Ask any guy who’s entered the dating scene in Taiwan about ‘Princess Syndrome’, and chances are you’ll get that all too familiar slow nodding and appreciative but weak smile of understanding.

Taiwanese and western guys alike in Taiwan’s dating scene often run headfirst into Princess Syndrome, the scenario at times feeling like being armed with a toothpick trying to tear down a towering brick wall of culturally ingrained entitlement.

But where does it come from?

Crappy parenting.

Thankfully my current girlfriend only reverts back into her princess ways on the odd occasion, but every now and then I’m reminded of just how ingrained this concept is into Taiwanese culture.

My latest Princess Syndrome episode involved our landlord, a guy who at the time we’d barely known for a month.

Surprised at the fact we were living together, after a night of drinks at his place (he owns a factory nearby and we go around for drinks every so often as he’s quite a social chap), he took me aside and half jokingly, half seriously in so many words conveyed that he’d decided my girlfriend was top shelf and that if I dared to mess things up or hurt her, there’d be trouble.

He’d decided that the fact we lived together effectively meant my girlfriend’s family (specifically her father) must have abandoned her, and consequently there was as such some sort of guardian role he saw the  need to fill.

Far be it from me to let some other guy dictate the terms of my relationships, but it was all I could do to insist that just because I wasn’t from Taiwan didn’t mean I was about to just abandon ship and run off with the next vagina that caught my fancy.

Well, that’s not quite how I put it but between his grasp of English and that of mine with Chinese, I’d like to think that’s the message that was conveyed in reply.

With four daughters of his own, I kinda feel sorry for the poor schmuck who starts to date them.

As awkward as my little exchange might have been at the time, the topic hasn’t been re-visted and we all get along fine.

…just another day in the life of a guy going out with a Taiwanese woman.

Looking forward, it’d be nice to think that this was just an older generation thing that would eventually die out. But with an island choc-a-bloc full of these princess types, and father figures seemingly only all to willing to step in and encourage the behaviour – that seems unlikely.

Just ask one thirteen year old student from Feng-Lin Junior High School in Hualian.

After exchanging flirty SMS messages and what not, a thirteen year old boy decided to reject the advances of a fellow female student.

Outraged, the girl ran home and began to start cutting herself.

Upon seeing his daughter’s injuries and asking her about it, the father decided to investigate on his own and upon finding prior SMS exchanges between the two students on his daughter’s phone, jumped to the only logical conclusion he could muster.

This heartless teenage demon had assaulted his innocent precious. And his daughter, being the psychotically deranged princess he’d raised her to be, completely went along with it.

Doing what any father would do given the circumstances, he called up the school to complain – and eventually his concerns found their way to Director of Academic Affairs Shen Wen-jun (沈文俊).

This clown, instead of investigating himself and passing on the incident to the relevant authorities, abducted the male teenager (presumably abusing his position of authority) and took him to the girl’s house, where of course ‘her parents and several other cousins had gathered‘.

What happened next?

Furious at the loss of face this kid had caused his princess,

the girl’s father, reportedly intoxicated, started shouting and beating the teenaged boy. Soon, three cousins joined in while four others stood around and watched.

Wonderful.

Realising his complete and utter cock-up, Shen claims he ‘shielded Chiang from the blows initially (but was) soon swatted aside‘.

After beating the kid senseless, the father then held him hostage until his mother arrived. Upon arrival the mother, along with her son, were then held hostage until she signed a  ’NT$200,000 promissory note for the emotional distress the son allegedly inflicted on the perpetrator’s daughter’.

$200,000 TWD ($6,592 USD) and a bashing just for rejecting his daughter? Jesus Christ, just how exactly freaking fugly is this girl?!

Upon being released by their captors, the mother promptly presented herself and her battered son to the nearest police station, where ‘their claims were not taken seriously‘.

Feng-Lin Junior High School refused to report anything and police were happy to pretend the attack never happened. Finally, it was ‘only when they sought the help of legislator Yang De-ching did the horrifying confrontation come to light‘.

For his part in the fiasco, Shen was fired and as it stands, ‘formal charges on all parties are pending investigation‘.

Seriously, does messed up even begin to describe this incident? Forget the actions of the school administrator for a second – how messed up is the father’s daughter?

She gets rejected at school and then proceeds to start cutting herself – WTF? Why the hell isn’t she seeing a psychologist!

I well and truly pity the poor bastard who winds up dating this girl over the next few years.

‘Whaaaaaat? He looked at you funny?!

THAT’S IT! Call a family reunion, WE’RE GOING TO GO BURN DOWN HIS FUCKING HOUSE AND HANG HIM!’

I appreciate the parental instinct to protect your kids… but there’s being a responsible and caring parent, there’s taking that idea a little bit too far, there’s even being a completely overzealous control freak about it… and then there’s this guy.

Note to Taiwanese fathers: Having a daughter is not a license for crazy.

I can’t believe this would happen to him.


My eyes scrolled below the headline and without hesitation, I instantly knew why Hayden Burnes was murdered.

Sorry but this is 2011… with hair like that was the headline supposed to be a rhetorical question?

Clicking  on the story and reading the finer details about Burnes’ murder, things only deteriorated;

When asked about Hayden’s bikie roots, friends nodded in agreement before deciding not to comment further.


Tony Soprano wannabe bikie parents’ teenage son gets murdered. Wait, I’m supposed to act surprised when exactly?

And I hope the police are paying attention, examination of Burnes friends clearly reveal who might be getting whacked next;

I’m not exactly sure how members of the public are supposed to react to stories like this. I mean am I supposed to care? And care about what?

If you’re dumb enough to be a bikie, the least you can do is use some of your money to shield your kids from the bullshit you’re involved in. How much of a moron do you have to be at failing even that?

No doubt we’ll all get to read about the future bikie wars that result of this murder. Yay for us.

‘ey bros, didja hear they knifed burnesy!’

‘no shit eh? Wheres my macheddi. Let’s go geddem.’

‘Fully sik yeah, we’ll get em!’

‘Where’s my earring yo, I can’t knife anyone without it!’

‘Next to my hair curlers bro, watchout they’re still hot.’

I for one can’t wait. No really.


Update 6th December 2011 – Well that was a rather short wait;

A bikie tattoo parlour has been targeted in an arson attack in north-western Sydney overnight, following the fatal stabbing of a boy yesterday.

The blaze was lit at the Naked Gun 2 tattoo studio at South Windsor just before 1:00am (AEDT).

The shop was damaged and the fire also caused smoke damage to an upstairs unit.

The same parlour was sprayed with bullets last year and a bikie was shot in the leg there in 2008.


Oh and as for Hayden not having anything to do with the bikie gang nonsense his parents are involved in;

Channel Seven last night reported that Hayden’s father had links to the Lone Wolf bikie gang, and that the teenager had recently been involved in an argument with a girl whose father was the head of a rival gang.


Of course this all still has nothing to do with bikie gangs, move along now – nothing to see here!


Update 8th December, 2011 – Appreciating a lack of evidence pointing at bikie gang violence, I decided to pull the above article sometime around 4pm local time 7th December, 2011.

Figuring that the investigation was still ongoing and due to the comments suggesting that Burnes was of decent character and not in any way related to possible bikie nonsense his dad was involved in, I decided to let things cool till something concrete was out.

Then a few hours later, this happened:

(Hayden Burnes) was being investigated for allegedly raping a schoolgirl weeks before he was killed.

Police have confirmed that the allegations of sexual assault against Hayden Burnes are now part of their homicide investigation.

Sources claim the rape victim’s father was recently visited by a relative of Hayden and told to back off and stop making any further allegations.

The boy’s father has known links to the Lone Wolf bikie gang.

Couple this with the earlier report from Channel 7 which stated that Burnes ‘had recently been involved in an argument with a girl whose father was the head of a rival gang‘, ‘Rival bikie gang The Rebels also have a clubhouse near the industrial estate where the murder took place‘ and the fact that Hayden’s ‘father… has known links to the Lone Wolf bikie gang‘

and I think it’s even more obvious now what happened.

Again, not saying Burnes did or didn’t deserve it – but the sentiment stands: Get involved in bikie crap and this is what happens.

Any carefactor and sympathy I’d developed over the last few days is fast plummeting back to 0.

Especially when in light of all this family members are making statements like ‘you hear about these tragedies but you never expect them to come knocking on your door‘.

This tragedy didn’t come knocking, this family through their actions and associations left the door wide open and threw tragedy a party.

And ultimately, all joking aside, that’s what cost a fifteen year old kid his life.

a. her mother worked for over 12 hours most days and

b. she had completely unrestricted and unsupervised access to the internet.

Subsequently I don’t blame the girl in situations like this, but rather squarely on the mother. Shitty parenting equals shitty kids, and if at 9 years of age she’s already whored herself out online… well, you can imagine the type of life she’s set herself up for.

In an attempt to curb minor’s access to the internet during the summer vacation period, deputy mayor of Taipei City, Hou You-yi (侯友宜), led a charge into several unlicensed internet cafes to shut them down.

You see contrary to the obvious, it’s not shitty parenting causing Taiwan’s kids to rampage on the internet, but rather it’s those evil internet cafes.

For some unknown reason, despite there being an acknowledged 157 unlicensed internet cafes in Taipei County, only 4 of them were shut down in the raids.

Why?

Cafe Free Space (自由空間) was not only caught admitting underage teens 18 times, but also permitted a 6-year-old child in the shop.

Hou said 70 of the 157 unlicensed Internet cafes have gone out of business. Another 55 that illegally admitted underage teenagers were immediately ordered to shut down.


Rather than because they’re unlicensed, these latest raids seem to focus around the cafes granting access to underage patrons.

