Joseph Atukunda; The battle with mental health



Joseph Atukunda



By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa

Mental health in Uganda has for a long time been treated with a lot of suspicion and misunderstanding. In many tribal societies it is treated like a taboo. People with mental illnesses are thought of as mad. They are thought of as being possessed by evil spirits or having been affected by supernatural causes and witchcraft okuloga. While traditional healers have tried to bridge the gap in the providence of some form of treatment, there has also been intervention from religious groups especially evangelical Christians trying to "exorcise" those afflicted by evil.

Therefore people with mental illnesses have been excluded from main stream society for a long time. A report by The International Journal of Mental Health Systems found that mental services in Uganda are underfunded. Only 1% of the total health expenditure is spent on mental health and in many cases, treatment is only centred in urban areas. There is one main national referral hospital, Butabika.

Joseph Atukunda was in his last year at high school in 1989when problems started ”I was outgoing at school as you know, an extrovert but all over a sudden I became withdrawn and fearful, lost interest of the things I liked."  For Joseph this was the beginning of depression buthe had no idea what it was. "After holidays I refused to go back to school and tried to even commit suicide"

Atukunda was known amongst others to be one of the best actors at school. At Budo Junior School and at Kings College Budo, he was known to have such great stage experience especially with comedy. He was a school prefect and he was well respected. Yet everything came crushing down around him. He had to learn that depression made him scared and loose interest in things that he liked. Worst still, it made him feel suicidal for no good reason. "The brain is just having a problem and misinterpreting things [but] many people have taken their lives that way."

"They say that its a chemical imbalance, the psychiatrists but to me it was an identity crisis gone wrong. Most people suffer mental illness onset in the late teens as I did and usually this is the time of identity crisis"

Joseph Kahigiriza Atukunda  was born in 1969 in western Uganda.  His late father, Mzee James Kahigiriza,  was the last prime minister of Ankole. He was born into a large family going to Budo Junior School and Kings College Budo for his education. When he dropped out of Budo before his final exams, he went to Nkumba College of Commerce (Now the University) to study accountancy. Because he hadn't finished his A level, he had to rely on his O level results for admission.

One of his friends at high school Philip Miiro recalls the days at Budo "Atusoks (his nick name for Joseph) used to call me "Partner" and we read hard. When books became hard we used to go to point X to mourn our low marks. But we worked hard". Miiro and Atukunda both studied Physics, Chemistry and Biology. They both dreamt of becoming doctors. "One day, Muddu (a biology teacher) gave each of us  1.5 out of 20 for our biology essays. That was a very low moment in our lives". Miiro was sad to see his friend succumb to mental illness leaving him to struggle on alone through to the end.

To Atukunda, this was a major blow "I could not continue with my studies and go on to University and after surviving the suicide attempt it was understood that I was developing some mental illness and I was treated by Prof. Bosa at mulago with ECT. This is electric shocks through the brain and its believed to help in severe depression when life is at risk of suicide".

When he got better, he went to Mbarara to rest but then got manic depression while trying to act a play and direct it about mental illness. "When I got manic, I was then diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and treated for the mania again at Mulago. Bipolar had bouts of depression followed by mania but also sometime of being normal."

One of the lowest points in his battle against this illness was in 2003 "I had a manic episode and I was taken by the police to Butaibka (national psychiatric hospital). On arrival at the hospital, I was injected, stripped naked and put in a very cold isolation room" Atukuda was so depressed that he started hallucinating he was in hell. The room never had a toilet and on occasion, food was brought before it had been cleaned.  "Apart from isolating you from the rest of the patients as you may be very dangerous, the psychiatrists maintain that it also has some therapeutic effect of cooling you down when manic." In this room, he maintained that even though it was unpleasant it made him come back to his senses   "you are thankful for all that was done to restore you."

