Doctors to tell pupils truth about knives

SCOTTISH doctors will lecture young teenagers in schools on the horrific reality of violence as part of a campaign against the nation's "booze and blades" culture.

Medics are so tired of patching up assault victims – frequently for months or years after incidents – they have decided to take their anti-violence message directly into the classroom. Scores of doctors – ranging from surgeons specialising in facial reconstruction to A&E consultants – approached police for advice on how to combat the epidemic of casual violence.

The doctors will spell out the devastating long-term effects of injuries, using a short film, their own stories of treating the wounded and even real-life photos of victims.

Christine Goodall, a specialist dental surgeon who helps rebuild mouths after violent attacks, said: "Our strength is the fact we see the consequences of violence, consequences that the kids don't realise.

"Kids are so used to watching things on TV where people have dreadful things done to them and then they just get up and walk away. We need to tell them: 'You are not invincible and it does not take very much for something really bad to happen to you.'"

The scheme – to be called Medics Against Violence – has won the backing of the World Health Organisation and Scotland's own police-led Violence Reduction Unit.

It will initially be rolled out in Inverclyde, where there have been several high-profile killings of young people in recent years, and in Glasgow.

Goodall has prepared a seven-minute talk, timed to be exactly as long as it takes to bleed to death once a major blood vessel has been severed. "At the end I will tell them that an average ambulance call-out takes eight minutes," she added.

Some gangfighters, doctors explained, believe a stab in the bottom or the leg can't kill. Rudy Crawford, the much-respected veteran accident and emergency consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, knows that's not true.

He will be going to schools to explain why. "There is no safe place to stab someone," he said. "Even a one-inch-blade can kill."

A "square-go" – a fight without blades – is little better. Crawford said. "People can be felled, straight down. Bang. They're gone. Your hands and feet are lethal weapons too."

Doctors to visit schools also include an oncologist and other non-casualty specialists who know the cost of violence to the NHS. Studies in England – where violent crime is not as common as in Scotland – suggest that injuries from violent attacks account for up to 6% of the annual health budget. The annual bill north of the border is thought to exceed £500m.

Goodall yesterday described "secondary victims", the people whose treatment is delayed because their beds are taken up with attack victims.

She and her colleagues will also make it clear that the health consequences of violence can last forever. "A young man with a scarred face will find it harder to get a good job and he will find it harder to get a good girlfriend," said one doctor. "That chib could mean he is never really healthy."

Inverclyde schools, like those elsewhere, are largely free of violence but not of its consequences. One school, Gourock High, is still traumatised by the death, by stabbing, of a 14-year-old pupil, Darren Pyper, last year. Everyone, children and staff alike, faced a "huge impact" from that single event, Ian Fraser, Inverclyde's top education official, said.

'I told my son to run away if somebody had a knife'

BRIAN Pyper knew what there was to fear for his son. The one-time funeral director had lain out enough victims of violence. But he was always confident his lad would never become one.

"I told Darren to run away if somebody had a knife," the 45-year-old businessman said yesterday. "I remember telling him that just two weeks before he died. And he said he would."

Darren Pyper had just turned 14 when he was stabbed three times with a Commando blade after he got caught up, by sheer chance, in a row between two neighbours in his home town of Gourock, Renfrewshire. The well-liked teenager had no links with gangs, fights or trouble.

Brian, 45, said: "He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing we could have done.

"I never thought in a million years he would be stabbed. I had tried to educate him. The streets aren't safe, I told him. When he was younger he would come into the parlour and I would show him and – if there was a young guy in – tell him: 'That is the way the world is.'

"We had the police contract, all the shootings, the stabbings, the suicides, the people who fell out of windows. All the sudden deaths in Greenock. It was horrible."

Darren died on the evening of September 19, 2007, in a friend's flat. That afternoon the Bob Marley fan had been working in his family's flooring and carpeting business, HG Pyper, in nearby Greenock.

Brian said: "He was serenading the ladies with that Tom Jones song, 'The Green Green Grass Of Home', only he was singing it with w's instead of r's, like the old joke out of Only Fools And Horses."

Later that evening Brian got a call from Darren's mobile. But it wasn't Darren. It was the boy's grandmother, phoning to tell Brian that something terrible had happened. Darren died in hospital. Later the man accused of his murder, 64-year-old William Brown, died of a heart attack before he could stand trial.

Darren's mother – Brian's ex-wife Margo Hagen – has campaigned for an end to knife crime, leading scores of her son's schoolfriends and relatives in a march through Greenock earlier this year.

Brian said he was delighted that doctors will talk to children about violence in Inverclyde. But he can't bear to go to the area any more – other than to visit his son's grave.