So what are kids as young as 6 doing spending their vacation in internet cafes anyway?

The child, said the Juvenile Affairs Division, was accompanied by his 12-year-old brother.

The elder brother brought his sibling to the cafe because their parents locked their computer and were out at work.


Once again, all it comes down to is shitty parenting. Good on the parents for locking the home computer while they are at work all day and night, but where does anyone think this 12 year old kid got money from to go to the internet cafe in the first place.

And what kind of moronic parents leave a 6 year old in the care of a 12 year old all day anyway?

But, as always seems to be the case in Taiwan, the parents are no reprimanded in anyway. Rather it’s all the internet cafes fault.

If left unchecked, fast forward a couple of years and here’s where shitty parenting takes us;

A group of suspected Internet fraudsters barely of adult age was apprehended on Tuesday for allegedly scamming as much as NT$70 million (US$2.4 million) in just two years.

New Taipei City Criminal Investigation Division deputy chief Lin Chia-lun (林家倫) said the group was led by Su Ching-pei (蘇慶霈), who ran a betel nut stand.

Su worked through proxy agents Chen Yung-lin (陳詠霖), Chang Kai-fung (張楷峰), Lin Yuan-chuan (林元泉), all 21 years old, and a teenager surnamed Pan (潘), who recruited other young people between the ages of 15 and 20 at cybercafes and pool halls.


Ah betelnut stands, where all neglected female children inevitably wind up.

Most likely the end result of shitty parenting themselves, these criminal masterminds made their fortune by using

names that were suggestively female such as “LOVE,” “BABY” and “RUBY” in the game We Dancing Online (唯舞獨尊), to randomly chat online with otaku — a Japanese term referring to people with obsessive interests — feigning to be their female colleagues or peers.

The scammers pretended to promote software to increase the gaming points for the other player to gain personal information, which they then used to buy small amounts of IWAN game points.

The scammers used the points to buy virtual treasure from the online shop in Forsaken World (神魔Online) and Demigod (暗黑世界Online) to sell to other players of those games for profit.

Police said that although the fraudsters used the oldest trick in the book by asking victims to guess who they were, they got away with the scam because they knew the otakus’ weak points.


…preying on online gamers.

Kind of poetic don’t you think?

Now obviously not every neglected Taiwanese kid is going to wind up a criminal mastermind or whoring themselves out over the internet but without proper supervision (hell, any supervision) the temptation is certainly there.

Will the Taiwanese government do anything about it though? Not likely. They could introduce the concept of industrial relations into Taiwan and perhaps just flat out tell employers they can’t work their employees to death – but it’s far easier to blame a few rogue internet cafes and call it a day.

Problem solved… except not really.

At the other end of the spectrum here’s what happens when you push your kid too hard to excel when he’s clearly not interested;

A high school student believed to be mentally ill injured his parents with a knife during an alleged attempt to kill them in Kaohsiung yesterday.

His mother sustained serious stab wounds to her back and head in the attack at their home, and remains in a coma after being rushed to the hospital.

The 16-year-old student, surnamed Chang, who is from a top-three senior high school of the southern city, was said to have worked out a detailed plan to kill his parents.


One of the top three senior high schools? What on Earth went wrong then?

His teachers were cited by the United Evening News as describing the student as a quiet teenager whom had shown no signs of violence at school, though he often skipped classes and was late to school.


Hmm, sounds like your good old ‘you’re going to go to school and get straight A’s in everything we want you to do. We don’t care what you want or think’ Asian parent syndrome.

Not surprisingly, the parents saw this coming and took their son to a psychiatrist;

‘Help help, our son doesn’t want to do good at school. What’s wrong with him?!’

Despite having a photocopy of the murder plan as carried out by their son though, neither father nor mother were prepared for the plan itself to eventuate.

Following the attack, the father showed police a photocopy he had kept of the alleged plan that the son had written down in a notebook, the United Evening New said.

The father told police he and his wife had taken their son to a psychiatrist this summer after he showed abnormal behavior.

It is uncertain what kind of mental disease he is suffering from.


My guess? He’s suffering from yet another case of shitty parenting.

I wonder if there’ll every be a day a large chunk of Taiwanese parents realise their kids aren’t inconvenient subordinates who want nothing more than to be ordered around all the time.

Overbearing or completely indifferent, I thank my lucky stars I didn’t grow up here.

And it wasn’t some convenience thing of memorising the language and just defaulting to ‘computer games’ as a reply – this is really what most of these kids got up to on the weekend.

Now fair enough, back in the day I played my fair share of computer games too and it didn’t seem to do too much harm (I think).

With summer holidays currently in swing though, computer games are no longer just a weekend pass time. With no exams to study for or homework to review, the internet is increasingly becoming the new television babysitter.

Add to this Taiwan’s crazy work ethic and the long hours parents stay away from home, the amount of grandparents that are utilised as cheap baby sitter substitutes and the internet (a magical box that keeps children entertained for hours as far as most Taiwanese grandparents go), and ultimately you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Case in point? A Taiwanese nine year old kid who recently whored herself out over the internet.

Left in the care of her grandmother whilst her divorced mother works 12+ hour shifts and ‘admitting she has no idea ’doesn’t know what exactly‘ her kid gets up to online , the child published the classified ad offering herself up on a porn site.

Yes, not only did she whore herself out, it appears she had an account on a porn (messageboard?) site and was savvy enough to publish an ad.

Despite being just 9 years old and revealing her age in the ad published, ‘no one stepped in, alerted the police, tried to do something about it, or even said a word before it happened‘.

And what exactly ‘happened‘?

Well, after 19 public bids on an offer for sex, a teenager won for $1000 TWD ($34 USD). Then, not only was the act carried out but it was done so ‘in the presence‘ of  the nine year old’s twin sister.

And despite all this happening online and being illegal in Taiwan, the teenager and 19 other bidders on the girl’s offer are still at large (according to the 13th August news report).

With the increased and consistently long working hours most parents are forced to work due to an overbearingly devotion to their jobs that Taiwanese people have, one can only wonder just how rampant online child prostitution is.

As one Wang Yun-tung (王雲東), an associate professor on the faculty of National Taiwan University’s Department of Social Work put it, ‘online prostitution by people of a young age group is becoming a pervasive trend’.

Indeed. It seems shitty parenting is also becoming a pervasive trend that is also coming back to bite Taiwan in the arse too.

Parents need to appreciate that their kids aren’t mindless robot zombie drones – or else trends like this are not only going to continue… but god forbid they become the socially accepted norm.

With Planking, the basic idea is that you get someone to take a photo of yourself face down with your arms by your side and toes pointed at the ground.

Other than that, there are only four other guidelines to follow;

• More Public the Better
• Larger the Group, the Better
• No location is out of bound when playing the game
• A disregard for personal safety is to be held in higher esteem


Unfortunately as with anything that is open to the general public, in the last few weeks Planking in Australia has seen it’s fair share of idiots. Two particular idiots that have caught the nation’s attention are Simon Hallam and Acton Beale.

Beale died after falling from a seventh story balcony and Hallam is lying in a hospital comatosed after falling off the back of a moving car.

Obviously both men are complete morons and only have themselves to blame… but ask the parents however and it’s all somehow the internet’s fault.

Because y’know, the internet made them do it.

After a Saturday night out drinking on May 14th, Acton Beale returned to an apartment and thought it’d be a good idea to attempt planking off the balcony railing.

Being drunk, he lost his balance and plummeted to his death. No harm, no foul and just another not too bright spark removed from the gene pool.

Well, at least that should of been how it ended. Instead we had the police pleading with the public to not be idiots and even had PrimeMinister Julia Gillard weigh in, describing

the incident as “really tragic”.

“There’s a difference between a harmless bit of fun done somewhere that’s really safe and taking a risk with your life,” she told reporters in Sydney.

“Everybody likes a bit of fun, but focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first.”


Safety sure, but was Beale’s death really tragic? Hardly.

Beale’s death was nothing more then a completely avoidable celebration of stupidy.

Less than a week later, in what appeared to be the second national Planking story, Simon Hallam fell of the back of a moving car whilst allegedly Planking.

For his contribution to the Darwinian hall of fame, Hallam (photo right) is now lying ‘in induced coma in intensive care‘ and ‘may never recover from (his) horrific head injuries‘.

In light of his idiocy Hallam’s father, Terry Hallam, decided it was all the internet’s fault;

The internet and Facebook, they’re just dreadful things … they encourage this sort of behaviour among the young ones, and young ones don’t think about consequences of their actions, they think it’s fun, so they do it with little thought for what could happen – like this.


Yes, the internet and Facebook really are dreadful things. You know what else is dreadful though?

Shitty parenting.

To claim Simon Hallam was nothing more than an impressionable ‘young one’ at age 20 is laughable. Mate, if your 20 year old son doesn’t know that attempting to Plank off the back of a car moving at speed is probably not a good idea then that’s some catastrophic parenting failure right there – the intenet doesn’t have anything to do with it.

To further highlight the stupidity of Simon Hallam’s behaviour, turns out he wasn’t even planking. After reviewing mobile phone footage taken to no doubt impress Hallam’s mates, police are now claiming that he was ‘car surfing’ rather than planking.

Car surfing hey… well I bet the evil internets and Facebook are still responsible for that. It couldn’t possibly be as simple as Simon Hallam being a complete and utter moron now could it.

Meanwhile the planking death/injury craze looks set to continue with reports coming in this morning of three men caught Planking on top of a moving car.

A police spokeswoman told AAP the threesome had been issued with on the spot infringement notices.

The female driver, 20, will face court on June 15, for a dangerous operation of a motor vehicle charge.


Personally I welcome this sort of behaviour. I obviously don’t condone or encourage it, but I find it hard to fault idiots doing the world a favour and eliminating themselves from the gene pool.