When he was first diagnosed, he was taken to traditional healers "I can't really say whether I was helped or not by the traditional healers but some professionals think traditional healers help for those who believe in them. The body is self-healing and Jesus told many people that your faith has healed you. Some people who believe in traditional healers think positively after seeing one and foster wellness to themselves. On the other hand western medications have a lot of side effects and are quite addictive to an extent that when you stay on them very long it becomes a guarantee that you get a relapse the moment you discontinue medication."

"The psychiatrists say we have to remain on medication for life but some books I have read like Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker are really against medication and convince the readers that it seems pharmaceutical companies are out to hook people and somehow convince the psychiatrists to encourage and keep people on medication. Please read this book and see what am talking about. We users are left in a dilemma whether to discontinue medication or not but this is largely an individual choice and like Rev. Bombo (RIP) used to tell us, you can't escape the consequences of your choice."

His family especially his wife have handled his illness with a lot of understanding "They are simply taking it easy" Atukunda now works for heartsounds Uganda mental health service user-led Community-Based Organisation helping other people with mental problems "Now that I have made it a vocation and some of our survival comes from my working in mental health it is much easier on them. My wife runs a catering service and I have given her business on many occasions cooking for our workshops. We have agreed with our donors that we give her business as she works with service users and carers in form of occupational therapy. She gets very frightened and encourages me to go for medication and if I get worse she convinces me to go for admission."

Mental health services are improving he maintains "we service users are coming in openly to talk about the illness things are getting better, stigma is being combated. The service users should be consulted on how they wish to be treated and our experience with the illness put to use."

There are many challenges that still face companies like Heartsounds "We two funded projects running, the donor requirement that administrative costs should not exceed 10 or 15% of the total budget leaves most of our administrative costs not covered as we are beginners and are getting small funding. Our salaries as full time workers are still very low yet some of us already have families to look after, we are failing to pay our utility bills and as we talk our power has been disconnected at our resource centre, we are just lucky that I own the premises where our resource centre is housed otherwise we would also be having a problem of rent."

Joseph Atukunda still battles his mental health but with much more optimism now than ever before. recently, he was in The United Kingdom on a Commonwealth funded trip to further enhance his skills in helping out people like him who have had the misfortune of having mental health problems.

“Nze ndi ku murimo. Bwembeela ku murimo, MBEELA KU MURIMO!”

By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa

My dear friend Godfrey “Leo” Kivumbi was once carrying out his normal duties as the prep prefect at Kings College Budo one evening. These duties amongst others involved taking the pressure lamps down to girls end whenever there was a power cut so that the girls could have some light in their coommon rooms.

I can’t remember where the lamps were lit from but on many occasions, they were carried across the “Green Lake” (lower field) while alight. So, anyone from any direction could see him well.

Now, the problem was that on the way back,  Leo had to cross the vast expanse that is the Green Lake in the dark. Anyone with good knowledge of this area will realise that if there is a power cut and only the upper classes are lit by the generator, the whole place is wrapped up in almost ink like blackness. 

The Famous Green Lake. Photo by Yosamu Semugoma



For reasons Leo is yet to explain, he decided to cross the field diagonally heading towards Nigeria house instead of going along the normal route, past a set of concrete stairs towards the lower classes. He nearly first came to problems when he missed the goal posts at the girls end side with inches to spare. Thankfully he knew that if he walked through the high jump pit, he would miss the posts. Keep on a certain vector and you are heading straight for Nigeria house senior wing.

Then out of nowhere, an arrow was right in his face!!!! The Askari. That one with an Askari name like “Mulefu” or something. Some dark blue guy one couldn’t see the contours of his face against the Milky way. So, he shouted at Leo stopping him to ask who he was:

“Sumama! We nanni?” Mulefu asked

“Godfrey Kivumbi”, Prep Prefect.

“Onakupenda wapi” Mulefu asked. Kivumbi was flummoxed. Coming from a pretty affluent middle class family, Leo had no idea what Mulefu was asking in Swahili . Problem is that both of them did now not understand each other.

So, with the arrow now straining against the bow, right in between his eyes, Leo thought fast. He decided to reason with Mulefu. Pleading that he was only a student heading back to boys end after his duties.  Mulefu was not having any of it.

