Parents need to be more responsible

Jul 16 2009 By Maureen Messent

WE have seen the utmost in parent loss this week – but there’s the other side; the mindless who allow their young to take appalling and needless risk, then lament the outcome.

I’ve hit compassion-fatigue with fathers like Berkshire teacher John Higgins who, having allowed his 16-year-old son to go on holiday with a bunch of teenagers, professes “shock horror” that the lad was found dead on a Cornish beach after an evening spent swigging sambuca.

“Why was he served alcohol?” asked Mr Higgins.

More to the point, what was this father thinking to allow a child to go to Cornwall, known for its teenage party excesses?

Had he looked at this proposed holiday, he’d have discovered that another boy died in a fall from the same cliffs and a third had fallen and broken his neck, all thanks to Newquay having become a teenage boozing centre.

Then there was Nicola Dyer, mother of Shakilus Townsend, that teenager lured to his stabbing death by his girlfriend.

“He was a loving and caring person,” says this single mother of five, one of whose partners, Shakilus’ father, couldn’t attend the trial of the assailants because he was himself upon cocaine possession charges.

And this loving and caring son? Well, he’s to be seen flaunting a knife on a social network; he has a criminal record which included carrying an axe, robbery, knife possession and violence.

A son to be proud of, indeed eh? But his mother accepts no responsibility.