I think it is so sad that the coroner and Jury in the inquest case of the suicide of Fiona Pilkington and the killing of her daughter Francecca Hardwick, concentrated their fury on what the police and council didn't do to prevent the yob abuse of these two vulnerable women.Over seven years, teenage bullies from Pilkinton's housing estate sporadically harassed and intimidated mother and daughter in their own home, until Fiona could take no more and she set fire to her car with herself and her daughter trapped inside it.
By concentrating on the authority's role in this matter, the Jury has neatly sidestepped all of our own responsibilities in this and thousands of other cases just like it.
Communities often remain fractured and isolated when faced with the lawless underclass; fear produces if not an apathy , a paralysed inability to act in the "right" way.
What would these teenage thugs have done if, when on one of their sorties to the Pilkington house, the whole street had banded together and had stood shoulder to shoulder at their gate posts? Perhaps the whole story would have been so very different then again perhaps not...
As one, the usual "silent majority" needs to hold fast against these families that have no respect for others; we need to realise that it is not just the responsibility of the police to face and sort these behaviours , but is something we all should be dealing with, face to face.....and despite of all the terrible fear and anxieties provoked.......