“Nze ndi ku murimo” he interjected in a heavy western accent. But Leo pleaded that while that was true, Mulefu was arresting an innocent person.

“Nze ndi ku murimo. Bwembeela ku murimo, MBEELA KU MURIMO!” Mulefu barked. So Leo thought maybe “chai” will do. Quickly Leo asked Mulefu whether his wife would eat that bow and arrow he was aiming at  him on a darkened football pitch or the Shs 300 that Leo was now waving in his face. Mulfeu relented and took the money. Needless to say, that money bought Leo another three weeks of free passage to girls end anytime even when he wasn’t on duty.

Until the next time…….”SUMAMA! WE NANI??”

Leo new what to do next time.........

Confessions Of The Budonian Dumb Ass.


By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa
 


Kings College Budo Upper Classes. Photo by Yosamu Semugoma

There comes a seminal moment in one’s life where they start questioning a certain trait about themselves or actually confirm that there are somethings in life that they can or cannot do. I knew that age was catching up with me when I stopped somersaulting on the spot. But with academics, it was a hot Monday morning in 1981 at Budo Junior School when I was excluded from both P3 West (Eyabagezi) and P3 East (eyabasilu). I spent the rest of the morning sat behind the school kitchen not knowing what next. How low can that get?!?Then there was the time when Ms Kigozi wrote the heading; The Mole Concept on the blackboard. We were in the chemistry laboratory at Kings College Budo (1987). That was the time I stopped understanding Chemistry.

At Budo , I knew that whenever results were displayed on the noticeboard, I started off by looking at the bottom of the list for my name. Even then, I never thought of myself as a dunce because regardless of my position in class, I still held my position socially with clever people like the Songas, Paul Yawe and Peter Sengeri.

As a student, the fright of report signing was almost debilitating. In many cases I would have been given a dressing down before by my own father the late Rev Bombo who was a teacher. The embarrassment he would have felt I can only imagine as he sat in the staffroom marking other scripts well in the knowledge that Miss Muddu across the table was rolling her eyes after marking yet a hopeless biology answer booklet from me. I never had a comeback for my failures because he knew why. And then at report signing, some form of corporal punishment was given not because I was a random student but because oli mwaana waffe.

My first encounter with Mr Busulwa at the end of the first term in 1989 will never get out of my head. I was in S4. He took one look at my report card, and before he even suggested it, I was waiting for my five kibokos.  I thought he would stop there….No. He demoted me back to S3!!! The walk of shame back into S3A after a whole term was sheer torture. The other students had already settled in their own places so I had to find someone kind enough to share their desk with this “repeater”.

It was a while later that one teacher Miss Margaret Kusasila realised that I may have had a condition called dyslexia. When I heard of it I nearly jumped out of my skin. What did that mean? I never read much about it but looking back I now understand why the rest of my family are mathematicians and I can hardly solve a quadratic equation.

The Late Mr Bawuba Center back row.

My disinterest in the finer points of the Periodic Table or the different layers of the skin was also studied by the Late Mr Bawuba and his wife Christine Bawuba. By 1990, other teachers were also agreeing to the emerging wisdom that I was probably better at something. I was spending a lot of time reading with Godfrey and  Andrew Songa, both very intelligent in class yet their intelligence never rubbed off me.

When I joined journalism school everythingl fell into place. For the first time I sat in a class and whatever was being taught to me seemed like common sense. It was only then that I learned to enjoy what the rest of my friends had been enjoying since we started school. Here I was sixteen years later actually enjoying school because I was studying something that I actually understood. If only this had been discovered earlier maybe I wouldn’t have rebounded so many times.

Of Dark Corners and Derus.....

Gonza Lukanga Kagwas take on Phil Collins' Groovy Kind Of Love in 1988 was absolutely spot on. It was the inter house music competition and Africa house had to produce a song like no other. It was the best kept secret because no one knew who was singing the solo or what was going to be sang. A house or so had sang Nakatanza (as expected) but the competition was high.

