"In my small town"
Jun. 20th, 2010 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccI've been meaning to post about this, and reading this news item yesterday reminded me about it.
I watched Australian Story back in April. The story was, on the face of it, about the impact that a 2008 car crash had on the small Victorian town of Harcourt. The crash itself was so unfortunately ordinary - a group of 5 18-20 year olds, with a driver (Brenton Chaplin) over the blood alcohol limit, over the speed limit who lost control of the car. One 20 year old (Leigh Charter) killed, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the car. Another 18 year old lucky to be alive after he was also thrown from the car while not wearing a seatbelt.
From the program:
At the time that they've come across the 80 speed zone, experts estimate the speed of the car was anywhere between 117 and 124 kilometres per hour. The alcohol in Brent Chaplin's blood is 0.08.
As I said, terrible but unfortunately not extraordinary - we've had four 17-22 year old men killed last night for example, and that's on top of the crashes at Mill Park earlier this year (five dead in one; one in the other) and a whole stack of other single fatalities. 18-21 is a risky time to be a driver - the combination of inexperience, being legally able to drink and pushing the limits can be fatal. What made this case ongoing news was what came next.
The bare facts are that the father of the dead teenager went to the house of the teenager driving - who was also his late son's close friend - and stabbed his father, brother, cousin and mother before hanging himself. Of those stabbed, one - Wendy Chaplin, the mother of the teenager who drove the car - was killed.
It was seriously disturbing to watch. The family of the dead man refused to participate, but Leigh Charter's mother did write a letter which was included on the website.
What really got me though, both from the program and the letter was just how much of the anger directed at the Chaplin family stemmed from class issues. Class isn't something you normally think of here - we stick with our mythology that everyone's middle class, even the Packers and the bogans - but it really stuck out like a sore thumb at points.
From the program:
(Excerpt from Leigh Carter Senior's letter)
The only people that are impressed by your party lifestyle are the underage people you encourage to get intoxicated. In November last year I personally told Brenton ‘you’re are a complete idiot in a car and you will end up killing one of my kids’. Your family’s are a real concern to the community. We don’t want anything to do with you people and never have. So leave us alone.
(End of excerpt)
From the letter:
Then at 19 he bought his first home. He couldn’t afford to live in his house so had to rent it out which made him ineligible for the first home buyers grant. Strange really he was too poor to receive help. He had worked really hard to achieve this, often staying home when his mates were out partying to save money. I don’t think Wendy understood this.
...
I don’t think she realised the importance of buying a house at a young age as I believe they were given their land and maybe the same would happen with the next generation.
The Chaplins had parties. They had inherited land. They didn't understand what it was to struggle. They went on overseas holidays.
There's a huge amount of underlying resentment in the letter. An almost a "if they hadn't been well off our son would be alive" or "He's getting away with it because he's rich" sentiment.
I wondered how much of that was behind Leigh Charter Senior's committing murder. I certainly found it interesting that of all the people in the house that night, the two that he didn't stab were Brent Chaplin - who was, after all, the intoxicated driver of the car crash that killed his son - and Brent's girlfriend. Also interesting that the only person he killed was Wendy Chaplin.
From the letter:
She wanted Leigh to go on holiday with Brenton. We didn’t. She went so far as to contact Leigh’s boss to arrange time off for him. I told her Leigh was old enough to arrange his own holidays.
It was her fault. She gave birth to the monster that befriended and killed our child. She went behind our backs so he could go on the holiday where he was killed.
I don't know how I would react to the grief of losing a child. I don't know whether or not I'd be able to avoid blaming the person responsible, re-writing history so my child was an angel, avoiding any notion that they could be partially responsible for their own death. I do feel immense pity for her - to lose a son, and then have your husband commit murder and lose him too, I don't know how hard it would be to deal with that. I don't know if time will give her a different perspective on things. It's interesting though that as the producer noted:
She does not talk readily about the murder of Wendy Chaplin and her choice of words speaks volumes about her feelings. She says her son was ‘killed’ but Wendy Chaplin ‘died’.
The smallness of the town probably didn't help things either - small communities can be supportive but can also be claustrophobic. And Harcourt is a very small town.
Then living in a small community we heard about every party [Brenton] attended, we knew he had a new girlfriend shortly after killing our son.
...
The party life continues. He killed our son, destroyed our family and he’s out partying.
How dare he go on living when he killed my child. How dare he turn 21, go to 21st parties. How dare he turn 22, 23, get a girlfriend, get married, have children, grow old when he denied this to my child.
And that, I think, is probably the crux of it, as it always is. How can this person be still alive when the person I love is not? Where is the fairness of it?
I did wonder if things had been reversed how it would have gone. From the program again:
Driving seemed like a fine idea. Having had a few drinks myself, I didn’t connect the dots thinking 'oh, we don’t have a sober driver, how’s that going to work', and to be honest in a country town you don’t think you’re going to get caught. Brenton straight off offered to drive. Being his Mum's car, he didn’t want anyone else at the wheel. Leigh put up his hand to drive. Brenton refused.
