Say goodbye to your children”.
“I’m going to break your heart into 50 million little pieces,” Headland told her over the phone.
He added it would be the last time she would speak to her children and she heard him giggle before hanging up the phone.
She immediately went to the police for help, but it was too late.
And that’s just children who are dying. Many more are being abused emotionally, physically and sexually and will live for those scars for the rest of their lives.
That’s where Polished Man comes in.
What is Polished Man?
It’s a campaign which challenges men (and women) to paint one fingernail Polished Man Blue to represent the one child that dies every give minutes from violence.
Celebrities around the world have joined the movement, committing to not turning their backs on the vulnerable and ignoring the smirks and sideways glances in an effort to raise awareness and much needed funds.
Help abolish violence against children here – even one is one too many.
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