I mean cmon, if you need someone to tell you that lying on a balcony railing of a seventh story apartment whilst drunk is a bad idea, or that car surfing off the back of a Commodore is not so smart or lying face down on top of a car with three mates will probably get you killed – it’s probably only a matter of time before you wiped yourself out anyway.

I hope this spate of Planking craziness continues and that there are many more ‘tragedies’ to come. We all need a bit of cheering up every now and then and these morons aren’t going to be missed anytime soon.

Thankfully if the last week is anything to go by, we won’t be running out of them anytime soon. Yay!

Days later Bell found himself at the Royal Darwin Hospital after being stabbed in the arm and leg.

Bell was stabbed by a student. The student had gone for his stomach but could only get a hold of Bell’s arm and leg. Moments earlier the student had also kinghit Bell in the face.

The stabbing occured after ‘heated words’ were exchanged between Bell and the student. Obviously not happy with what was said, the student ‘went back to his desk and pulled the knife‘.

What a knife was doing in the student’s desk is anyone’s guess but thus far officials have been tight lipped about it.

Nightcliff Middle School principal Sarah May refused to talk about the incident and Northern Territory Education Minister Chris Burns ‘would not give details about the 14-year-old’s mental and physical health, nor about his past behaviour or personal background‘ when questioned.

Burns wasn’t entirely tight lipped about the incident however. Playing the assault down, he labelled it an ‘isolated incident‘ and laid out a government backed guarantee that public schools in the Northern Territory were safe.

So what changed in the 24 hours after the stabbing to prompt such a response from the government?

Absolutely nothing.

The guarantee from the NT government that staff and students in their public schools are safe appears to be backed up by nothing more than the Education Minister’s own words.

Violence in our schools is completely unacceptable, even the possession of a knife is not on in our schools.

We will ensure the safety of our students and staff.


Violence is unacceptable? Great. Possession of knives ‘not on’? Fantastic.

But it’s already happened, and there’s absolutely nothing in place to stop it happening again.

As far as deterrent goes, the student was immediately suspended while the police are investigating.

From the sounds of it though, no further police action appears to be imminent. Instead, ‘the chief executive of the education department will decide whether the student will be removed from mainstream schooling and placed in an alternative learning centre‘.

Alternative learning centre? Don’t you mean jail?

This is a kid who has previously ”smashed windows and thrown chairs around the room before‘ and ‘received support for behavioural problems in the past‘.

Yeah, because clearly that support has been adequate and effective.

Despite the stabbing however, NT Education Minister Chris Burns insists that ‘trouble makers were dealt with appropriately‘.

Dunno about you, but if I was in the NT public school system I’d be feeling anything but safe, especially when NT education union boss Matthew Crannitch is claiming there’s been ‘an increase in behavioural problems across Northern Territory schools‘.

Feeling secure yet?

In the NT at least, stabbing a teacher results in no criminal charges and the education department deciding whether or not you need to be put into a special school or not. Y’know, because it’s not like it’s a no-brainer or anything.

But what about other states?

Over in NSW the now famous ‘Zangief kid’ incident between Casey Heynes and Ritchard Gale made headlines over the past week.

In a nutshell, skinny younger kid Gale was taunting and punching fat overweight Heynes in the head. With his back against a wall Heynes lost it, picked up the lightweight Gale and bodyslammed him into concrete.

The video footage was captured by Gale’s mates and uploaded to Youtube where it went viral.

Subsequently both boys were removed from school and then two local rival tv networks picked up both their stories for a reported $40,000 each.

Forget ‘appropriate channels‘ and suitably disciplinary action, over in Sydney we reward school yard violence with cold hard cash.

Is it any wonder violence in Australian schools feels like it’s been on the rise for years now?

So what exactly are the government going to do about this problem? Obviously counselling and trying to be best mates with bullies and disruptive students is failing miserable, so what alternatives are the Australian government going to come up with?

…

…hello?

Oh that’s right, you’re not going to hear any new ideas or strategies announced because the government already has its hands full policing toddlers drawing rainbows on our footpaths.

• Council tells cafe to stop giving kids chalk
• Drawings included rainbows and stick figures
• Children cried when chalk taken away


Students are bodyslamming eachother into the ground and stabbing teachers and our government is worried about freaking rainbow drawings?!

Really guys?

Take away toddler’s chalk and make them cry, put them through years of school letting them run wild with little no disciplinary action (but make sure you offer them loads of counselling so they can talk about their feelings), meanwhile completely ignore the problem by offering up paper thin guarantees and at the end of the day… where does that get us?

Four boys, aged just 11,12,13 and 14 years-old, have been charged with a string of sex offences against women over a two-day period this month.

They include an alleged attack on a woman at the Murdoch train station, an attack on a 16-year-old girl at a fast food store in Bull Creek; an attack on a 42-year-old woman at a store at the Bull Creek Shopping Centre; an attack on a 16-year-old girl at the bus port at the Cockburn train station and an attack on a 67-year-old woman on Hefron Street in Rockingham.


11, 12, 13 and 14 years old? Why the flying fuck aren’t these kids in school?!

The public school system in this country is stuffed. Give it another decade and I’m almost certain Australia is going to be staring down the barrel of our very own Columbine.

But yeah, so long as the government keeps policing our footpaths, we’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about – our guarantee even says so!

They’re arming themselves with knives in Queensland, brawling over racist Facebook taunts in west Sydney, writing abusive graffitti and making threats over the internet and SMS in northwest Sydney and stabbing the shit out of eachother (west Sydney, Geelong and Brisbane).

Sometimes the parents are no better either, take for example a brawl that occured amongst family members causing a school to go into lockdown. This happened shortly after a student fight involving three teenage girls.

And that’s only within the last six months.

In South Australia alone, 1880 students were suspended in 2009 for ‘making threats or acting violently‘.

The government it seems has lost all control and in Victoria at least has gone into damage control, trying to cover up and supress the full extent of incidents occurring;

A request was made (by the Herald Sun) to WorkSafe Victoria for improvement notices sent to schools over alleged workplace bullying in the past year.

Five notices were released but the names of schools were deleted, despite the full information being released under a similar FoI request last year.

The Herald Sun also sent a request to the Education Department seeking case studies of students bullied in schools over the past two years.

The department said there were 11 incidents on its database but refused to release the reports, even though the Herald Sun did not ask for people’s names or schools.


The picture painted is an out of control school system with a government scrambling to cope. Teacher’s are left helpless and increasingly the playground appears to be more of a battlefield.

The end result?

An overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of resources are directed at playground warriors and meanwhile students who actually need help, slip through the cracks and are ultimately failed by the system.

Take for example the case of a sixteen year old autistic child who ‘was accepted into Year 7‘, despite having the ‘literacy of a six-year-old‘.

How this happened I have no idea but I can imagine it had something to do with being understaffed and under resourced. When you’re worried about parents rocking up to beat the shit out of you or students stabbing you in the face, whether or not an autistic kid can read or write is hardly a priority.

With six years old being the usual age of grade one students in primary school, how he got accepted into year 7 is beyond me.

Oh and it gets better.

He’s now suing taxpayers ‘after allegedly being left illiterate and innumerate despite being taught at a state-run school‘.

Lawyers for the student reportedly told the Federal Court that their client’s future was “questionable” and “seriously disadvantaged” after he “missed out on the requirements of an education” at his school in Melbourne.


In this particular case, evidence of just how messed up Australia’s public education system is wonderfully illustrated;

the boy suffers from a severe language disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and a general learning disorder.


Wonderful!

Yet despite all of this, the public school system, who were no doubt directing all their resources into referring Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts between students,  still felt it acceptable to admit him into a class five years above his literacy level.

Why the bloody hell wasn’t he placed into a special school and placed in a more academically appropriate class?!

the court also heard he is too intelligent to attend a special needs school.


Too intelligent?!

Oh.

My.

God.

The kid has the literacy level of a retarded caterpillar and more learning disabilities than anyone on the planet and you’re telling me he’s too bloody intelligent for a special school?!

Seriously…?

The real kick in the nuts, and evidence that bullying has totally engulfed our public schools is delivered in the reasoning for the lawsuit, (which ironically has nothing to do with learning disabilities, autism or being put in a class five years above him);

Lawyers for the student said the state government promises a “world class” education for students, but the boy — who is also suing for future loss of earnings — had been severely bullied at school and left illiterate and innumerate.


Severely bullied.

Students are out of control, the state public school system is absolutely stuffed and the end result is taxpayers like you and me are going to foot the bill.

Buggered if I know what the average income of an autistic person with a zillion learning disabilities is, but it’s a lawsuit that should have never have happened.

Instead of trying to force multi-culturalism on Australia or forcing corporations to hire more women – why the hell isn’t the Australian government forcing reform in our public schools?

Zero tolerance and public naming and shaming are long overdue, whilst clearly the softcock policies in place are delivering little if any results.

Well, apart from big fat compensation payouts and an almost comedic series of indefensible errors.

I remember being distracted by something and falling a ways behind my brother, and then by the time I caught up he had four kids surrounding and picking on him.

They were obviously a few years older then he was but decidedly also a few years younger than I was. I can’t remember exactly what they were saying but it was your usual random kid taunting. That and I remember he copped a few random slaps to the head.

Anyway, when I caught up they took one look at me and drew the assumption I was his older brother.

‘uh.. his brother looks a bit pissed…’

and they left.

My brother, not really having gone through anything serious (we’re talking all of two or three minutes here) was fine so we left it at that and got on with our day.

Somehow I can’t help but think that had that happened today, the fact that I was older wouldn’t have mattered. Not only that, but there’d probably be a good chance one of them would be armed too.

