I went grocery shopping with my mum over at Glen Innes because we were meeting one of my my sister’s and her kids at Spotlight, which is just down the road. Glen Innes is a shit-hole and one of the more unsavoury areas of Auckland, though it’s situated next to some of the most expensive areas, ironically. So, while we were there we got to see a woman whack the child in her care on the thigh with a rolled up newspaper. The kid would have only been about 2 or 3 and it had walked away from the woman and was sitting on the side of this building that had a ledge along the bottom, merrily waving its legs and singing a song. Along comes this woman and BAM on the leg, yanks the kid up and marches it away. It was a hard hit and the kid started crying obviously. Never do I feel more despair for humanity than when I’m witness to something so repulsive as child abuse. You know perfectly well that what you see someone do to a child in public is only the very tip of the abuse iceberg it no doubt experiences on a daily basis, in many forms, in private.

I wish that woman had gotten into car so I could have taken note of the license plate, though who the hell knows if any car she would have would be registered or whatever. But still, it would have been better than not being able to do ANYTHING. I could have yelled out, but what would that do? It’s not a safe area and I would not want to put myself in danger, nor make things worse for that child as the woman probably would have blamed it for my yelling at her.

It’s such a huge problem and one that I can’t see an end to because, no matter what age we live in, stupid people will keep having children and those children have almost no chance of being anything other than what their parents/carers are like.