#parental-neglect

#parental-neglect

A couple have been handed life sentences for the murder of their two-year-old grandson following a trial that exposed weeks of horrific abuse. Michael Ives, 48, and his wife Kerry, 46, subjected toddler Ethan Ives-Griffiths to sustained physical and emotional cruelty at their home in Flintshire, North Wales. Ethan was found to be dangerously dehydrated and severely underweight, bearing visible marks and bruises, when he collapsed with a catastrophic head injury in August 2021.

This is one of my rare memory pieces, in which I mine the past for drama and resonance by way of opening a window onto my own hapless participation in the human condition. That wife is mine, those children are mine, that house was mine. This is fiction, however, and the events have been remodelled to fit the architecture of the story (and, yes, I did make the mad leap from the roof on the impulse of the moment).