‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’ – Oscar Wilde
The inspiration for my latest novel, Demon, comes from a question I was asked by an audience member at an event a few years ago: ‘Can someone be born evil?’
I’ve worked in education for most of my adult life, specialising in helping young people who have emotional, social and behavioural problems. Some of my happiest times and most satisfying experiences have come when working in Pupil Referral Units with volatile young people from some of Newcastle’s most troubled and deprived areas. It’s a tough job, though, and takes a lot out of you on an emotional level, especially considering some of the things you hear about the lifestyles and backgrounds of the pupils. But I managed to connect with them, usually by remembering that there was still a child beneath the sometimes hardened exterior – a child worthy of respect and compassion.
Many of the young people in these sorts of units have come from dark places: childhoods rife with addiction, disorder, and in some cases abuse and neglect. Many of them have done bad things and committed crimes. One thing is almost universal though – they’ve all been labelled in some way: they’re all ‘bad’, they’re all ‘naughty’, and many of them have been written off almost entirely by the adults in their lives.
None of them, however, have been simply ‘born evil’.
There’s no one-size-fits-all reason that explains why young people do bad things; instead there’s a complex array of causes. It was easier in medieval times, when we could simply blame spirits and witchcraft for bad things happening. In Demon, I challenge the notion that we’ve moved on at all from this method – allocating simple causes to complex events. In fact I don’t actually believe we’re much further forward at all, which is why I introduced the trope of ‘demonic possession’ to the book – a convenient medieval explanation for an array of issues, which, alarmingly, is still propagated today by the Catholic Church.
At the heart of Demon is a societal taboo: children who kill. It’s a subject that has fascinated me for many years, but I did not feel educated enough to tackle it. Now, though, my experience working with troubled young people has given me some insight into the issue, which I’ve combined with a lifetime of consuming books, documentaries and, more recently, podcasts on the subject, all of which has helped inform my writing.
Sadly, and despite all my research, I’ve reached no conclusion about what causes children to commit murder. All I can say is there’s no single reason they do so. I know, however, from experience that when children feel like they don’t matter, they’ll do almost anything to try to correct this. When children do terrible things, they suddenly matter again. So when I was writing Demon, I formed a new question: one directed at society in general: what happens before and in the aftermath of a killing committed by a child? What could and should change to prevent the death?
In Demon I want to encourage all of us, as a society, to have to look at ourselves and ask tough questions about our decisions, the votes we cast in elections, and the ill-informed opinions we spout at each other on social media. I want us to reflect on the roles we play in a society where children kill.
I’ve stood at the school gates to pick up my son, in my comfortably upper-working class area, watching smiling children run to their waiting parents clutching paintings, feeling far from the troubles of the estates and those young people I’ve worked with. Yet I’ve seen said parents not even bother looking up from their phones as their children go for that hug. I’ve seen that moment of confusion or disappointment, and wondered about the subtle message that has been sent even here: You don’t matter.
I worry about the impact those moments have. I wonder how many times a day a child doesn’t matter. I wonder whether not mattering can provoke a desire in a child to matter. Because a child who kills matters. When your child does something terrible, suddenly Facebook isn’t important anymore.
Demon also explores the idea of blame, and where it lands in the wake of a tragedy. Who do we blame when children matter for all the wrong reasons? And what kind of justice and punishment do we imagine is appropriate when it comes to children? I know from my own experience that punishment simply doesn’t work. If it does, then why are reoffending statistics so high? With an adult, it’s easy: chuck them in jail and throw away the key, right? But what about when a child commits an unspeakable act? Are they worthy of redemption, or is that it – their life us forfeited? I don’t pretend I have the answers, far from it. In Demon, I’m trying to ask the reader the same question: it’s a tough and knotted one, and one I’m sure they’d rather not answer.
They might well prefer to adopt the alternative explanation for the killing I’ve offered them in the book: demonic possession. All the signs are there – any horror fan will spot them – and they’re the same ones people claimed to see in a young woman in Germany. Interestingly, it wasn’t any of the heartbreaking and well-documented cases of children who kill that was the biggest influence behind Demon; instead it was the case of Anneliese Michel, who died of malnutrition after undergoing sixty-seven exorcisms by German Catholic priests.
This did not happen in medieval times but in 1976.
Anneliese was diagnosed with ‘demonic possession’ after presenting with what was eventually identified as a complicated combination of temporal lobe epilepsy and mental-health issues. The medical and psychological treatment she required was replaced with a simple, ill-informed religious remedy.
In Demon every one of the six characters connected to the death of twelve-year-old Sidney Parsons has some other-worldly experience or sighting to relate, some ancient tale of witches and devils to tell. As with the priests who ‘treated’ Anneliese, perhaps it’s just easier to look outwards than back at ourselves.
But where does that leave us? If you believe a child is possessed by evil – has killed because their soul is corrupt – how do you prevent another child killing? And what punishment fits the crime of being possessed?
I am perhaps utterly unqualified to even discuss these things, because there are no clear answers to the big questions killing by children raises. I’m no better than any other parent, just trying to do their best and not always managing it. So what gives me the right to write a book about such a horrible, heartbreaking and all-too real event?
My answer is that I think it’s a writer’s job to reflect the society in which they live, and that sometimes things happen in that society that can’t be simply and neatly explained. With Demon, I’ve pushed a boat out into an uncertain sea, then cast us adrift. I wonder how different things will feel when we’ve found our way back to shore…
