Social Worker’s Report on Child G, August 1980.
Child G arrived at the Residential Home in April 1979 after his parents were killed in a car accident. Initial signs of psychological trauma were standard; G displayed harsh, withdrawn behaviour, mainly verbal, but with a few isolated incidents of physical violence.
The last of these was a knife attack on one of the staff members, after which G was restrained and transferred to the secure division half a mile from the Home. Interviews with the staff and children indicated that G had never expressed any interest in knives or made threatening references to using a bladed weapon.
Child G appears intelligent and cooperative, but does not recognise the criminal nature of his action. He claimed to have no memory of the events, except for one counselling session where he claimed that this was ‘a natural conclusion to a vulgar and dismal episode’.
As part of the inquiry, teachers were interviewed from G’s School and all of them described him as a normal boy with no history of aggressive behaviour. However, one of them recalled a classroom exercise when the children had been asked to role-play characters from history.
G said he had been watching a television programme called ‘I. Claudius’ (note: this is an adaptation of a well-known book and includes graphic scenes of sex and violence, not suitable for viewing by children) and he wanted to play a Roman Gladiator. The small group of children created and performed a 3-minutes scenario, at the end of which the gladiator (Child G) informed the slave he was about to kill that ‘your life has just been a long and dismal episode which needs to be forgotten’.
This curious remark was noted by the teachers; some of them tried to locate the original source, since it was obviously a quote from somewhere, but nobody was able to identify it.
The residents in the children’s home have a small locker in which to keep their belongings. A search of Child G’s locker showed nothing unusual, apart from an exercise book full of random drawings and diagrams. Nothing in this book relates to any kind of violent conflict; however, one section seems to indicate a type of religious paranoia, and a transcript of this is attached below.
“The Brotherhood of the Living Stones (p.9-11)
“We are not meant to understand the song of the Stones, we are not meant to hear their words. The Stones have waited forever to learn how to speak and will wait forever before the wise ones come to understand and revere them.
For there are invisible grains of wickedness that lurk inside the blood of man. The grains are dormant; when they are exposed to sin, they become alert, they drink the rays of the moon, they corrupt the fibres of the living man and damage the pathway of desire.
Pure and virtuous man will grow straight and tall, clean and white; but sinful man has been tarnished and in his blood will be a family of the evil grains. Scientists have detected these grains, which they call bacteria or viruses; but we know that they have an essence, a fundamental nature of cruelty and wickedness and corruption. They cannot be killed, but by abiding by the tenets of the Lord and the Stones, they can be starved and weakened. When a man surrenders to selfish pleasure and vice, he feeds the grains of evil so they can flourish.
The grain of evil will weaken the sacred fibres of a man’s body, and give rise to deformity in the man and his offspring. Physical and moral weakness shall afflict his children. The particles of evil contain within them molecules almost identical to the normal molecules of sugar and protein; but these grains of wickedness are formed from twisted atoms of carbon, and so they spread sickness and decay.
We are not meant to understand the message of the Living Stones, but we must hold firm to the hope of revival, and the upright strong purity that gives the standing light.”
Beneath this were several crude sketches, one showing a crucifixion scene, and another showing a sort of bracelet made up of small planets. (Editor’s note: this was a diagram of a glucose molecule, copied from an A-level textbook. The writer had added some occult symbols to each of the atoms making up the molecule. The case work team did not recognise this illustration.)
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