Are children who can shoot and stab without empathy or remorse really baffling? Violent acting out emerges from being terrorised as a child. There's a logic to it.
Kids Company works with exceptionally vulnerable children, many of whom would be dismissed as young offenders. Their life histories illustrate years of surviving abuse and precarious parenting. The child perceives civil society to have been absent when he was suffering behind closed doors. Child protection statistics bear witness - within one year some 500,000 referrals are made, of which only some 30,000 are put on the register.
Tormented children are initially victims. They absorb the blows and invest in hatred for revenge. Their smallness prohibits them from taking matters into their own hands. When they are physically more robust and capable of acquiring the tools to express their violence, they make a shift from victim to perpetrator. Feeling is not easily available because they have had to freeze their emotions into numbness in order to survive.
Love and good quality care is more disarming for this type of child than threat. That's why Kids Company is described by independent evaluations to have a 97 per cent effectiveness rating and an 88 per cent impact on crime reduction. All we do is exercise compassion, solve these children's problems, and apologise before they can express remorse for the wrong they have done and engage in reparation. Only in being loved and shown kindness can you return to others.
