A Sad Day for Child Protection
he day Wednesday 13 March 1996 will remain focused T in the minds of many as a day when the child care and protection processes of our society failed to protect a class of young children at Dunblane Primary School. The horrific act of an emotionally disturbed and frustrated man killing sixteen young children and a teacher has shocked the international community of professionals and public alike, and thoughts go to those families affected by this immense tragedy.
The scale of this multiple child homicide makes it difficult to think objectively and understand how we failed to make these young children safe. Immediate reactions have identified that legislation related to the ownership of fire arms might be tightened up and the general debate on violence as a form of entertainment has re-emerged. However, there will be no simple solutions to ensure that such an horrific tragedy does not happen again. The protection of children from fatal child maltreatment and homicide is a complex problem as identified in the last Special Issue of Child Abuse Review.
The perpetrator of the Dunblane massacre, Thomas Hamilton, was well known to local community and law enforcement agencies as a man who had 'an unhealthy interest in children'. On the balance of probability that he might have had paedophile tendencies , he was appropriately inhibited in his activities with children by the local councils and schools. However, he was never prosecuted for any offence presumably because it was considered that there was not enough evidence to provide proof beyond reasonable doubt. Regardless of the steps that might have been taken to protect children from his possible activities as a sexual perpetrator, these in themselves would not necessarily have prevented his overt and extremely violent reaction to perceived rejection, a behaviour which could have been rooted in his childhood experiences.
Certainly, Thomas Hamilton exhibited behaviours and strategies that are typical of sex offenders against children, which may have warranted further in-depth investigation and analysis. The type of sex offender who forms superficial 'relationships' with his victims often uses sporting activities,