"Leigh put up his hand to drive."
I hate to say it, but they were all pissed, they were all young and they were all stupid. It could so easily have been the other way around; the Charter family defending their son while the Chaplin family grieved for theirs. Although I get the idea that the Charter family would still be blaming Brent Chaplin for having destroyed their son's bright future by his influence. The difference is that Wendy Chaplin and Leigh Charter Senior would probably still be alive.
It really is a horrible tragedy, both parts of it. The accident was, in the end, so bloody preventable - if one of the five had said "nah, we're over the limit, how about we ring them and see if they want to come over." If there hadn't been five of them in the car. If they had all been wearing seatbelts. If there'd been a cop on the road who'd seen the P-plates and pulled them over. If they hadn't been hooning but driving carefully to avoid the attention of the police.
If they hadn't been fairly typical 18-21 year old country boys. *sigh*
And the second part - I don't know, in the end, how preventable that was. The only person who could have prevented the murder was Leigh Charter Senior, and given that he appeared not to be in his right mind by that stage it's difficult to say whether it could have been stopped.
What makes me more angry than anything is the fact that there was people in the community that knew Leigh Charter that must have known what he was trying to do, or that he could do this; that he did have a problem mentally and that the police should have realised that he had a problem. His workplace should have known that he had a problem and they did nothing about it. And I believe that someone in the community does know the truth of what he was about.
"Having a problem" is still a bit different from "going out and murdering people". I'm sure people knew that he was struggling and tried to help. Most people don't believe that anyone they know would be capable of something like this though. And generally speaking what people look out for in struggling people in the bush are signs of suicide, not murder.
From the letter: Brenton is in prison because he killed Leigh. He would be out of jail by now and his mother and my husband would be alive if he had taken responsibility for his actions. I know my husband should not have gone to the Chaplin’s house but I understand all too well his total despair.
He pleaded guilty, but apparently not quickly enough. And it still didn't bring Leigh Charter back.
Brent Chaplin's appeal against his four year sentence (18 month minimum) was dismissed on Friday. He will be 23 when he's released. I hope that he is getting some counselling over both his own actions that lead to the death of his friend and over his mother's death, which he wasn't responsible for. I hope that something positive can come out of this, if only more focused education on teenage drink-driving in the bush and the awareness of the need for more mental health services. Because while the second part of the tragedy is fortunately uncommon, the first is still news-in-brief on an almost weekly basis.
I watched Australian Story back in April. The story was, on the face of it, about the impact that a 2008 car crash had on the small Victorian town of Harcourt. The crash itself was so unfortunately ordinary - a group of 5 18-20 year olds, with a driver (Brenton Chaplin) over the blood alcohol limit, over the speed limit who lost control of the car. One 20 year old (Leigh Charter) killed, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the car. Another 18 year old lucky to be alive after he was also thrown from the car while not wearing a seatbelt.
From the program:
At the time that they've come across the 80 speed zone, experts estimate the speed of the car was anywhere between 117 and 124 kilometres per hour. The alcohol in Brent Chaplin's blood is 0.08.
As I said, terrible but unfortunately not extraordinary - we've had four 17-22 year old men killed last night for example, and that's on top of the crashes at Mill Park earlier this year (five dead in one; one in the other) and a whole stack of other single fatalities. 18-21 is a risky time to be a driver - the combination of inexperience, being legally able to drink and pushing the limits can be fatal. What made this case ongoing news was what came next.
The bare facts are that the father of the dead teenager went to the house of the teenager driving - who was also his late son's close friend - and stabbed his father, brother, cousin and mother before hanging himself. Of those stabbed, one - Wendy Chaplin, the mother of the teenager who drove the car - was killed.
It was seriously disturbing to watch. The family of the dead man refused to participate, but Leigh Charter's mother did write a letter which was included on the website.
What really got me though, both from the program and the letter was just how much of the anger directed at the Chaplin family stemmed from class issues. Class isn't something you normally think of here - we stick with our mythology that everyone's middle class, even the Packers and the bogans - but it really stuck out like a sore thumb at points.
From the program:
(Excerpt from Leigh Carter Senior's letter)
The only people that are impressed by your party lifestyle are the underage people you encourage to get intoxicated. In November last year I personally told Brenton ‘you’re are a complete idiot in a car and you will end up killing one of my kids’. Your family’s are a real concern to the community. We don’t want anything to do with you people and never have. So leave us alone.
(End of excerpt)
From the letter:
Then at 19 he bought his first home. He couldn’t afford to live in his house so had to rent it out which made him ineligible for the first home buyers grant. Strange really he was too poor to receive help. He had worked really hard to achieve this, often staying home when his mates were out partying to save money. I don’t think Wendy understood this.
...
I don’t think she realised the importance of buying a house at a young age as I believe they were given their land and maybe the same would happen with the next generation.
