THE neglect, torture, and murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes must be one of the worst recent cases of the gross abuse of a child. It has been made more unbearable by the audio recordings and CCTV footage documenting the extent of his physical injuries and his cries for help.

Many of us will be finding it simply terrible to contemplate that this little boy knew, at the age of only six, that he was unsafe, that he was the victim of torture by those who should have loved and cherished him. Comment has focused on the sentencing (no sentence long enough, bring back the death penalty), on the effects of lockdown, and on the failure of procedures by the police and social services to protect him (underfunded, incompetent).

But the case also opens a rare shaft down into the darkness of the human heart. Human beings are capable of monumental cruelty and indifference. The cold stare of Emma Tustin, who was found guilty of his murder, is as much part of the human condition as the cheerful face of little Arthur in happier times.

Fortunately, I did not have to write a sermon last weekend. But, had I done so, I might have invited the congregation to reflect on the Advent collect, which asks for “grace to cast away the works of darkness”. We don’t often recognise that the works of darkness are all too natural to us. We all have an inkling of the psychopath’s reality, the ruthlessness that ensures our survival even when it is at others’ expense, even when the “others” are innocent and vulnerable. If love awaits us when we are born, we are blessed; it cannot be guaranteed.

There are brutal parents. There are brutal circumstances. There are the accidents of genetics. We do not know what turned Thomas Hughes, Arthur’s father, who was convicted of his manslaughter, and Tustin, Hughes’s partner, into the monsters they became; but the likelihood is that it did not start with them, that there was somewhere a deficit of love, a lack of that prevenient grace that, if properly tutored, might have enabled them to resist the works of darkness. As W. H. Auden put it in “September 1, 1939”: “I and the public know, What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.”

Little Arthur’s dreadful death points to something deeper than the evil deeds of the individuals involved. We have become a society that would always rather tolerate than condemn (at least until something goes wrong); a society that fetishes pleasure above responsibility, personal choice above duty, correct procedure above discernment. Without the armour of light, and without the moral intelligence and self-discipline to discern it, we are helpless. Tustin and Hughes are now destined for years in prison. I suspect that rehabilitation is a vain hope: prison communities tend to be unforgiving when it comes to crimes against children.