If things escalated no doubt we’d both have caught the short end of the stick.

Fast forward to today and things have escalated quite a bit. These days kids don’t just squabble, bully eachother over Facebook or circulate nasty SMS’s amongst circles of friends…

…apparently they’re now hanging each other too.

Last December at Para Hills Highschool in Adelaide, South Australia, a thirteen year old boy was hung from a pole via a velcro strap.

And when I say hung, I don’t mean suspended, I literally mean hung hung, like the death penalty. Not only did this happen on two seperate occasions but the mother of the boy wasn’t notified. She only found out presumably when her son came home and had no voice for two weeks.

With students being openly hung at the school, how did Para Hills High respond?

They simply suspended the three students responsible. After their suspension period, it was as if nothing had every happened.

What the hell kind of bizarro world is this where students are running around hanging each other and receiving absolutely no form of punishment?

Contrary to education departments all around the world, suspension means nothing if you’re a student. Let’s face it, if you’ve got the balls to hang a fellow student you’re not really going to give a shit about being suspended are you.

And why on Earth haven’t the police been involved? It’s not like they had a punch on, stole the kids lunch money or called him names.. they strung him up and hung him!

Assault, intent to kill, intent to cause grievous body harm, being freakishly lucky he didn’t die?! Take your pick!

Amazingly though, after being informed of the matter Education Minister Jay Weatherhill stated

From the material before me, the school clearly took the incident very seriously.


Sorry what? Calling in the police and having the three students locked away for a couple of years is ‘taking it seriously‘. Suspending them? Well you might as well just go ahead and encourage them.

Meanwhile Weatherhill claims he has ‘zero tolerance‘ against bullying.

The school and government’s horrendously underwhelming response to the incident aside though, as a parent of one of the three kids responsible, how the fuck do your raise your kids to think it’s ok to go around hanging people?!

Seriously, what the hell kind of upbringing do you need to receive to think that it’s ok to hang people at age thirteen?!

This is the kind of crap I’d expect from war torn fleeing refugees, but school kids? Seriously, has parenting become that atrocious in Australia?!

Honestly, the entire raising children system in this country seems utterly broken.

During the day you’ve got schoolkids hanging each other at school. And if they’re not at school, they’re taunting tafe students.

Sixteen year old tafe student then cracks the shits and the next thing you know he’s on school grounds armed with a knife wanting to bash students for saying something about a girl.

Then at night time you’ve got underage kids running riot with spray cans and alcohol. The police’s response?

Call the parents.

Y’know… because it’s abundantly clear the parents give a shit if they’ve let their kids run riot in the first place.

To be fair though it’s hard to actually blame the police, I mean what else are they supposed to do? In the case of the Tafe student caught armed and wanting to punch on with high school students during the middle of the day, he was simply charged with possession of a controlled weapon.

This kid had the knife in his hand and was punching on with students, told police he carries the knife around for ‘protection’ because at age 16 he’s got ‘enemies in town that are after him‘… yet ‘posession’ of the knife is the best they can get him on?!

No doubt at his court hearing we’ll hear about his trashy upbringing and how hard done by he is. One week, two weeks community service? That sounds about right.

So just to recap, we’ve got kids running around hanging each other, schools trying to cover it up by not telling anyone, police not being called in because when they are they can’t do anything except call the parents. The same parents who are responsible for the actions of their children to begin with.

And, if the police do actually charge someone with something, they front up court and get off because of their upbringing at the hands of their neglectful parents. Once off the cycle begins again and wash, rinse and repeat.

God help us when these kids have kids of their own.

Well, unless you’re a Victorian judge.

Apparently calling someone an ‘Indian dog‘ and telling them to ‘shut up you Indian motherfucker, shut up‘, whilst you brutally beat them unconscious, is insufficient enough information to ascertain whether or not you dislike Indians.

…maybe the attacker just really likes dogs?

Durign the height of ‘Delhibelly’, otherwise known as Melbourne’s western suburbs war against Indian students, Shayne Comensoli  and a mate decided to set upon Lucky Singh whilst he used a phonebooth in Sunshine.

During the attack, as quoted above, multiple references to Lucky Singh’s race were made. After receiving 15-20 blows to the head and face Singh was knocked out and then Comensoli and mate decided to rob him too.

Now to me this is a pretty open and shut case. 2 mates go looking for easy target, see Indian in phone booth and set upon him. If it wasn’t for the comments made by Comensoli that specifically single out Singh’s race, then I too could write it off as just another day in the life of Melbourne’s western suburbs.

But the comments were made and they do single out Singh’s race. This attack happened at a time when Indians were being singled out for attack in Melbourne’s west by gangs of crazies and it’s a no-brainer to see that this attack was part of it.

In his defense, Comensoli played the ‘I hate gay people, but I’m not homophobic… I have lots of gay friends!’ card. He stated that he

felt ashamed about his racist comments because he played cricket with a number of men from Sri Lanka and India.


Yes the comments were obviously racist but apparently not the attack. Go figure.

For his effort in inflicting severe swelling and bruising, fracturing Singh’s cheekbone and nose requiring reconstructive surgery and leaving him suffering from ‘nightmares‘ and being ‘afraid to go out at night or use public transport‘, Comensoli was sentenced to be detained in a youth justice centre for three years.

Despite the judge’s order though, anyone sentenced to be detained in a youth justice centre is eligible to be released from the day of their sentencing. So naturally expect to see Comensoli out and about in a few months if that.

Oh and just to further stretch the eligiblity of being classified as a ‘youth‘, Comensoli is twenty years old.

So just to recap, random western suburbs guy goes and bashes the crap out of an Indian man, makes several racist comments during the attack, is spared being found guilty of a hate crime and at twenty years of age is sentenced to a youth justice centre, from which he can be released on any day from being sent there.

Marvellous.

So what exactly do you have to do to be convicted of a race hate crime in Australia?

All went well and the trade was a roaring success with what was originally reported as being 100 male customers now ballooning out to over 200 men. With the money rolling in and the relatively small customer base to be found in Tasmania (or whoppingly large proportionally) of men wanting to sleep with a twelve year old, eventually someone squealed and the police shut the operation down.

For their part in the horrendous act of prostituting out a twelve year old, Gary Devine and Angela’s mother were both sentenced to 10 years jail.

Job well done, case closed.

Well, almost. What about the two hundred Tasmanian men who slept with Angela? Surely they can’t be that hard to track down?

Apparently so. Due to a combination of not wanting to put now thirteen year old Angela on the stand to recite her sexual experiences and the fact that ‘I thought she was 18′ is somehow a valid defense against child prostitution in Australia, the 200 closet Tasmanian pedophiles get to walk free.

My thoughts were that we need to take a long hard look at the law if ‘I thought she was 18′ is a valid defense and as for Angela’s welfare… well despite being drug addicted and part of the group that came up with the plan to whore her out – fair enough she’s only twelve (now thirteen), if she doesn’t want to go through it all again then I don’t blame her.

Maybe with her parent and Devine removed she’s come to her senses and decided to move on with her life.

…that’d be a reasonable assumption to make, except for the part where Angela is now preparing a case against the state government (the taxpayer) for compensation.

Oh, and she wants you to fund her legal case too.

Angela was a ward of the state and despite living at home with her mother and primarily being under her care. Somehow that means that the government and by proxy, we the tax payer, were responsible for her welfare. More then that, we’re actually her legal guardians.

First and foremost what kind of stupid system is this? If you’re a ward of the state what the hell are you doing being drug addicted and living with your drug addicted mother? How the hell are we supposed to be held accountable if this is how wards of the state are allowed to live?!

Secondly, despite no doubt being under the influence of drugs Angela was privvy and a part of the decision making process to sell herself into prostitution. Now, I’m not going to suggest a twelve year old perhaps realises the full gravity of the situation in selling herself openly but if she’s mature enough to consider legal action against the government, there’s probably a good chance she understood what was going on.

Even more so that she probably wasn’t an innocent virgin either when all this came about. I’m not implying that non-virgins aren’t innocent but that Angela probably had a good grasp of sex and what it involved – let alone prostitution and the idea of sex for money.

How on Earth then is the government responsible for the welfare of this child?

I don’t really know what it takes to become a ward of the state but if you can do so and still live at home with your druggie mother and her boyfriend and be addicted to drugs yourself – something’s broken.

Then there’s the issue of Angela reliving her experiences. Obviously someone’s talked to her about it and when the issue came up the police were were ‘reluctant to put the girl through the ordeal of having to give evidence at multiple trials‘.

Yet to mount a case against the state government, Angela is going to have to ‘provide evidence she has suffered at the hands of their neglect‘. This is obviously going to cover what exactly happened to her under the care of her mother and will include the whole prostitution ordeal.

Unfortunately to launch such a case Angela is looking at around $10,000 to come up with the various reports and what not. Now instead of partnering up with lawyers who think her’s is a strong case and funding her themselves, she’s gone with some guy Roland Browne.

Browne yesterday placed an ad in a newspaper calling on public donations to help fund the case. Angela and Browne want the public to fund the case in order for them to then go ahead and sue the government, which inevitably will hit the taxpayer in the pocket.

Despite not willing to put the funds up himself (really, what’s ten grand to a lawyer?), Browne claims ‘we’re of the view that she has a good case against the Government‘.

Really? But not ten grand sure enough to start a case that you just know is going to kick off with Angela demanding millions…?

Something doesn’t add up here.

If this case goes ahead and Angela wins (and I have no doubt she will win given the circumstances) then this entire ward of the state system needs to be scrapped.

As a taxpayer I find it utterly ridiculous that the government can be the legal guardian of someone, yet they still live at home as a drug addict with their drug addicted parents.

