Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

"It takes guts to stand up to bullies, especially if they're living next door."

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OPINION: As Nia Glassie's killers face inevitable long sentences, I can't help wondering about the rest of us, who help make the world she lived and died in.

Not that I have any sympathy for the offenders in this case, especially her hopeless mother, but the law is dealing with them. What it can't deal with is the climate that lets small children suffer, the climate of fatal indifference that we make together.

Where was everyone while Nia was being tortured? Did nobody really know what was going on, as her mother outrageously insisted she didn't? When she and her mother were abandoned by her father - because she wasn't a boy! - did that have to be a death sentence? How indignant is he now entitled to be?

People did know what was happening, of course. With the murder verdicts came a dawning of awareness among neighbours of that appalling household that yes, children do die, and yes, if some people are left to their own devices they are capable of anything.

They heard the child's cries over the fence; they even witnessed some of the cruelty; but they did nothing, they said, because there were other adults present, and it was therefore not up to them to act. It was the same story at Nia's previous address, where the misery seems to have begun in earnest.

There were observers enough who didn't help her there, and I don't let them off the hook, either. They all helped her to die by their inaction, as did her absent father, whose abdication of responsibility, and rejection, seems to have set the tragedy in motion.

Neighbours who gave evidence, those who pretended they knew nothing, those who could have lifted the telephone to tell someone, all share some responsibility. It wasn't just up to the adults around Nia to look after her: it's up to all of us to look after each other, surely, and to act when we have reason to doubt anyone's safety.

When bullies run rampant the inevitable outcome is death. They can - and do - push it that far, if we let them. We so lack courage. We've abandoned right and wrong, those stern and steady compasses, in favour of weak apologies and excuses. "It was someone else's fault." "I didn't know." "I had a nasty childhood." "I didn't think it would hurt." "I was pissed." "She was ugly." "I just felt like it."

We are collectively in awe of bullies - in homes, schools, workplaces - and give them too much power. If we truly shared a belief that what they do is wrong, we could do something collectively about it, but it's easier not to.

Too many of us condone violence, even as part of the glue that sticks families together. We condone it because we don't resist it, and in any case, we sometimes seem unsure of what wrong is. We have to look beyond the justice system to discover that; it's too crude a tool to deal with what should be in our hearts. The post-university debating society we call legal practice isn't up to it.

Yet it's more complicated. It takes guts to stand up to bullies, especially if they're living next door. People fear retaliation, and don't believe they'll be supported if they speak up. For reporting to be effective, there has to be the right response from police and welfare, and support. This doesn't always happen.

As a small example, a friend recently tried to do the socially responsible thing. The public phone box opposite his flat is regularly vandalised, and in the small hours of one morning he rang the police because it was happening again.

By the time he'd spelt his name aloud several times, given his age, address and phone number, and greeted with stunned silence the suggestion that he leave his flat himself to confront the offenders in the street, the phone box was trashed yet again, and the vandals had disappeared.

As a gay man, the chance that he'd have been assaulted if he'd tried to stop the thugs was magnified.

If he'd confronted them with several friends for moral support, it would have been seen as provocation, and if he'd hurt anyone involved in self defence, he'd have potentially faced months of misery awaiting trial, and lost a fortune paying for a legal defence. It just wasn't worth his while to have tried to do anything.

Would a response to a call about a crying child be any more helpful? Are we sure?

- © Fairfax NZ News