This was the most difficult piece of journalism I have had anything to do with. Occasionally I have witnessed scenes of horror in war zones, but nothing was as gruelling or as emotionally tough as talking to the victims of the tragedies we reported in the film.
I will never forget talking to brave Lyn Philcox about how her evil husband Brian tormented her family for months, then gassed their two children, Amy and Owen, in the back of a car. Or listening to Val Gee describing how her obsessive husband Chris tormented her for years before stabbing their son Ryan to death and nearly killing their daughter Donna.
I will always be haunted by the tortured face of little Amy Howson in a photograph taken shortly before her death. Her father had broken many of the bones in her body before finally breaking her back across his knee.
There were many cases like this and the film shows the evil and barbarism of which human nature is capable. But it was also very inspirational. I found the sheer courage of those who, like Lynn McAuliffe and Val Gee, had survived these tragedies profoundly moving. Both have been dealt the most crushing blow. And yet they get on with their lives. Val's two daughters, Natalie and Donna, were terrific and lively girls and a tremendous credit to Val and themselves.
In Manchester we interviewed Andrea Dennis, who had endured the horror of discovering her two grandchildren dead, killed by her mentally ill daughter Jael. Both she and her brave son Leighton were displaying awesome moral nobility by standing by Jael, a devoted mother who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
If making the film was very tough for me it was ten times tougher for Lynn Ferguson, Amy Walker and Charlotte Davis, the production team who travelled the country knocking on people's doors and hearing their sad, sad stories and gently suggesting they might want to talk about the lessons to be learned from these tragedies. The film took more than six months to make. Both the production team and the families made their extraordinary efforts for only one reason. They wanted people to learn about the horror of child homicide so that we as a society can start to take steps to prevent it.
In all the cases we looked at there were warning signs that showed that children were at risk. And yet each these warning signs were ignored. Social services, who so often get blamed, are not the only agencies who could help prevent one child a week violently dying in this country. The police, doctors, judges and all of us as ordinary people have a role to play in preventing tragedy. The message of this film is that many child killings can be prevented if only society can become more alert to the known risk factors.
