I was saddened to read in The Times yesterday that David Rathband, the policeman who was shot in the face by Raoul Moat, has been advised by doctors that he has been blinded in both eyes. At the end of the article it was mentioned that more than 21,000 people had joined a Facebook tribute page called RIP Raoul Moat You Legend, many of them praising Moat for shooting a policeman. That really shocked me.
Having just read more on the subject on the Internet, it appears that the number had increased to to almost 40,000 but that the page has now been removed from Facebook, apparently by Siobhan O’Dowd, the woman who created it. I have not seen the actual page as I cancelled my Facebook membership several weeks ago and do not wish to rejoin. It seems, however, from other sources, that the majority of the more recent postings were either critical of Moat or of his supporters. Thank goodness for that, but it still horrifies me that thousands of people consider him to have been a hero deserving of legend status.
Raoul Moat had a history of violence against his female partners. Very shortly after being released from prison, after serving a short sentence for assaulting a child, he shot and seriously injured his ex-girlfriend, Samantha Stobbart, who was also the mother of one of his children; he shot and killed her current boyfriend, Chris Brown; and he shot, at point-blank range, PC Rathband who was unarmed and merely sitting in his patrol car. He then fled and went into hiding for several days before shooting himself after being confronted by the police.
How can any rational person consider such a man to be the subject of hero worship? The examples of comments from Moat supporters that I have read indicate a lack of both intelligence and literacy. In that regard, I found the You Tube clip of a radio interview of Ms O’Dowd on Talksport particularly illuminating. It is very worrying that so many people share her views. How can they be uncritical of his actions or blame them on Samantha Stobbart or the police? Do they not have any sympathy for his victims or their families? What value do they place on human life?
I have already written on the Broken Society (blog of 24.2.2010). It seems to me that the Raoul Moat fan club confirms that our society is not only broken but sick too.
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