Gonza walked on to the stage in top hat and tails!!!! TOP HAT AND TAILS!! OMG!!! No one had seen anything like it. He stood next to the grand piano and what a belter!?!? Even to this day I can hear him sing it. the reason being that I thought that it was his own work. I had never heard of the song. When I later heard Phil Collins sing it, I thought someone had to give loyalties to Gonza.


Gonza at full pelt singing. Photo Curtsey Gonza Kagwa


The song was not only what was poignant at the time. It was rumoured (and I will not confirm or deny this) that the afore mentioned gentleman had the hots for a one LN (initials only please as its only an allegation). Now, LN was ignoring his amorous moves so he conjured up this absolutely flawless performance so as to win the damsel's heart. I don't know whether the plan worked.

But from the above story, we at Budo in those days enjoyed a healthy social life the school being a mixed, coeducational school (what does that mean? Co..what?). Mention words like Bursary, deru and shhhhhh (in small words) dark cornering and many peoples' ears prick up. I can never over emphasise the importance of Saturday roll call when students dressed to thrill! At this juncture, I want you all to think about your position in the roll call line. I was using "Mwenkanya" then so I was near the Nagundis!!! Bliss. If you were a Sse-something, suffer! Wasn't it ever so political? And then we went to the dinning room where upon we would wait for entertainment thereafter.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfVuBIi6Qj0

I was of the Main hall persuasion. Never was a member of the Contact group and if I was ever seen there, I had other ulterior motives (rather get that out of the way soon............choir front line more like).To me, Chapel and The main hall were diametrically opposed. When the late Mr E K Bawuba arrived in 1980, there was a general intake of breath as he belonged to the Bazukufu group. We thought all freedoms were going to be curtailed. how wrong were we? Never did Kings College Budo have derus and house parties like we did in Bawus' time! Never. Lord, did we dance.





Entertainment was varied as we  all know. Derus were the best. Why the hell did we dance in large circles?ela abamu kumwe manyi muli bafuumbo naye nkyababanja!!!  Asadu implored us "Do you want a music oba a filimu?" The Obaces, The Mawanda and The Wabulyas brought the videos. Invasion USA, Deadly Prey, Nails of Death, RAMBO!!!  But I know many of you didnt watch them anti daaka konaring. It was even more dangerous in Chapel. Yes, lets get the secrets out. Those people in Contact had a habit of bringing films on the reel! The worst time was when the film was coming to the end. It would go 5...4....3...2....now if you haven't finished ebibyo Nyenje is about to switch the lights on. So it was always better to have one eye on the thickness of that reel, never the film.



S4 Social with Gayaza Photo by Moses Kinobe

 And then there was the problem of Minyigos. Sorry but this must be mentioned. Promises!!!! Some never materialised

And then that most difficult of all male functions; the walk to Bursary road. I went. I escorted but only escorting someone elses' kyana (you know your self) and the humiliation of escorting someone elses' kyana was final and complete. Because just as you arrived near the drum/bell, you would be relieved of your duties.

Budo had couples that were incredible. I wont mention names now. Abaantu bafuumbo but I know that I can mention Edward Tebandeke and Wini Bemba Kagere. I must submit that this was the cutest couple ever. The two come from the royal clan and there was an ease about them. They were the same height, cracked the same jokes. Even Rev and Kamuhanda never bothered them. There relationship was so sweet that up to this day, I think, Budonians of that era took ownership of it. Both of them moved on after but they are good friends. Their problem (and I think their partners at the moment) is that whenever there is a Budo function, they are pushed together.


As always, Tebandeke and Wini pushed together extreme right.


I write like we never actually went for any lessons. We did. And my next instalment will be on that subject.

Sometimes we just need to log off!!

When Gary Lineker, the former England international wrote on twitter (18^th January 2013)  “I m leaving twitter for personal reasons. Thanks all, it made the news the next day here in the United Kingdom. Speculation was rife on all social media sites as to what those “personal reasons” were. To date, it seems that those reasons were simply that he had got tired of twitter.