If the government is the guardian and we’re going to start dishing out compensation claims for neglect then it’s clearly time to yank out all wards of the state and place them into suitable foster or state run care.

Families be damned, why should we the taxpayer be left to foot the bill of people’s utterly messed up lives? Clearly Angela’s mother was unfit to be a parent and ten minutes with a psychologist should have established that.

And as for Angela, be angry at Devine and your mum. They’re the ones that actually allowed all this to happen, and all of the public money in the world isn’t going to change that.

This ‘condition’ probably isn’t helped by the fact that I’ve got the aircon on whenever I’m home (I did try to resist Taiwan’s summer for as long as I could but eventually it overcame me).

When I woke up this morning things were no different. I got up, went to the toilet and plonked myself infront of the laptop to check the news/emails/make sure the world hadn’t ended etc.

As I checked the daily news, within minutes I was chuckling to myself and then gagging in pain. Evidently my throat isn’t prepared for laughter first thing in the morning…

…on the plus side though it’s not every day that you get two hilariously delicious stories of stupidity to start your day off.

Slingshots are always going t0 be something that fascinates most children. With a few cheap components (usually a rubber band and a stick) you’re all of a sudden able to catapult projectiles at great speeds.

Seriously what kid isn’t excited by that prospect?

Not satisfied with a standard slingshot, two kids from Minnesota decided to take the slingshot concept to the next level. Armed with surgical tape and a bum bag (slightly larger then a coin purse), the duo set about creating a giant slingshot between two poles down at a local park.

Starting off small, the pair began launching baseballs and small rocks. Not satisfied with following convention either, instead of firing their projectiles horizontally these kids were shooting things up into the air.

After graduating from small projectiles, the kids then moved onto bigger and better things and wound up launching a 2.7kg rock into orbit. Upon re-entry however the rock landed on one of the kids chests and crushed him.

Brilliant. Seriously, you can’t write comedy like that.

What amuses me most is that the pair were firing things up into the air, so you’d think ‘run!’ would have at some point entered the thoughtstream of our creative cast.

Apparently not.

A 2.7kg rock is approximately the same weight as a bag of oranges. Now I’m not a physicist but surely launching that into the air to a height high enough to crush something upon landing means you’d have more then enough time to get out of the way?

I can just picture the two kids launching the rock and staring up at the sky watching it.

‘Haha that’s so cool. Hey we should probably get out of the way it’s coming back straight fo-KLUNK!’

Either that or they lost interest so fast and started to look for another larger projectile to launch that the rock completely caught them by surprise upon landing.

I can’t decide which scenario is more amusing.

The only way this story could be any better is if they were filming it for YouTube and it was leaked by the police… though I guess that’d be having my cake and eating it too.

Next up we venture into the teenager years. Tying things to vehicles, whether they be go karts, rollerbladers, shopping trolleys, dumpsters, other cars, bicycles etc., is always going to be enticing to a teenager.

What with the exhilarating feeling of speed as you soar through the air without the safety confines of a car body protecting you, ah… I can almost feel the impending disaster run through my hair just thinking about it.

Such disaster struck one California teen as he rode a skateboard tied to the back of a car. Evidently he wasn’t wearing any protective gear and when his skateboard hit the back wheel of the vehicle towing him, he hit his head and died.

‘Hey guys, check this ou-’

‘…’

‘so we should probably pull over now hey’.

Apart from the hilarity of attempting something like this without protective gear, just how the hell do you plan on stopping when the car towing you brakes?

Unless skateboarding technology has come a long way in the last few years, as far as I knew skateboards weren’t too effective on the braking side of things.

What could have been any other day has now kicked off to a great start, thanks solely to the actions of two very special kids. The amusement of their antics aside, I guess what further does it for me is the confirmation that no matter how much we attempt to cotton wool the current generation, the end result of shitty parenting and stupidity always manages to prevail. Not only that but it somehow manages to also be consistently funny.

There’s writers in Hollywood whose sole job is to be funny and even sometimes they can’t deliver. Yet here’s mother nature not even trying and still delivering the funny.

Sore throats aside from early morning laughter, I’d lastly like to thank the families involved. Whilst I’m sure they were great kids it takes a special combination of stupid genes, lacklustre parenting and inspiration to pull comedy like this off.

If only every day started off this good…

In all honesty I don’t really see how things could get much worse.

It started off with the gradual curtailing of parental responsibility via means of discipline. All of a sudden it became taboo to discipline your child beyond any passive means. And even then when doing so if you didn’t cave in and give them what they wanted anyway, you were still a bad parent.

In short, anything short of letting your kids run riot and turn into little nightmares was seen as child abuse.

Over the years this method of thinking has slowly filtered it’s way up into the legal system. With parents unable to discipline their kids, kids increasingly got caught up in crime and now the line of thinking is that rehabilitation and the softly softly approach is best.

After all, kids aren’t capable of murder, violence and serious crime… a few months of counselling and they’ll be model citizens right?

Wrong. It’s utter horse shit to believe so and not only are an increasing number of Australians finally asking what went wrong, but increasingly they’re starting to realise what kids worked out long ago.

There simply is no punishment for youth crime.

After being released on bail following charges on ‘a stabbing, a robbery and assault‘, a now eighteen year old youth held up a fifteen year old on a tram and then proceeded to slit his throat.

When caught by police the youth told them

I felt like stabbing someone in the throat. I wanted to … kill him.”He’s lucky I didn’t drag him off the tram and cut his throat and stab him in the eye 50 times.

“I wanted to be a murderer … and I wanted to eat his heart. I wanted to cut off his limbs and burn him alive.”


Mind you this is the police he was talking to, it’s not like it’s alleged gossip. This moron is actually on police record saying these things during an interview.

Why?

“My lawyer is gonna get me off all this s— anyway, so I’m gonna laugh at youse when youse are at my court case.”


Sadly he’s probably right.

I mean if a stabbing, robbery and assault isn’t enough to get you put away for a very long time… what’s a little slit of someones throat?

The real kick in the nuts for society is that complete playing of the legal system by criminals like this. Shortly after being granted bail, the youth published the following on Facebook;

(I) had a stabbing and a robbery and assault pending. And I still got bailed. The dumb slut of a judge ha ha ha.


Kids aren’t stupid and the ones getting caught up in crime have been taking all of us for a ride for far too long. And it’s not like this is an isolated case either.

If we weren’t catching the perpetrators then it’d be a different story,  but we’ve hit this era where criminals don’t really care if they’re caught or not.

If you catch someone accused of committing a serious crime and they admit to it there should be no excuse as to why they are granted bail. Telling police that you actually wanted to kill someone isn’t just a state of mind that develops overnight.

Had someone with the slightest clue sat down and talked to this guy before he was previously granted bail I find it hard to believe none of this would have come out.

Really this should be a lot more out in the open. Traditionally crime when it gets out of control does surface as a primary election issue so why hasn’t it burst through this time?

I find it hard to believe that any Australian can read about this particular crime and not feel a sense of Australia’s criminals being woefully reprimanded for their crimes.

I for one would love to see the political parties tackle crime instead of pretending it isn’t out of control. Hell I’d even consider voting Labor and their stupid internet filter in if they announced an accountability policy for the judges who make these bullshit decisions. I mean that might be a bit too much to ask but at this stage I’d be willing to take anything, even the slightest hint that the government was acknowledging people are sick of Australia’s criminals running around like they own the place.

To hell with rehabilitation, it was  a nice feelgood experiment while it lasted but it’s long overdue that we get back to actual justice.

Armed with nothing more then a mobile phone these kids like to hang out in groups of five or so down at your local suburban mall.

Their modus operandi?

Stand around all day and and hope that one pubic hair is enough to convince anyone that walks by not to mess with you. Assuming anyone in the world would have a reason to mess with you, you’d totally… well you and your mates would probably give it a fair crack but lets face it, eleven year olds are eleven year olds; you’d probably come off worse.

Enter Jessi Slaughter, poster child for rubbish parenting and why the ‘protecting our children’ argument falls flat on its face when it comes to internet filtering.

So the story goes Jessi got up one night around midnight and published a rant on Youtube that is terribly hard to watch.


Word eventually made it to 4chan, home of some of the most darkly creative minds on the internet and before Jessi Slaughter knew it, her life was in pieces…

…and rightly so.

I mean for starters you’re eleven. Nobody gives a shit about your haters and talking about glocks, brain slushies, sucking penis and AIDS is just laughable. Who else, with the exception of other brain dead eleven year olds are going to even shoe the slightest resemblance of caring.

In kind 4chan ran with the video and gave Jessi Slaughter hell. Reports of death threats, fake pizza deliveries and the publishing of Slaughter’s personal details all hit the net shortly after the original rant was published.

One guy even called up the Slaughter household pretending to be a police officer.


Then, despite clearly not giving two shits about what their eleven year old daughter gets up to on the internet, Slaughter’s parents decided to enter the fray.

Although not one to routinely finding amusement in seeing children cry, this video had me beaming from ear to ear. If for nothing else then it proved the age old saying that behind every self obsessed posing terry tough cunt child there’s a woefully neglectful parent.



You dun goofed up – Watch more Funny Videos


As one watches Slaughter’s dad vent his technologically incompetent spleen all over the internet, I couldn’t help but wonder if this could have all been avoided had the Slaughter’s not given their eleven year old daughter rampant access to the internet.

When you’re eleven school and social networking is one thing, publishing expletive riddled Youtube rant videos at midnight is another. Presumably in the next room doing crack cocaine or god knows what, Slaughter’s parents seem woefully ignorant of their daughters online persona.

No it’s not Jessie’s fault for contributing to the internet garbagesphere, nor her parents fault for letting their daughter run riot online… this one’s apparently the fault of those non-existent nasty internet people who forced her to upload the initial video.

