The horrific murder of schoolgirl Ana Kriégel shocked the nation, both for its brutality and the young age of both victim and perpetrators.
Since the sentencing of the two boys who murdered Ana in May 2018, when they were just 13-years-old, middle Ireland has struggled to come to terms with the details.
There seems to be a desperate need for an explanation as to why these boys from normal, ‘respectable’ homes turned into savage killers.
An explanation so that it can be processed in the minds of those who categorise crime and criminals into neat and easily understandable boxes.
Boxes that mean the people who commit these crimes are not like the residents of suburban Ireland, they are career criminals from broken and dysfunctional homes.
It’s easier to blame the parents of a child who commits crime than to accept that child could be your own.
CCTV footage shown during the trial means the exact route Ana took with the teenager known as Boy B as he lured her to a disused farmhouse where she was murdered, is known.
Scientific analysis, forensic experts deployed extensively during the investigation, gave details of exactly where she was in the room when she was attacked and what objects were used by the other murderer, known as Boy A, to beat her to death.
The how is all known, the why is not. Following the murder of James Bulger in Merseyside in 1993 there was much debate as to why two 10-year-old boys lured the beautiful, smiling toddler from his mother and left his battered broken body on railway tracks.
Unlike Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, Boy A and B cannot and will never be named officially due to a lifelong court order.
Knowing their names will not change the horrific circumstances of the crime, it will not bring Ana back to her loving parents.
A couple who have held themselves with such dignity, who have described with such loving detail every aspect of the little girl they adopted from Russia.
Who have made Ana more than just a victim of crime but told the nation what a wonderful young woman she was growing into and gave a glimpse of what she could have been.
They also spoke of the bullying, the online abuse their daughter was subjected to, a disturbing glimpse into the modern world that we are bringing our children and grandchildren into.
One that is so unlike our own childhoods that we understandably struggle at times to comprehend it.
In Northern Ireland we have endured so much violence it’s easy to become desensitised to it.
As a journalist it’s almost an essential requirement to be able to compartmentalise the horror of what you’re listening to and reporting on for self-preservation.
But when it comes to violence against children that is simply not possible nor would I want it to be, for the day you fail to be disturbed by the murder of a child is the day you’ve lost your humanity.
Maybe now is the time for some serious and honest debate about what kind of future society we are creating.
One where violence against women is used as a form of sexual gratification.
For anyone over the age of 40, a look through the underwear section of Kays catalogue was as about as close to pornography as their teenager self was likely to encounter.
Now children of primary school age have devices in their hand and on their person 24 hours a day that give instant access to violent pornography.
Content that shows women as objects to be violently abused for the gratification of men. Where sex is something done to a woman not with her.
The impact this has long term on very young and underdeveloped minds, both male and female, is still not known given how recent this has become.
But that makes it all the more important to deal with it now before those young susceptible minds move into an adult world with their skewed experience of love and life.