A month ago (I reckon in a state of pique), I decided to take a few weeks off facebook. I had got to a point when I spent far too much time on the website not accomplishing much. So, I decided to deactivate my account. For anyone who has tried to do this, the button is well hidden. I couldn’t find it so I called on the services of Google. Upon finding it, I went through the “Spanish Inquisition” as to why I wanted to leave facebook. I managed to anyway and in a state of panic, I thought my life was about to come to an end. I had no online presence. How was I going to deal with this? Talking to a  friend of mine about my actions  she agreed “Sometimes I tell myself I need to get off FB and then I think - but who will know about me - like if am not on then I have been wiped off the face of the earth and from people's memories!”

Is this the way that some of us have become addicted to these sites? Well, the next day was different. For a start, my mobile phone was not clogged with message reminders. Apart from emails, there was nothing. It was quiet! It took me a while to get used not to check my phone for status updates but as time went on, I realised how liberating this was.

Status updates had become my bane. From the beginning, I didn’t care much what I wrote. After all this was a bit of fun. But then I realised that I was telling people all that I was doing day by day. The satisfaction came from the comments.  As I became good at writing these updates, the more comments came through. They became addictive and in a strange sort of way, a marker to how people were judging my intelligence or wit. If I updated and got less than 8 comments, I scrutinized the update. Where had I gone wrong? What could I have done better?

As a former media student and writer, I am aware of targeting audiences. My facebook friends list is well over a thousand people. A huge percentage of this, maybe 65%, is former school mates. The next largest group are people that I worked with in my home town Bristol. Then other smaller groups follow. So, cunningly, to increase my “ratings” I suppose, I targeted these updates. I suspected which updates would bring the most traffic on my site.

Status updates in my view are a form of diary entry. These are things that one should be comfortable to say in public. They are like a diary entry but one that you would like others to read about. One the most confusing writers I have ever read, Professor Noam Chormsky said that “Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.” In status updates we employ cognitive science by presenting information in such a way that influences intelligence and behaviour through how this information is presented. In writing these updates, I have always tried to be witty, in some cases betraying my journalistic instincts. 

The downfall to them however is the tendency for many people to become Laissez-faire while writing these updates forgetting one of the most fundamental things in our lives; privacy. When Mark Zuckerberg founder of facebook was speaking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco he said that privacy was no longer a "social norm". "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people …….That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." Well facebook has really eroded privacy where people are comfortable to update thus “Having a cuddle with the hubby having a glass of wine. Who knows what may follow ;)” (That sign at the end by the way means “wink”). Why would anyone want to know that one is having a cuddle with the hubby? I thought that is a private time with the hubby so better keep it private. And the hubby is sat there as this update is being uploaded? What we write and the photos we upload stay online forever even if they are “deleted”.

The loss of privacy for me had started becoming like a yoke, where I started feeling like I was living in a glass cage, having to get my life qualified by my online friends. I found that this created other problems. Relating to people like this blunts real relationships. Once I used to pick up the phone and call people up. With facebook, I felt like I was part of someone’s life because I looked through their photos and liked the baptism album. Matters came to a head when I rang up my daughters godfather only  to find out that  in the intervening months he had become a father again. I made things worse by calling his wife by another name!!

Facebook is an interesting portal I must say. I have many friends whom I wouldn’t have been able to keep in touch with as easily as I do these days. But there comes a time when we all must, at a certain point in time, switch off the damn thing and remember that people don’t exist online alone. It is good sometimes to log off! I certainly won’t get off facebook but it’s time to do things differently. And like Garry Lineker, just go away without necessarily arousing suspicion. In my language Luganda there is a saying that “Nazina obuluungi atuuka ekiseela naava mu ddiro” (Even a good dancer stops at the end of the night). Yes, I just got tired of the damn thing!!!

Life isnt that lonely abroad.......

