I have known since the beginning that Zahra was dead but, you know, a person has to hold on to some kind of hope, miracles do happen, so I’ve sort of fantasised that she could have escaped from her intolerable situation and run away to be taken in by a kindly person….Last night, in the aftermath of a day when it all started to come together and the walls started closing in on AB and EB, well, I finally let my fantasy scenario go and cried for Zahra.
Cases like these have always held a dreadful fascination for me, drawn me in, the first was when I was about 12 years old, a little girl called Maria Colwell. It broke my adolescent heart to realize there were children out there whose parents, far from nurturing and protecting them as mine did me, saw fit to batter, torture, starve, neglect and finally kill them. That case obsessed me, I read everything there was to read in the papers about it and prayed and hoped it would never happen again to another child. And yet here I am many years and many child victims later. It never gets any easier to understand the workings of the minds of people who can do these things to those they are charged with loving and caring for. The ‘why’ always eludes me.
Zahra’s story spoke to me in the same way as Maria’s. Here was a little girl who was taken from a happy, stable, secure home surrounded by those who loved her to eventually die after suffering unknown cruelties at the hands of a sadistic monster in the midst of squalor and deprivation. And these children weren’t snatched and taken away from their secure, loving environments by some random, unknown psychopathic child predator, no, they were taken by those who had the legal right to do so, those they had every reason to trust would look out for their happiness and welfare – their parents – who delivered them up to the monsters. We warn our kids about stranger danger from when they are very small, horribly ironic, when so often it’s actually the parents and guardians who commit the worst atrocities on them.
Zahra, like Maria, would never have fought back or spoken out against her abusers or tried to run away. She would have stayed, wondered why she was being punished, rationalised that she must have been really ‘bad’ and deserved it, then hoped if she was ‘good’ enough the punishment would stop. Well, the punishment has stopped now, Zahra, may you rest in peace. I like to imagine you are now laughing and playing with Maria Colwell and all the other children who suffered so much during their short lives.
It’s all over now bar the shouting for EB and AB, just hope they get everything the law can throw at them. For Zahra’s Grandmother, Mother and others who loved her, I hope they eventually find her remains and that they can find a semblance of peace and happiness in the knowledge that Zahra will never suffer pain or fear again.