An interesting question to pose when presented with a situation like this is whether or not an internet filter might have prevented it. I mean we’ve got parents blowing their stack and an eleven year old in tears, surely this is what Conroy is going on about when he pulls out the ‘let’s protect our children’ routine.

Considering Youtube won’t be filtered under the Labor filter, the answer to whether or not an internet filter could have prevented this is a resounding no.

Idiot kids will be idiot kids with or without an internet filter and those with the technological means will still be able to track them down. Slaughter had active Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts which no doubt contributed to her details being so readily circulated.

There’s just nothing you can do to legislate against naive stupidity.

Despite being American, it’s almost guaranteed Australia has it’s own share of retarded kids publishing hard arse videos on Youtube and filtering the internet is going to squat.

Sure Labor’s internet filter isn’t a ‘silver bullet’ but let’s be realistic here, in the face of adolescent stupidity, the internet filter isn’t even a paper missile. As social networking grows and openly encourages people to publish anything and everything about themselves online, Australia and other countries are inevitably going to see an increase in morons taking to the internet and having it horribly backfire on them.

With the internet filter currently shelved until after the election, let’s hope this message gets across sooner rather then later.

If I was to become a father in the near future though I’d like to think I’d exhibit a certain degree of responsibility towards my children. For example, what they eat, who they play with, the environment they live in and who’s watching them.

Take note of that last one. For some parents apparently who looks after your children doesn’t matter. If you’re available to babysit, come on down.

Well it turns out who babysits your children is more important then some parents would like to think. This is a lesson one mother from Campsie, in Sydney’s southwest unfortunately learnt the hard way.

Jayant Kumar Singh was being held in a mental health facility until late 2006. For whatever reason Singh was then released and a short time later found himself babysitting three young children. One of which was a baby.

Despite having ‘never shown any aggression towards them and had a good relationship with the baby‘ Singh then decided to try some unconventional disciplinary methods and proceeded to ‘hit (the) baby with a crutch before almost cutting her head off with a meat cleaver‘.

Singh did this to the baby girl infront of her two other siblings.

A post-mortem report revealed the baby had brain injuries and extensive fractures to her skull, and her neck had been cut deeply with “near decapitation.


The sentence for committing such an act?

Not guilty via means of mental illness.

Not a fan of the ‘mental illness defence’ normally this kind of sentence would leave a bitter taste in my mouth. In this particular case however Singh appears to actually have had a prior history of mental illness. The article doesn’t specify what he suffered from but whatever it was it was severe enough for him to be committed to a loony bin.

How or under what circumstances Singh was released though remains a mystery. Either the process by which mentally ill people are assessed for released massively failed, or Singh convinced his captors he was healthy enough to rejoin society when he wasn’t, in which case the process by which mentally ill people are assessed for release still massively failed.

What’s worrying is that this very process is again being used to hold Singh until he is deemed fit for release again. Although Justice Robert Shadbolt Hulme found Singh not guilty, he did sentence him to ‘to be detained in a prison hospital at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail “until released by due process of the law”.‘

This very due process which seems to have failed before just needs to eventually fail again and Jayant Singh gets to walk the streets a free man without any prior conviction.

It’d be like the murder of the baby girl never happened.

I’ve long since held the view that by all means sentence mentally ill people to mental institutions or whatever but sentence them punishment wise in the same manner a non-mentally ill person would be sentenced.

By not recording a conviction against Singh the legal system isn’t doing society any favours. Sure a custodial sentence under these circumstances might be for a very long time but eventually if and when Singh is released is it in any way fair he can carry on his life like the murder never happened?

Worse still perhaps one day engage in employment around children whose parents are completely oblivious to Singh’s past?

The cynic in me can’t help but wonder if Singh’s release could possibly have been due to over crowding at the facility he was being held at. Given he appears to have no prior history of violence against children I’m left pondering the thought if Singh’s actions might have been a physical plea to be let back into the ‘system’.

It’s no secret mental health is pretty underfunded in Australia.

Whatever the reason though sadly a mother has had to learn the hard way that who babysits your children matters. Whether the mother knew of Singh’s mental problems or not remains unclear.

If she didn’t know then if I was her I’d seriously be considering legal action against the instituion that certified Singh fit for release.

If she did know well let that be a lesson to all the other lazy parents out there. Pay attention to who’s around your kids.

It should go without saying but letting mentally ill people watch your kids probably isn’t the smartest idea in the world. One minute they’re sitting in the corner drooling like an invalid and the next they’re trying to hack off your baby girls head with a meat cleaver.

For some Tasmanians this is a big draw card. A hearkening back to simpler times, living in an natural pristine environment and escaping the bustle of Australia’s main cities.

For others it’s just a convenient excuse to hop into bed with 12 year old girls.

I knew when I saw this particular news story all I was going to be left with was the bitter taste of chlamydia in my mouth. Yet I couldn’t stop reading…

A Tasmanian man has admitted prostituting a 12-year-old girl at his home and sharing the proceeds with the girl’s mother.

The Mercury reports the man, 51, acted as the girl’s pimp last year while she had sex with more than 100 men at Glenorchy.


…yeah, so hows that chlamydia tasting?

The man, Gary John Devine put an ad in a local newspaper advertising ‘Angela‘ who was ‘new in town‘. Rates were $100 for the half hour and $50 more if you wanted to ride bareback.

So what drives a 12 year old girl into prostitution?

Well mid last year ‘Angela’s’ mother complained to her boyfriend close male friend Devine that she had no money. Now instead of Angela’s mother getting a job, claiming to be 1/16th Aboriginal or simply just whoring herself out, Devine, Angela’s mother and Angela herself sat down for a chat and came to the conclusion it was in their best interests that Angela become a prostitute.

When I was twelve my parents wouldn’t even let me decide on what hairstyle I was getting… I can only imagine what it’s like having a conversation with your mother about becoming a prostitute.

‘So son, we’ve got no money… it’s time for you to grow up and become a prostitute.’

‘…I’m sticking my pee pee into the what now?’

Not to be stereotypical or anything but at the root of the prostitution ring was drugs. Presumably this is why Angela’s mother had no money in the first place. Both Angela and her mother’s boyfriend close male friend Devine were also addicted to drugs too. Infact from the sounds of it most of the proceeds of the business wound up funding the trio’s drug habit.

Talk about your messed up childhoods…

‘so sweetheart what was your childhood like?’

‘well by the age of twelve I’d stretched out my vagina to the size of nineteen football fields, done hard drugs and worked as a prostitute. Now what color did you want for the wedding cake again?’

‘…’

‘…honey?’

The kind of worrying thing (well one of many worrying things really), is that ‘Angela’ was quite the success. Initially starting off in a hotel room she quickly graduated to turning tricks at Devine’s unit.

The business ran from Thursday to Sunday and on average Angela saw 100 men a week. The business started in July and it wasn’t until November that police caught up with them. Between July and November there’s 18 weekends which comes in at a staggering 1,800 men.

And I don’t mean staggering as in ‘holy crap that’s a large number’, I mean staggering as in how the hell do you put a 12 year old’s vagina through that? I’m also not being metaphorical… that’s literally got to be a staggering experience for her.

Even more worrying is the fact that there’s so many men in Tasmania willing to shack up with a twelve year old for money. The advertisement sold Angela off as an eighteen year old but cmon, when was the last time you saw an eighteen year old who looked twelve?

…and this is coming from a guy who lives in Taiwan where it seems puberty has skipped half the female population.

I’m not saying there weren’t any repeat customers in the  1800 men who slept with twelve year old Angela but really, not one person thought to themselves ‘you know what, there’s no grass on this pitch. Something isn’t quite right here’.

While at this stage it’s unknown just who the clientel were at least one high profile customer has been named and shamed. Tasmanian independant MP Terry Martin is currently facing court over child pornography allegations;

It is alleged that on or about September 10, the 51-year-old politician took photographs of a naked 12-year-old girl performing a sex act.


Martin is due in court next month.

Underage prostitutes, drug addicted pimps, mothers who consent and pedophile politicians;

Seriously Tasmania, what the hell?

After speeding past a police patrol the police engaged in a high speed pursuit but called it off after Williams ran a red light. A few seconds later Williams ran another red light and collided into a family of three.

Both Williams and the entire family died at the scene.

The real tragedy?

Williams had multiple prior records and just ten months ago put himself into a coma after crashing another car he’d stolen. At the time of both crashes Williams was also an unlicensed driver.

Sadly the only tragedy here is the abysmal ineffectiveness of Australia’s court system who now unquestionably have blood on their hands.

Police are already in a difficult position when it comes to engaging in pursuit. On one hand there’s the danger factor to the general public and themselves but then there’s also the need for some kind of deterrent. If moron drivers know that by hitting the accelerator police will mandatory give up chase what do you think they’re going to do?

Currently Sky Webbe is in an induced coma, she was in the passenger seat of the stolen car and had been going out with Williams for just two months. Today Webbe’s mother Debbie (pictured right) lashed out at police and placed responsibility of the accident squarely on them.

Ms Webb’s mother Debbie this morning conceded Justin was running from police but said she blamed police “totally” for the crash.

“I can see he’s done wrong but it’s a petty little crime,” she told Radio 3AW.

“One stolen car. He didn’t murder anybody at the time, you know, but that’s what it led him to because of the police chase.”

The mother called for legislation to ban police pursuits.

“Innocent people are dying all because of police chases,” she said.


Apart from sounding like your typical bogan trash family Debbie’s logic is bulletproof.

Wait what?

It is currently unknown when the car Williams was driving was stolen therefore just for how long he’d been speeding along before the police engaged in pursuit is also unknown.

If the police weren’t around does anybody really think some moron with his girlfriend speeding along are going to be stopping for red lights anyway?

