Child Soldier

Aoife and Jack were next-door neighbours and best friends. Their parents were friends. Aoife came from a Muslim family. Jack’s family were Christian.

Together, they lived in rural Ireland. Neither family had much by way of income or security. But they had each other and that was keeping them afloat.

Jack and Aoife played games in the street. Aoife, being 2 years younger than he, held him in such high regard. He was fun, he didn’t treat her as an inferior the way other boys did and he always made sure that she was allowed to play football with him and his friends, even though they protested.

When Jack was 12, he was recruited by a cult and brainwashed. He was told that Muslims were the enemy and that they were conspiring to kill him and his family and destroy his country. Jack, being 12, was susceptible to their lies and terrified at the thought that Aoife and her family were plotting to kill him and his parents.

Jack wasn’t seen for a few days. When he returned, he was different. Aoife noticed something was wrong but when she asked him, he told her to go away and leave him alone.

‘I believed that she was the devil,’ he says now.

One night, he crept into Aoife’s bedroom and slit her throat. He then stabbed her mother 6 times in the chest and back and punctured her father’s lungs before burning their house to the ground. Nobody survived.

For that, the cult rewarded him for his bravery and service. He earned the right to carry a rifle and do ’God’s work’. This is what he was told. Since that terrible night, Jack went on to kill 16 more people, 11 of which were just children, his own age or younger. Jack thought that what he was doing was for the good of mankind and believed he was carrying out the will of a God he feared terribly.

When Jack was 15, he escaped the clutches of the cult. At a recruitment drive for more children, he was given the task of getting another child, Steven, just a 10-year-old boy, to kill his own family. That was when Jack knew that the cult were not what they seemed.

‘They told me that it was my job to protect my own family. Why wasn’t it the same for Steven?’ He tells me now as tears roll down his cheeks.

Late at night, Jack woke Steven, who was frightened and confused, having just been kidnapped. He took him by the hand and promised to return him home.

It was a long and terrifying journey and the cult were close behind but eventually. They reached safety. He kept his promise and brought Steven back to his family and was welcomed by Steven’s community. He was a hero to them and they offered him a place to stay and even a job as a carpenter to repay him for his deed. He stayed there for a short time but, while he could have built a new life for himself, all he could think about was the pain he’d caused and the hurt he was feeling. He missed his mother and father. He missed his Aoife. He knew he couldn’t bring her or her parents back but he desperately wanted to put things right.

‘I wanted so badly to go home and be held in my mother’s arms again; to help my dad in the fields. I wanted things to go back to normal. But I knew that couldn’t happen. All I could do was go back and hold my hand up and take responsibility. Anything that happened after that was not up to me but I was ready to be punished for my crimes,’ he says.

His eyes were deep and warm, trustworthy, not the eyes of a killer.

One day, he dropped his tools and headed for home. It was a long, silent journey but when he got there, he was ran out by the community and banished to the far corners of Ireland. Even his own mother, although desperate to welcome him back, was silent and never tried to help him. She looked like a stranger to him then. Nobody loved him now.

‘That was the worst part. Seeing my mother like that; so distant and in so much pain. Her eyes were raw and she aged so rapidly. I caused that,’ he said.

He left the town where he grew up in disgrace for the second time in his life.

Until recently, Jack has worked as a labourer on a farm, far away from home. Nobody knew what he’d done or where he came from because he never spoke during those 2 long and lonely years. He just kept his head down and worked.

Today, Jack has come forward and spoken up about the true horrors of his actions and the sorrow and shame he feels for what he’s done. He wants to go back to school so he can one day set up a foundation to help others who have been through what he has.

‘I want to help others now. I’m going to set up a foundation and call it Aoife.’

His new mission is a real one with no lies or hurt and that mission to make sure that no children have to go through what he has been through ever again.

NOTES: This is a fictional story about a child soldier in Ireland. Although I have seen no evidence of this happening in Ireland, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen all over the world. The stories of Child Soldiers like Jack in my story are very real and sometimes a lot more terrifying. You only have to look at the Rwandan genocide to know that this happens in the world. Does the setting change change people’s attitude towards it? It shouldn’t.

(Image taken from addictinginfo.org.)