The thing I’m finding so hard to come to terms with is I know this family. The father was at one stage my son-in-law’s best friend. They grew up together, went to school together, worked together for four years, and socialised together all the time. When my grandson played football for two years, the two older sons were in his team, and they were also best friends. Before those twins were born, my daughter used to babysit the other children from time to time. There were children’s birthday parties, sleepovers, camping weekends, and other social gatherings occasionally. Although discipline was a bit on the slack side, there was never a hint of neglect or abuse. On the contrary, those children were often spoiled with the best of everything, expensive clothes and toys, playstation, xbox, a tv in every room. The parents always had two late model cars. They always lived in nice homes albiet rented homes, but very comfortable nevertheless.
Reports of them being known to the deparment previously are incorrect. It was his brother’s family who were previously under investigation by Child Services. The only contact the Department had with the twins family was only once when one of the children went to school with a cut above his eye and the school, because of the history with his brother, reported it to Child Services - it was investigated, and was proved to be a simple accident where the child had injured himself.
About 12months ago my daughter’s family bought their own home, my son-in-law was offered a new job which he took, my grandson had to stop playing football for medical reasons, and the contact between them and this family became less regular. Anytime they did visit, and my daughter and grandchildren asked to see the twins, it was always a case of “the twins are sleeping and can’t be disturbed”. Over the last 12 mths they have only seen those twins on two occasions, the last being when they helped them to move house into the house where this happened. My daughter sat and played with the twins while the other adults moved the furniture and set up the house. She said they were beautiful healthy babies but appeared a little behind in their development. That was 8 months ago. She hasn’t seen them since. The father has visited my son-in-law several times, but the mother and children were never with him as by this stage their relationship had broken down.
Last Thursday, when my daughter picked up the children from school, they asked her if they could go visit because they hadn’t seen them in so long, and they wanted to go play with the kids for a while. So she took them. In hindsight my daughter says she should have clicked there was something odd. The mother didn’t let them into the house and instead ushered them onto the front patio, the excuse being she wanted to have a cigarette, but didn’t smoke in the house. So the children, all except the twins, played in the front yard for about 20 mins, and they sat on the patio having a cigarette. When my daughter asked about the twins, and how they were, the mother said “oh they’re fine, but they’re sleeping”. Little did she know that they were already dead, and only 3 feet inside the outer brick wall on which she was sitting against! The mother then made an excuse as to why she had to go, and my daughter left.
Well my daughter and son-in-law spent all day yesterday giving statements to the police. Apart from the grandmother, my daughter was the last person to see the mother and the other children. Needless to say, she is devastated. She’s full of emotions and grief and has thoughts that maybe if she had visited more often, insisted on seeing the twins, even snuck into their room when the mother wasn’t watching, she could have prevented this. She can’t understand why she didn’t sense something was wrong, and no matter how much I try to reassure her that this wasn’t her fault, she is flooded with “if only…” thoughts and feels she’s let those little ones down by not being there for them.