You’ve just stolen a car, you’re speeding along and you’re unlicensed with a previous criminal record and outstanding charges. Yeah, better stop for those red lights.

As for a petty little crime, let’s not twist the situation post mortem. Justin Williams not only stole a car on Saturday night, he murdered an innocent family too. Murder isn’t exactly a petty crime in my books.

Whether the police were doing their job or not has nothing to do with it. Ten months ago Williams put himself into a coma after crashing another stolen car and the police weren’t pursuing him then. The only constant between two crashes is the idiot behind the wheel and those that support him.

Debbie Webbe included.

Unfortunately the family of the Oppelaar’s (the innocent family Williams’ smashed into), seem to be just as bogan as the Webbes and have also come out blaming the police.

Mr Oppelaar’s cousin, Jason Kelly, said: ”I purely blame police for it. He’s getting chased and that’s what young people do. They get scared and they take off,” he told reporters.

Mr Oppelaar’s sister, Nicki, was also angry. ”My brother is dead now because the police chased this car to the point where he didn’t want to stop.”

Mr Oppelaar’s brother, Chris Mills, said: ”You have to ask who’s responsible … in some part it’s the driver for doing the speeds he was doing, but mostly it comes down to the coppers … what good’s a stolen car?”


Firstly does anyone seriously think Williams was scared? He knew what he was doing, he’d been through the motions before and undoubtedly knew there was a high chance he’d be picked up by police. I sincerely doubt this pillar of society crapped his pants the second he saw a police siren on his tail.

Most likely Williams was enjoying the rush and his idiot of a girlfriend would have been cheering him on.

Secondly, “wanted to stop?” Sure, that makes sense. Williams was flying around speeding his nuts off in a stolen car before he even registered on the police radar, and we’re expected to believe he wanted to stop?

”onest guv, I ‘ad wanted to stop but then I saws those police sirens and shatted myself I did’.

Yeah I’m sure that was exactly what was going through Williams’ mind.

Thirdly it’s not about the stolen car. It’s about sparing the public from morons who steal cars and joyride around in them at high speeds. Williams had already proven he didn’t need a police to get himself into a car crash at high speed ten months earlier.

Unfortunately the coma crash didn’t kill Williams. Darwin gave him a second chance at life but the courts should have revoked his freedom then and there.

Instead, due to a troubled childhood, physical abuse, being down on his luck, missing his favourite tv show or whatever stereotypical bullshit reason his lawyer would have fed the courts, the Australian court system gave Williams the now all too familiar slap on the wrist treatment. Now an innocent family of three are dead.

The good news is that ten months after Williams was released and given permission to ruin more people’s lives, the Australian court system is still as limp dicked as ever. Last November P-plater Joanne Grosse was found slumped over the steering wheel of her car and had a blood alcohol reading of 0.385.

The legal blood alcohol limit for a P-plater is 0.00.

Despite having multiple prior drink driving offences Joanne Grosse was simply fined $600, disqualified from driving for 18 months (like that’ll work) and put on a good behaviour bond.

Three cheers for the Australian court system!

I for one can’t wait to read about who Grosse winds up killing and how invariably the police are to blame.

One of them that sticks out in my mind is the idea of designer babies. Currently a fledgling technology, we’re still obviously a few years from logging into some website and designing what we think is the perfect aesthetically pleasing baby yet.

Meanwhile the technology to choose your babies’ gender is already here and with a five year moratorium prohibiting superficial use of the tech almost up, the IVF sector has already begun to campaign for baby gender selection to be unleashed onto Australian mainstream society.

The worrying news is that it’s been tipped that they’ll get their way.

Currently baby gender selection is illegal in Australia except in cases where the parents have a serious disease that has a high probability of being carried onto a specific gender.

This in my mind is totally acceptable and I fully support the use of gender selection technology in screening for serious genetic diseases.

What I have trouble with is the widespread use of the technology to create ‘perfect’ socially engineered families. Even if we put aside the religious, ethical and humane arguments for a second, baby gender selection has already been proven not to work on a large scale in countries like China.

In China the practice of baby gender selection is illegal but still widely practiced. As a result the Chinese government puts it’s male to female ratio at 118:100 and rising.

In some cities such as Guangdong and Hainan the ratio is at 130:100. It’s been predicted that should current trends continue by 2020 there’s going to be a lot of Chinese males out there unable to find partners.

Anyone want to take a punt on what happens when a country of over a billion people is full of males who can’t get any sex?

Then you’ve got the crazy countries who either due to religious, social, economic or superstitious reasons want male babies and nothing else. Traditionally you’d just throw your female baby off a cliff or into a river, which for most should have been a pretty big deterrent against social gender selection… now you just go see a doctor.

I can’t begin to think of the social problems in 20-30 years time if areas like the middle east and India decide to only pump out male babies.

In the west we tend not to have such a gender prejudice. Parents get put in old people homes and it’s not like we’ve got dowry’s or other religious gender crap to worry about. To be honest I don’t know what’s worse though. A couple opting for social gender engineering on the grounds of superficiality, or doing so because they don’t want to pay a dowry.

I’m one of four boys and it’s no secret that my parents were trying for a girl before giving up after the four of us popped out. Had the technology been available to them I’m not entirely sure they wouldn’t have opted for it.

What doesn’t sit right with me is the knowledge that they might have perhaps chose to just have a boy and a girl. Sure not having a sister has meant that I’m probably a little less equipped to deal with females but at least I know our family was made up of chance. Nobody ‘designed’ it.

I’m not exactly sure why that’s such a big deal to me but it just is. Knowing my parents pre-planned their children down to the very gender we would be just trivialises the whole ‘having children’ thing down to baking a specific type of cake because you felt like banana that day.

I’m lucky in that despite wanting a girl, my parents provided for my brothers and I and accepted us as males. This is obviously a potential problem, yet when addressing it supporters of gender selection seem to have somehow turned it back onto the unborn child. IVF pioneer Gob Kovacs argues that

It might even be in the interests of the child to have their sex selected.

If a couple so badly want a boy or a girl they are prepared to go through IVF and sex selection at great cost and effort rather than getting pregnant naturally, then maybe if they had the child naturally and it was the wrong sex it may not be looked after as well.


What?

Sorry mate but if parents are that superficial that having a baby of an undesirable gender to them means child abuse and neglect, then what the hell are they doing having kids in the first place?!

And what’s this nonsense about ‘the wrong sex’. Since when was it right or wrong to have a male or female baby?

Kovacs continues;

at a cost of between $10,000-$15,000, only those who were extremely determined would go for sex selection.


I think it’s pretty obvious we can replace ‘extremely determined’ with ‘wealthy’. Mind you with the baby bonus up to whatever it is now $10,000 becomes $5000 which is easily in reach of the middle class.

This talk of money however and using it as justification in that most people can’t afford it so it’s ok outlines the thinly veiled argument put forward by the IVF sector. What we’re really looking at here is obscene amounts of money to be made thinly dressed up in mock concern about the welfare of ‘wrong gender’ babies due to neglectful parents.

Only instead of blaming superficial parents we’re now blaming unborn babies. Yes, we need mainstream baby gender selection so that we can help babies avoid being born the wrong gender.

What a crock.

Sure I might be exaggerating the situation in my head but I’ve never felt comfortable going out and buying a box of condoms on my own. Part of the reason is the narcissistic habit that kicks in when I see another guy doing the same, or worse another girl.

If I’m stuck behind someone on the conveyor belt and I see a box of condoms, instinctively I’m looking them up and down and wondering how ugly or hot their partner is.

If the conclusion is they’re really ugly then I feel like they’ve ruined my night before it’s even begun with their ugliness. If the conclusion is their hot then, as stupid as it sounds I get little pangs of jealousy run through me. Even if I’m not single at the time.

I assume I’m not alone in this and thus when I’m standing in line buying a box of condoms I can’t help but think this is what if someone else sees my box this is what they start thinking about too.

I’m well into adulthood (well, physically anyway), and these are the thoughts that run through my head when I think about buying condoms. Recently Swiss condom company Lamprecht AG announced that they plan to market condoms to 12-14 year old boys.

What a great idea, let’s inject a bit of sexual crazy into minds who’s only other social responsibility is deciding whether or not they want the red or the blue McHappy meal toy this week.

Profits aside, I’ve tried to rationalise the marketing of extra small condoms (subtly named the ‘Hotshot’) to young boys. From what I can tell nobody is going to benefit from a product like this…

12-14 year old boys

I’m not saying 12-14 year old boys aren’t doing it but cmon… whilst they might understand that their hoohah goes into her wahoo is anyone really expecting them to grapple concepts beyond that?

Most parents dread the birds and the bees talk and these days leave it to the television, internet or schoolyard to fill in the blanks. Imagine trying to explain sexual disease and pregnancy to a 12 year old.

What’s more, even if by some stroke of luck you’ve got a kid who gets it, do you really think he’s going to be thinking safe sex if he’s about to get some?

Kids at that age get distracted walking from their bedrooms to the dinner table let alone trying to remember to go buy a condom before doing little Sally down at the playground.

Then there’s the stigmata of the name. Adult males have a hard enough time dealing with condom sizes. What kid is going to buy ‘extra small’ condoms?

Parents

Ok so somehow your kid understands sexual diseases and avoiding pregnancy…what next?

You work in a supermarket and Mrs. Johnson whom you’ve known since you were a little kid rocks up with a box of Hotshot extra small condoms. What’s the first thought that pops into your mind?

Either she’s just started an affair with an Asian man or old man Johnson simply ain’t what he used to be.

As husband and wife going in to buy extra small condoms let me tell you now that nobody is going to believe they are for your kid. After years of sexual frustration as a couple you’re just both glad that somebody finally made a condom in just the right size for you.

