Let me confess immediately that fashion has nothing whatsoever to do with this week’s subject, although I may touch on despair.  It is, apparently, the title of some very learned acedemic tome and sounds even better in the original German.  I think it is perfect but then I have always been a sucker for great headlines.  I intend over the coming months to work it into conversations relentlessly. As usual, I urge you to copy me.

I had intended to start with the old phrase, now clearly long forgotten, that it takes a village to raise a child. To raise, to supervise, to protect.  Whose blood was not chilled by the story of the 13 children in California kept in captivity by their loony parents?  Home schooled by devout Christians – doesn’t that covers  a multitude of sins in a few words?

One of the best reasons for compulsory education is that it gets children out of the home and into public view five days a week.  If a child appears to be starving, beaten, covered with cigarette burns or just missing, in theory someone will notice and, even better, do something about it.  If you choose to keep your children at home in this country you get regular visits from an educational welfare officer.  Someone I know who did this said that the parents always appeared to be on the far end of the crazy spectrum and the children were at least two years behind their peers.

So let’s put a stop to this now.  If you have a child between 5 and 16 ‘the village’ wants a good look at it on a regular basis.  Not rocket science.  Easy.  Sorted.

Even more chilling, much more, were the comments from the family’s neighbours and this is where I start to despair.  One man said that he often came home from his late shift at work to see the children marching around a room in circles in the early hours of the morning.  However, having given it a bit of thought, he decided that there was ‘never anything to suggest that I should call somebody’. Granted, we are talking about a Californian here but really!  Just went indoors did you and thought that looked perfectly normal?

Another caring neighbour saw the children routinely scavenging for food in bins but decided that it ‘didn’t prompt intervention’.  Shame on you.  Shame on all of you in that street.   If you see a thin, frightened child, or a woman with yet another bruise on her face, I trust that everyone I know would get off their arse and do something about it.  Not give an interview to the papers when the bodies are found – ‘They seemed like a nice family.  They kept themselves to themselves’ – but get on the phone now, today and do something about it.  You may be wrong but better that than do nothing.  You being wrong doesn’t matter a row of beans.   If you are a parent of one child, you are a parent of all children and you should start being responsible for them.

Let’s be a village again, wherever we are.  Start now.