By Arthur Mwenkanya Katabalwa,  Stanley Gazemba writes an article; http://www.unaatimes.com/2011/09/an-african-living-away-from-home-a-sad-and-lonely-life-in-the-us/ , about a book, which chronicles the dire life of an African immigrant living in the USA. In the article, a line catches my eye about the book which is meant to make people think about immigrating. It reads, “…….Which is enough reason why all potential immigrants need to read this book; if only to take the scales off their eyes.”  I say no immigrant wanting to make a life outside of his or her own motherland should read that book. I am yet to read the whole book but let me react to what Stanley Gazemba highlights.

First of all, any would be immigrant or indeed anyone already immigrated like I have, should ask some fundamental questions as to why they are in the country that they are in. What has taken one away from their motherland? Have they left by force or is it by choice? If it is by force, where one has to run away from persecution of any kind then the argument is different.

Let me on this occasion concentrate on some of us who have moved abroad out of choice. I live in the United Kingdom. And by all intents and purposes, The United Kingdom is my second home. Uganda, my country of origin, will always be where I came from. Now, I live in the UK and I had better make things work here.

When I had just moved to the UK, one of my relatives made a very interesting comment to me. She asked me to put a time limit on how long I was staying in the UK else I would always live in transit, where I would have fridges, shoes and all sorts of things by the doorway waiting to be taken back to Uganda when I returned. They would be there ten years later if I wasn’t putting a time limit.

My father, the Late Rev Laban Bombo once told me while I was wasting time as a teen-ager that life was not a rehearsal. This is it. No replay! So when one decides to leave their country of origin by their own choice to live in the UK, USA or Timbuktu, don’t waste time. I have met so many people here in the UK and in Europe, who have lived away from their countries for decades and in many cases the most productive time of their lives and they curse and reject the countries they are in. What a waste of time! One may as well be in prison. Because what I have seen is that people live like that with one eye on their country of origin and don’t develop what they have because “lumu tujja kuda ku butaka” (one day we will go back home). When?

But let me turn to those who are living abroad or are thinking of moving abroad. First of all, to those wanting to move abroad, the streets in New York, London and certainly in Stoke On Trent, UK where I live are not paved with gold. They are paved with grey concrete slabs!!! One has to work hard. I am not very sure of the state of the economy in my native Uganda at the moment. I haven’t been for a while. I have never worked there for more than seven months in all my adult life. But from what I remember when I last worked there as a fledgling journalist, there wasn’t much for me to do. Apart from passing time sitting at Radio Buganda with Shanks Vivie D or searching for scraps of work from The New Vision. Life was a struggle. If things have improved now, the passage of time and the growth in the economy have helped.

When I moved to the UK, I was made aware that no job was not doable. Thankfully my family had been through the UK for education and on holiday so I was warned. My attitude stopped at London’s Heathrow airport. Bills have to be paid. Back in Uganda, my mother used to ask me to run to the neighbor for a pinch of salt if we had none. Not here. It is just not the done thing. One doesn’t walk about to the neighbor’s house asking for a spoonful of salt. Sorry, but this isn’t Uganda.

The reality abroad is obvious. One is abroad. So, the sooner that one makes that adjustment the better. “Abroad” is just not dire for lonely foreigners. It is dire for everyone who isn’t on a decent income. And that is true for everywhere else. What makes the pill easier to swallow in a country where one is from is that that person will know how to survive. I have been in the company of a British man in Uganda who was broke. I wonder what letters he wrote back home about the situation in Uganda was because he had resorted to selling roasted ground nuts.

The article highlights the loneliness that many immigrants face abroad. This is a major problem. My father once told me that the loneliest place he had ever been to was London’s Trafalgar square. Yet he was standing there with about two thousand other people. One of my loneliest times ever was in Uganda when I went to boarding school at Busoga College Mwiri. Simply because I was away from home. I was just across the Nile not abroad.

