Luke Batty’s violent death on Wednesday night sent the community reeling. The first reactions were of shock and anger that a father could kill his own child in this way. But as more information came to light, sentiment shifted. As Kate Forster discusses in this powerful post, a major catalyst for that shift from anger was the extraordinary grace shown by Luke’s mother Rosie Batty, when she made a statement to the media.
Yesterday, most of Melbourne seemed to be numb, with the news of a horrific murder of a young boy by his own father.
As the story unfolded throughout the day, sadness turned to questions, which by evening, judging from the messages in blogs and updates on my Facebook feed, had turned into a spew of vile anger and frenzied calls for the father to ‘rot in hell.’
I think that father was in hell before he died. Hell is living with that level of anger and mental illness. Hell is paranoia, and hurting the person you love most in the world.
In the midst of all of this craziness, it was the mother of the boy who calmed down the cyclone of raw anger, by bravely facing a media scrum to talk about family violence, mental illness, and the love her ex-partner had for their son.
While I noted shock in her swollen eyes, I also saw resignation and amazingly, compassion. She tried for 11 years to help the man, and protect her son. For 11 years she succeeded in keeping herself and her son safe. She was at war for 11 years. Her ex-partner was at war with himself and everyone else around him, for the same amount of time.
