Michael Hamer

15 year old Michael Hamer has been sentanced to life with a minimum tariff of 12 years after killing an 11 year old, Joe Geeling, in March.

Press reports describe Michael Hamer as an isolated child who was the victim of bullying. He had no friends at the school and had withdrawn into a phantasy world. One report also mentions a step-brother who died and an absent father.

The BBC reports the case in a tone which owes something to the 'cold-blooded killer' rhetoric of Greater Manchester Police. However the BBC also cites a psychologist talking about the effects of bullying.

It is not excusing Michael Hamer to note that like other boys who kill he came from a disrupted family background

The police have been keen to stress that the school which both boys attended did all they could including excluding students who had bullied Michael Hamer. Of course that in itself did not engage with Michael Hamer or make him any less isolated. Indeed it could have made him more isolated.

On the day of the murder a teacher detected that Michael Hamer had written Joe Geeling a letter purporting to be from the deputy headteacher instructing Joe to go to Michael Hamer's house to collect some books. The teacher simply told Joe Geeling to go straight home and took no action at all about the letter. Surely it must have been clear - and at the time and not just with hindsight - that there was something very sinister about this note, with its injunction to an 11 year old boy not to discuss it with anyone? Doesn't the school have a child protection policy? Surely forging the deputy headteacher's signature was against the school rules? Why did the teacher do nothing except put the onus onto an 11 year old boy with cystic fibrosis to escape?

None of this will bring Joe Geeling back, and I don't have much to base my case on, but, what there is suggests that the school was not engaging with Michael Hamer. The way to stop children becomming monsters is to engage with them. Whatever. If Michael Hamer had had some outlet for his feelings then he may not have vented them with such terrible effect on little Joe Geeling, by all accounts a wonderful, and a wholly innocent, child of 11.

The point I am making in these cases of children who kill - Christopher Pittman, Jason Clinard, Eric Hainstock in the US for example - is that when children kill it is a collective social responsibility of the community. It is very rare perhaps never that children are so 'evil' that they will kill if there are adults around them reaching out to them.

Links


BBC News Online