What This Little Boy Saw Is the Tip of a Terrible Iceberg Story of the Week Abigail Witchalls's Son Saw Her Stabbed in an Awful Act of Violence. Lucy Bannerman Finds That Thousands of Children Are Victims of Insidious and Lengthy Trauma in Their Own Homes

The Herald › April 30, 2005

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Summary

JOSEPH Witchalls was on his way back from a parenttoddler group when his mother's attacker held a knife to his throat. After seeing his mother being stabbed in the neck, the 21-month-old was thrown, still strapped in his buggy, on top of her as she lay bleeding.

For anyone who saw the photograph of Abigail Witchalls smiling, motionless, towards her husband and child from a hospital bed, the impact which the horrific, and apparently motiveless, attack has had on her life is painfully clear.

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Extract

What This Little Boy Saw Is the Tip of a Terrible Iceberg Story of the Week Abigail Witchalls's Son Saw Her Stabbed in an Awful Act of Violence. Lucy Bannerman Finds That Thousands of Children Are Victims of Insidious and Lengthy Trauma in Their Own Homes

But how will the memory of that morning affect the toddler reaching out to touch her lips? How will he overcome an event which has suddenly split his young life into "before" and "after"?

Parallels were drawn between this week's attack in a quiet Surrey village and the murders of Rachel Nickell, who was stabbed while searching for blackberries on Wimbledon Common with her two-yearold son, Alex, in 1992, and Lin and Megan Russell, who died after being attacke...

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