What you don't hear about Child Murder

EVERY single time you read a story in the newspaper about a child murder, you can be sure that the journalists know a great deal more than they are telling you.

Most reporters feel sick about it. They want to tell the truth, the whole truth, but there are new laws that make it impossible in almost every circumstance to show the faces of young children who have been killed, or even to use their names.

One of the reasons I started writing books was to try to show how much we, as reporters, can’t tell you, the readers.

I know that some people think: oh, come on. The laws can’t be that bad.

They are that bad.

If the laws that were brought into NSW in 2006 were in place in the 1980s, the media would not have been able to report the Azaria Chamberlain trial, using her name, or Lindy’s name, or showing photographs.

The story of the father who drowned his three children in a dam in Victoria? That could not be told in NSW, because of these laws.

It makes it look like child murder is not happening in NSW, when of course, it is.

One example. Some newspapers last week carried this story:

"A man has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual assault over the death of a three-year-old boy in northern NSW.

Homicide squad detectives arrested the Narrabri man on Tuesday afternoon in the regional town, just days after the child was hospitalised with serious head injuries.

He was flown to a Sydney hospital on Sunday and died the following day.

The 21-year-old man has been charged with murder and two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child under 10.’’

That’s it. That’s all you will ever be allowed to know.

We can’t tell you his name. We can’t show you his face. We can’t say anything about the family. We can’t say whether he was known to community services, or anything at all.

It’s the same with the case of Keisha Abrahams, the little girl missing in Western Sydney. It’s only because nobody has been charged – therefore, technically, no crime has been committed – that we can use her name.

The minute somebody is charged, we will not be allowed to see her face again.

The media, the police, the schools, the welfare, they will know everything.

The public will be kept in the dark.