The Chaplins had parties. They had inherited land. They didn't understand what it was to struggle. They went on overseas holidays.
There's a huge amount of underlying resentment in the letter. An almost a "if they hadn't been well off our son would be alive" or "He's getting away with it because he's rich" sentiment.
I wondered how much of that was behind Leigh Charter Senior's committing murder. I certainly found it interesting that of all the people in the house that night, the two that he didn't stab were Brent Chaplin - who was, after all, the intoxicated driver of the car crash that killed his son - and Brent's girlfriend. Also interesting that the only person he killed was Wendy Chaplin.
From the letter:
She wanted Leigh to go on holiday with Brenton. We didn’t. She went so far as to contact Leigh’s boss to arrange time off for him. I told her Leigh was old enough to arrange his own holidays.
It was her fault. She gave birth to the monster that befriended and killed our child. She went behind our backs so he could go on the holiday where he was killed.
I don't know how I would react to the grief of losing a child. I don't know whether or not I'd be able to avoid blaming the person responsible, re-writing history so my child was an angel, avoiding any notion that they could be partially responsible for their own death. I do feel immense pity for her - to lose a son, and then have your husband commit murder and lose him too, I don't know how hard it would be to deal with that. I don't know if time will give her a different perspective on things. It's interesting though that as the producer noted:
She does not talk readily about the murder of Wendy Chaplin and her choice of words speaks volumes about her feelings. She says her son was ‘killed’ but Wendy Chaplin ‘died’.
The smallness of the town probably didn't help things either - small communities can be supportive but can also be claustrophobic. And Harcourt is a very small town.
Then living in a small community we heard about every party [Brenton] attended, we knew he had a new girlfriend shortly after killing our son.
...
The party life continues. He killed our son, destroyed our family and he’s out partying.
How dare he go on living when he killed my child. How dare he turn 21, go to 21st parties. How dare he turn 22, 23, get a girlfriend, get married, have children, grow old when he denied this to my child.
And that, I think, is probably the crux of it, as it always is. How can this person be still alive when the person I love is not? Where is the fairness of it?
I did wonder if things had been reversed how it would have gone. From the program again:
Driving seemed like a fine idea. Having had a few drinks myself, I didn’t connect the dots thinking 'oh, we don’t have a sober driver, how’s that going to work', and to be honest in a country town you don’t think you’re going to get caught. Brenton straight off offered to drive. Being his Mum's car, he didn’t want anyone else at the wheel. Leigh put up his hand to drive. Brenton refused.
"Leigh put up his hand to drive."
I hate to say it, but they were all pissed, they were all young and they were all stupid. It could so easily have been the other way around; the Charter family defending their son while the Chaplin family grieved for theirs. Although I get the idea that the Charter family would still be blaming Brent Chaplin for having destroyed their son's bright future by his influence. The difference is that Wendy Chaplin and Leigh Charter Senior would probably still be alive.
It really is a horrible tragedy, both parts of it. The accident was, in the end, so bloody preventable - if one of the five had said "nah, we're over the limit, how about we ring them and see if they want to come over." If there hadn't been five of them in the car. If they had all been wearing seatbelts. If there'd been a cop on the road who'd seen the P-plates and pulled them over. If they hadn't been hooning but driving carefully to avoid the attention of the police.
If they hadn't been fairly typical 18-21 year old country boys. *sigh*
And the second part - I don't know, in the end, how preventable that was. The only person who could have prevented the murder was Leigh Charter Senior, and given that he appeared not to be in his right mind by that stage it's difficult to say whether it could have been stopped.
What makes me more angry than anything is the fact that there was people in the community that knew Leigh Charter that must have known what he was trying to do, or that he could do this; that he did have a problem mentally and that the police should have realised that he had a problem. His workplace should have known that he had a problem and they did nothing about it. And I believe that someone in the community does know the truth of what he was about.
"Having a problem" is still a bit different from "going out and murdering people". I'm sure people knew that he was struggling and tried to help. Most people don't believe that anyone they know would be capable of something like this though. And generally speaking what people look out for in struggling people in the bush are signs of suicide, not murder.
From the letter: Brenton is in prison because he killed Leigh. He would be out of jail by now and his mother and my husband would be alive if he had taken responsibility for his actions. I know my husband should not have gone to the Chaplin’s house but I understand all too well his total despair.
He pleaded guilty, but apparently not quickly enough. And it still didn't bring Leigh Charter back.
Brent Chaplin's appeal against his four year sentence (18 month minimum) was dismissed on Friday. He will be 23 when he's released. I hope that he is getting some counselling over both his own actions that lead to the death of his friend and over his mother's death, which he wasn't responsible for. I hope that something positive can come out of this, if only more focused education on teenage drink-driving in the bush and the awareness of the need for more mental health services. Because while the second part of the tragedy is fortunately uncommon, the first is still news-in-brief on an almost weekly basis.
