There’s something very disturbing about the rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling aside from the disgusting and unforgiveable act itself. I won’t spend any time on the actual crime as we don’t know for sure what exactly happened but her last moments must’ve been hell on earth.

When I first read the story on the internet, I think I was reading it with a dispassionate eye, as anyone who reads the news does. What really stopped me dead in my tracks was her age: fifteen years old. I had to re-read it. I couldn’t connect the facts that her family had travelled to another area and left the 15 year old behind. Fifteen. I read it again. There was something other than the fundamentally obvious “wrong” of a family leaving a fifteen year old girl behind in a resort that is known for drugs and all sorts of sordid party activity. Fifteen. She was on some very long holiday to India. Fifteen years old. Why was she not at school? Don’t fifteen year olds study for exams this time of year? You can’t substitute home learning for important exams like this if that’s what was going on. You certainly can’t supervise them when you’ve gone to another part of the country. I just couldn’t reconcile the story in my head and I still can’t.

The mother, if that’s what you can call it, is obviously some self-satisfying throwback to a bygone hippy age. She makes my skin crawl with her ice cold speeches on the television and those gypsy style tattoos on her arms. If the McCanns have taken so much stick for leaving their children alone, this woman must do the same. Both women must carry the knowledge in their hearts that they badly let their children down. In fact, although the McCanns cannot be defended in any way for what they did, there was a much smaller statistical risk of harm coming to their children than a 15 year old girl who appeared attracted to the hedonistic lifestyle offered by Goa’s nightlife and if we can believe what we read, was no stranger to it. I think there is a case for this woman to answer to the courts for neglect of that child and for her other unfortunate children to be looked at very carefully by social services. I hope the results of her selfishness haunt her into old age.

What surprises me the most are people’s shock at the apparent corrupt police in Goa. Do me a favour – did you just come out of a spaceship or something? In an area where drugs are rife, in the sub-continent known for corrupton, did you expect something else? Did you expect them to want to draw attention to the dangers of the area and discourage the must needed tourism? The ironic thing is that all of this fuss has probably attracted greater numbers to the area, the morbid rubber neckers that get kicks out of standing in the spot where she died or drinking in the bar she was in.

It’s a sick world out there. Perhaps Ms MacKeown, the mother, will now realise it, should the cannibis smog have cleared from her cold and selfish eyes.