The Keanu Williams Murder.

Today a Crown Court in Manchester UK sentenced Rebecca Shuttleworth to a minimum of 18 years in prison for the murder of her 2 year old son Keanu Williams and four counts of child cruelty. Described by the Judge as one of the most horrific crimes of its type the murder which took place over two days saw the infant sustain 37 separate injuries including a fractured skull and a (adult) fist sized tear to the intestine that most likely caused death through internal bleeding.

To be honest I've not been following this story because frankly it's too depressing. Obviously though the nature of the crime does invoke memories of the Baby P scandal. However on this occasion it strikes me as a clean case of sometimes bad people do bad things. Apart from the horrific nature of the crime the reason why the case has been given such prominence seems to be that although she was in a relationship with a man at the time of the offence (Luke Southerton was cleared of murder but sentenced to 9 months suspended for biting the child) Shuttleworth went on to form a lesbian relationship with another women. This obviously promotes some (invalid) discussion about lesbian parenting. However it also promotes discussion about the way that minorities manipulate equality rules and legislation to do as they please. After all much of the reporting has spoken of how Shuttleworth was able to "use her knowledge of the care system to avoid detection." The implication being social workers were too afraid to intervene out of a fear of being accused of homophobia.

This is of course nonsense because Shuttleworth was in a conventional relationship with a man at the time and I for one seriously doubt her lesbian credentials. I think the real reason is that Shuttleworth was severely emotionally damaged at an early age and social services failed to intervene because based on my extensive experience they're chronically underfunded and have a nasty habit of employing (a great expense) woefully unqualified staff.

16:55 on 25/6/13.