Are you your brother's keeper? your father's/mother's/sister's/friend's defender?

Yesterday on the radio I heard a woman tell of the neglectful and very distressing treatment of her elderly father, leading to his suffering and death in hospital. Her voice was clearly affected by emotion as she spoke of the guilt she feels and will carry to her grave by not speaking out about it at the time, not trying to put a stop to it, not fighting for him to be treated compassionately as a human being, he who had been a good man, a good father, a father whom she had loved.

We are all tempted to do nothing in the face of evil when the evil is being done to someone else. We are all tempted to kid ourselves that things aren't really as they seem, or that by 'interfering' we would maybe make matters worse, to delude ourselves that matters will surely improve without our having to intervene, to be brave, to risk getting into some sort of trouble or embarrassment. And we leave the victims, the suffering ones, the ill and weak and frail and exhausted ones, our relatives, our loved ones, our friends, to struggle on without our help. We have become complicit in the negligence.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke. Fight for accountability in the NHS. - See Fighting the System.