Culturally, people need to understand that unlike like in the Ugandan public transport where one will know the life history of ones neighbour before departure, things aren’t done like that. But hope isn’t lost. Not everyone abroad is walking about singular. Efforts need to be made to develop a circle of friends. Attend events and civil functions. The danger always is that people from similar backgrounds tend to congregate together. This has led to ghettos developing. I am also riled by the failure for people to integrate. This experiment of liberals around the world forging a multi cultural society is a failure and a farce in my judgment.
Another viewpoint that was put across was that the poor immigrants are shocked by the weather. Let me put this across this clearly. Even indigenous people are fed up with the weather. It’s atrocious!! Why are European resorts filled to capacity in the summer with people sunning themselves? Because the weather north of a certain parallel is just terrible. When I have been on holiday in the Mediterranean I have been put on a flight back to the UK in a volcanic mood because like any one who has been on a flight descending into any major UK airport, break through the cloud and one finds that the darkness has settled across the land. Descend into Entebbe and one will not see a cloud in sight from Yumbe in the West Nile region where one feels properly in Ugandan airspace. On the other hand though, I look forward to the spring in the UK because everything smells so fresh. The flowers are a riot of color!!!

Living away from home isn’t as bad as it is portrayed. It is hard. Things are not as we have known them back at home but why are so many of us abroad despite the pain and anguish so depressingly put in that book? Because it isn’t that bad.

Tia Sharp; A life cut short so young.

By Arthur Katabalwa

The following is an article that I wrote about Tia Sharp, a young girl who was found killed in her own grandmothers house.

Tia Sharp was a 12 year old girl hardly known by anyone beyond her south London home. By all accounts, there seemed to be nothing different from this young girl with all girls her age around the country. On 3 August while the rest of us were enjoying the Olympics on TV, Tia was reported missing having last been seen at the home of her grandmother Christine Sharp, 46, in New Addington, Croydon.  It has now been reported that the partner of Tia Sharp's grandmother Stuart Hazell  has been charged with murdering the 12-year-old.

This is a truly tragic story which sadly has been seen repeated around the country on several occasions. Young girls like her murdered by people with whom they are supposed to feel safe with. Mr Hazell has yet to be convicted of the murder of Tia. But to all this lies another footnote that hasn’t been well documented.
Mr Hazell was partner to Christine Sharp, grandmother to Tia. At some point in the past, Stuart Hazell was also partner to Natalie, mother to Tia. One starts to question how matters came to this.

It has also been reported that Stuart Hazell was a convicted drug offender. My question therefore is why did Christine Sharp invite to her bed a man who had been seeing her daughter and had been convicted of drugs offences? She then later on leaves this young girl in the same house with this man as she goes off to work supposedly a night shift?

Without a doubt relationships between adults fail and that is one of the fallibilities of man. However, in such instances, kids must be protected when these things happen. I wonder what Tia thought of Hazel? I don’t know if she knew him when he was with her mother but surely this matter would have come to light at some point. How then would it make her think about adult relationships? With Hazell bed hoping between daughter and mother would that put relationships in a better light?

I am certainly not perfect. Relations breakdown. After that breakdown there is a point where any level headed adult draws the line where their children’s’ stability is concerned. Where their children's' welfare is of no compromise or discussion. What we see here is a failure to respect that. Tia Sharp was oscillating between two homes where in one of them the male was boyfriend to the women therein at least at a certain point. Catherine Sharp on the other side should have known better not to invite a person convicted of drugs offences into her bed. Worse still, a man who had shared a bed romantically with her daughter Natalie. Children are involved. I find it incredibly sad that we adults fail to respect that and go on to satisfy our libidos.

Louise Thompson a mother from Weston Super Mare said “Sadly I think some people conduct their lives in ways very different to others. The ones that conduct themselves in the widely accepted way [then] get accused of throwing around stereotypes, but I can't help but feels if the cap fits they (the ones who conduct in the less accepted way) should wear it. Awful circumstances but it reminds me of the Shannon Matthews case (thankfully that little girl is alive but what she must have going around her head is anyone's guess). I just find the whole thing leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth”.

Tia Sharp interrupted our viewing of the Olympics. Indeed some people may not have heard of her story just like that of Shafilea Ahmed. Hopefully their tragic deaths will not be drowned out by the roar from the Olympic stadium.