A baby's sorrow

Many of you who read my blog know that I have spent 17 yrs working in law enforcement. During the last two years I have spent many months out in Kenya investigating child sexual abuse. After the investigation concluded I decided to take a few months off work and come out to Kenya  to volunteer at an orphanage in the area I had been working, wanting to see things from a different perspective than when I had been here in an official role. 
In my career I have seen and dealt with many horrific, tragic, and sad incidents. Like many of my colleagues, we deal with each incident and then put it behind us and move on to the next, most of us harden emotionally as the years pass as we see more and more tragedy and heartache. I've always been the kind of person not to take my work home with me and worry about it, I consider myself very lucky that I can do that. Those that know me, know that I am quite tough emotionally, not a lot phases me or upsets me.
Quite frankily I thought I'd seen it all and thought nothing could shock me, I was wrong. 
A couple of days ago the social worker/ welfare officer for the orphanage came into the office to tell us about a little boy in town who was in hospital after being attacked by his stepfather. His mother was present during the attack and tried to intervene, she was beaten as well. The father was arrested and is currently in jail. The details were horrific and we started the processes to ensure this boy comes to our safe haven as soon as possible. 
Today the social worker asked me to go and see the boy who had been released from hospital and was currently in a safe house. So off I went to the safe house accompanied by our social worker. The picture above is of me holding the little boys arm as the matron removed the boys clothes to show me his injuries. In fact, let us get one thing straight, this is not a little boy, this is a BABY of around 18 months old. I'll call him Baby L. His entire body was covered in human bite marks. I didn't count them , but I would estimate that there were in excess of 30 bites, bites that had broken the skin, drawn blood and torn off chunks of flesh. The bites covered his arms, legs, back, chest, stomach, face, hands and even his genitals. It was clear he was still in a lot of pain despite being released from hospital. He could not be picked up as he was in so much pain.
Seeing this shocked me to my core, this baby had such sorrow in his eyes, he didn't cry whilst I sat with him but his eyes were brimming with tears, as were mine. I wanted so desperately to hold this baby and give him a loving cuddle, but couldn't as he was in too much discomfort. He just stared at the ceiling with what can only be unimaginable horror going through his mind.
I later told a collleague in the UK who specialises in dealing with child abuse around the world about what I had encountered. This colleague has seen far worse things in his career than me and  had just been having a conversation at work about how human depravity couldn't shock him anymore, when he heard this story he realised that he had been wrong, and it had. 
How a human being can do such an horrific, brutal act to a helpess baby is beyond comprehension to most of us. This wasn't an act of terrorism, it wasn't war, it wasn't a religious ritual, I can only speculate it was as a result of drink, drugs and some mental instability.
Hopefully Baby L will be brought into our care in a few days time, where he will receive the love, care and attention he desperately needs. He will always have his scars from the ferrocious attack, but I hope that as he is so young the memories will fade and he won't remember what happened as time goes on.

Most of the 100 plus children in our childrens centre have suffered horrific trauma of one kind or another, most of them have gone on to become bright and happy children, so there is hope for Baby L when he comes in.
I have recently written on our website about several of the children in our orphanage and what they have been through. Please visit the 'meet the children' section of restartafrica.org to find out more.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.