As a lone father… well that’s a no brainer. It’s bad enough walking through the checkout with the least gay sounding and lack of fancy artwork on the box pack of condoms, let alone a box of Hotshots in extra small.

Not gunna happen.

The rest of us

I’m a guy and I’m pretty sure I’m getting lucky tonight. I open my condom drawer and realise stocks are running low. I need to buy myself some condoms.

No worries I think to myself. I head down to the local supermarket and as I’m reaching for my favourite box, I notice a few small packs off to the side with bright glitzy colors and cartoons on the box.

“What the hell?” I think to myself. I take a closer look at one of the boxes and then realise these are those new Hotshot extra small condoms I’d read about the other day.

“Ah, these are what the kids use when they… uh wait, better no finish that thought”.

Later on that night I’m getting little Oz ready for some fun and as I’m slipping it on that image of Hotshots pops back into my head.

The night is pretty much over at this point. Complete disaster.

Worse still imagine being behind some twelve year old at the supermarket and all of a sudden he slams down a box of condoms on the counter.

“Big night tonight son?”

“uh yeah lol.”

“Well uh, don’t forget to wash that one pubic hair down there…”

I can’t think of anything more awkward. Whatever the opposite of an aphrodisiac is, extra small condoms designed for kids is definitely the penultimate of it.


Whilst I understand the need for sexual education for kids these days I don’t really think retailing condoms for kids is the answer. And if it is, well that’s no excuse to ruin sex for the rest of us.

Even if they put them down with the powdered milk and baby formula or in the toy section there’s still a chance you’ll run into someone buying them.

Hopefully these things stay in Switzerland as an awkward social experiment and don’t make it for sale globally online. I imagine someone buying extra small condoms for kids in bulk over the internet is probably going to raise a few eyebrows at customs.

Living in Taiwan it’s bad enough thinking about buying tiny Asian condoms, I really don’t need to be thinking about children’s sizes too.

The irony of pregnancy aside, some things just don’t need to be associated with kids.

Scenario 1: Jack goes rabbit shooting before school, pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack.

1959 – Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s rifle, goes to his car and gets his rifle & chats with Jack about guns.

2009 – School goes into lock down, Star Force called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his Ute or gun again. Counsellors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.

1959 – Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2009 – Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3: Robbie won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.

1959 – Robbie sent to office and given 6 of the best by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2009 – Robbie given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Robbie has a disability.

Scenario 4: Billy breaks a window in his neighbour’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1959 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.

2009 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario 5: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1959 – Mark gets glass of water from Principal to take aspirin with.

2009 – Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6: Pedro fails high school English.

1959 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2009 – Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist.

AFRE files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro’s English teacher.. English banned from core curriculum.

Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a bullant’s nest.

1959 – Ants die.

2009 – Star Force, Federal Police & Anti-terrorism Squad called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, Feds investigate parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated,

Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario 8: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1959 – In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2009 – Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.


The above is a joke email that most of you should have seen by now having been widely circulated over the last decade.

It seems however that somebody forgot to tell Queensland that it wasn’t a roadmap for state government policy in our schools…

Kids these days are forced by society to grow up fast. From an early age they are bombarded with sexual advertising. Magazines featuring women with giant breasts in string bikinis line the aisles of shops, giant yellow billboards on the drive to school ask them if they are “getting enough sex?” and flick on a television and it won’t take long for something sexually suggestive to come on.

Parents start thinking about their current choices and how they might affect their child’s future career from seemingly earlier and earlier ages each year. Sometimes seemingly before the child is even born.

With so much pressure and media exposure thrust upon them, naturally kids are going to be curious. Internet filtering or not, they now have a world of information at their fingertips to feed this curiosity.

It’s too late to play the blame game we just have to accept that if we want all our freedoms that’s the way it is. What we can focus on however is how react to this new ‘coming of age’ of the younger generation.

A primary school in Queensland has shown us exactly how not to react to this situation.

Education Queensland admitted there was a crisis of confidence at the school on Brisbane’s northern outskirts.

A third of pupils have been taken out of school after a raft of alleged sexual incidents.

There have been 18 recorded cases at the Queensland school since last year with 11 incidents reported to police.


Usually it’s a teacher involved in this type of story but this time it’s students sexually abusing students and amidst a sea of paranoia, blame and bad parenting the auth0rities have been called in.

With both male and female kids running around feeling eachother up how did the school choose to respond?

Education Queensland director-general Julie Grantham acknowledged what was happening at the school was “not normal.”

Staff have since been given extra child protection training, teacher aide time has been increased in the playground, a psychologist was giving specialised support to children and parents were also being addressed by Family Planning Queensland.


Oh dear.

If this response is any indication then it seems Queensland is well on its way to raising a whole new generation of confused sexually repressed adults.

So do we blame the kids, the parents raising the kids or just accept that by turning our kids into mini adults this is what’s going to happen? Of course not, instead we just scape the principal.

Queensland Teachers Union members have also taken a vote of no confidence in the principal, who is under a separate investigation by the department.


Unless the school is sponsored by Club X or something, how exactly is the principal to blame here? This sort of behaviour is picked up at home and then brought to the playground.

Furthermore;

“With the sexual assaults, we have done a separate investigation into the full handling of this and the school has followed all the appropriate behaviours.

“They have followed the checklist in every one of the cases.”


So the school followed protocol as set out for the state government, yet we’re voting no confidence in the principal? How about a vote of no confidence in the stupid government policy in relation to “sexual assaults” in schools he or she was following?

Obviously these problems have massively failed but don’t worry, the government is onto it. They believe it’s spiralled out of control due to unaddressed copy-cat behaviour.

Griffith University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Professor Stephen Smallbone (hehe smalbone) said children could be influenced by their peers’ behaviour.


…really, they had to go and ask a professor whether or not kids copy other kids? Seriously are parents, teachers and the authorities that detached from the kids they are supposed to be raising, protecting and working with?

I remember in my primary school years two incidents that these days would have probably resulted in similar action being taken against the school and ‘sexual predator’ children attending.

The first was in grade one or so from memory. It was a brief incident where one boy realised he could flash his genitals to girls in the playground and chase them around, much to their amusement.

The second was a year or so later when a bit of touchy feely was going on between boys and girls at the school oval during lunchtime.

In both cases teachers spoke to the students after ‘breaking it up’ and explained that their actions were inappropriate.

Life went on, no police were called and there certainly wasn’t any need to tear the school apart on a witch hunt.

I’m certainly not saying we need to encourage orgy house primary schools or not address children’s curiosity when it arises but do we really need to label them as sex offenders and call in the authorities?

God knows how messed up personal relationships are going to be fifty years from now…

Sharon Ward took a Valium and a Panadol and retired to bed. The police weren’t called until 1pm that day.

Shellay Ward spent the final years of her life living in squalor. Neighbours reported the girl never left the house and lived in a boarded up room thick with the stench of urine and piles of feces.

The Wards were known to the Department of Children Service (DOCS) for fourteen years prior to Shellay’s death. Multiple concerns had been raised and DOCS had removed two of Shellay’s siblings two years prior to her death.

Somehow Shellay still slipped through the cracks.

When found, seven year old Shellay’s body weighed just 9kg. She was described as having a mummified appearance with bullants crawling in and out of her mouth. Black vomit oozed from her body into a puddle on her filthy matress.

Despite weighing a healthy 20.5kg back in February 2006, Shellay’s parents have strenously denied she died of starvation. Between the two of them they have blamed everything from drugs, eachother, Shellay’s fear of water and autism in an attempt to deny responsibility for her death.

They even tried to flee once the story broke but were apprehended at a Albion Park train station in Woolongong.

During their trial Blake Ward publicly admitted lying to many statements he’d made as fact under oath. These included blaming his wife for the death of Shellay and telling the court Shellay regularly ate large meals. Sharon also eventually publicly admitted to lying about her daughter’s meals.

Sharon however was not as outspoken as her husband during the trial but rather took the calculated route of blaming drug dependency, admitting to lying to doctors about her drug use and admitting she “didn’t do enough” for Shellay.

She told the court through her lawyer that she would not contest manslaughter for the death of her daughter.

The horrific conditions Shellay lived under and the absolute circus performance that Sharon and Blake Ward have put on for the courts is sickenly disgusting.

It took seven days of deliberation until finally on June 24th the jury passed two guilty verdicts for the couple. Sharon Ward guilty on the charge of murder and Blake Ward guilty of manslaughter.

Upon receiving the news both parties lawyers announced they would be dragging out the mental illness defense before sentencing. Blake’s lawyers asked for a six week adjournment to put together a defense but Sharon’s lawyers had already prepared one earlier.

Presumably Sharon’s lawyers started preparing the defense months ago as they didn’t just have one report on Sharon’s mental state but two – all ready to go.

The mental illness defense was realistically the only card these two dropkicks ever had a hope in playing. Mental illness is notorious for being an effective scapegoat in Australian courts and has the universal effect of reducing severe crimes to mere lollipop sentences.

It was no surprise to then read that on June 25th (the day after they were found guilty) that Sharon Ward’s sentencing had also been postponed until August. It seems her lawyers were going for maximum mental illness leverage. Firstly declare you’re ready to go and then the day after claim your client is too distraught to continue in a vein attempt to show remorse.

How stupid did Sharon’s lawyers think everyone was?

Thankfully justice prevailed today and Sharon Ward was sentenced to life in jail.

Blake Ward was found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years.

With all the rubbish sentences being handed down lately it’s refreshing to see some real justice handed out.

I know it won’t last but at least for now it feels like one set of parents have been held accountable for their actions. Not the government, not society and not their mental issues.

RIP Shellay Ward.