It’s unwise to treat victims of tragedy as universal sages
It really is no surprise to learn that Sara Payne favours restrictions to keep online pornography away from children. There cannot, after all, be a sentient adult who would not prefer our babies to spend more time with Peppa Pig than with Swedish Dolls. But although you and I might think that internet service providers should stick their greed where the sign don’t shine, our thoughts would not make headlines like last week’s: ‘Sara Payne backs call to block online porn’ — headlines which, given a moment’s thought, can only invite the question, well, so what?
This is a woman who knows a great deal more than we do about things that we must pray we never know better. The anguish when her eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and killed, in 2000, is beyond our paltry imaginings, while her subsequent stoicism — surviving, as it has, a broken marriage and a debilitating stroke — puts to shame our own feeble whimpers. Nevertheless, I’ll wager that she knows no more than any other amateur about pre-pubescent synapses, the cause and effect of commercially sexual filth — or, come to that, about anything much concerning the various campaigns that she has been asked to ‘back’ or ‘call for’ since Sarah’s death.
It might perhaps afford Mrs Payne some small comfort to be so used (she probably calls it ‘useful’), and about that we mustn’t carp. It is not, however, Sarah’s personal tragedy that her mother’s high profile represents: it is just an example of a peculiar trend which promotes the automatic elevation of ‘victim’ to ‘expert’.
Also last week we heard from Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger who was murdered by two other children in 1993. This time she was quoted on ‘sickos’ who enjoy ‘trolling’ — the posting of inflammatory messages on internet sites, a nasty practice with which, to be fair, she has been fleetingly targeted. But this is only one among many contributions Mrs Fergus has made to national debate and always, again, without knowledge or qualification. She waded in recently, for instance, when the Children’s Commissioner for England presented a well-researched, if controversial, opinion that the criminal age of responsibility should be raised from ten to 12.
Mrs Fergus didn’t like this. Well, of course she didn’t like it; her son was killed by ten-year-olds, and even now she has close supporters who have openly vowed that if they could get their hands on them they would ‘see justice done’. But that is precisely why we have the social contract of law and order, whereby we remove the machinery of justice from those emotionally unequipped to handle it. Why, then, was media space given to Mrs Fergus’s passionate but nonsensical view that the Commissioner ‘owes me and James an apology’?
So commonplace have become such broadcasts of uninformed opinion that victims ritually offer it without request. Parents, for instance, of any drug-sodden deceased, appear to believe it proper to offer themselves as guest speakers to corralled teenagers at local schools. As far as the staff are concerned, they are pushing an open door; as far as the pupils are concerned, the grim truth is that they usually know more than the bereft and bewildered parents in front of them — and if they don’t, the misinformation may be dangerous. Who can forget Paul Betts, father of Leah and self-appointed expert on the ecstasy he was adamant killed his daughter? The claim propelled him to fame, despite the findings of the eventual inquest: Leah was not killed by ‘just the one tablet’, as her father had believed. What killed her was that, having taken the tablet, she swallowed seven litres of water in 90 minutes; a salient fact that, if disseminated sensibly, really might have saved lives.
Christina Schmid’s claim to sad fame was to have been the widow of the bomb disposal expert Sgt Olaf Schmid, who was killed in Afghanistan. No doubt her status as poster-girl for war widowhood came the more readily because she is especially easy on the eye, but never mind; straight-backed, clear-eyed and well-spoken, it was entirely in keeping that she should have read a remembrance poem on Armistice Day last November. What is less appropriate, however, is that she should also have campaigned on a number of military issues, among them her perceived need for troops to be differently equipped.
Space, again, was cleared that her voice be heard — but, again, why? Her pain was evident, her credentials less so; should we not accept that those of, say, Colonel Tim Collins or General Sir Richard Dannatt put them, oh, at least a few inches ahead?
Poor Christina, I fear that we shall be hearing less from her since she has had the temerity to eschew social suttee in favour of a new romance. Still, sure as eggs, the vacuum left by her silenced musings will be filled by another, and sometimes the less qualified the better. Waiting in the wings, for instance, might be the latest model of a Margaret Cook, ex-wife of the late Robin Cook, who famously mislaid a husband, a marriage and a pair of riding chaps in an airport lounge — and as a result accepted, with alacrity, the position of agony aunt, dispensing theoretically informed advice for a women’s magazine. Anyone for Eddie the Eagle as Olympic skiing coach?
This is not to say that victims never use trauma productively, especially when they use it as a spur to expertise rather than a replacement for it. Among the 270 people who died at Lockerbie in 1988 was Dr Jim Swire’s daughter Flora. For nearly a quarter of a century since, he has filled his large, hurt brain with the case and become arguably the world’s greatest authority on it (Iran, not Libya, he concludes, is to blame, and it is my personal wish that more would listen to him). When Suzy Lamplugh disappeared in 1986, her mother Diana threw herself into learning all there was to know about personal safety measures; she campaigned, hectored and lectured for the rest of her able life.
When empathy thus combines with education it is a formidable force; empathy alone, as it is increasingly paraded, is rarely worth breath. As a media trend, it’s a cheap shortcut: instant quotes from usual suspects, mass wallowing in re-runs of their initial horror. As a social trend, it fuels the ‘self-help’ groups and their unregulated phone-lines manned by those whose only qualification is that they, too, have suffered. Given the prevalence of these services, there is, presumably, catharsis involved; whether to the benefit of the caller or the adviser has yet to be established.
It goes without saying that those who have endured brutal grief, in particular where it has been sufficiently grotesque to engage public awareness, deserve our unqualified commiseration. Our confidence, however, is another matter altogether.