The Casualty: A Parable

Once there was a care home, and from this home, a boy escaped. He had been beaten and abused in the home, and did not know how he was to go on. In his desperation, he tried to hang himself, but the rope broke, and there, by the side of the road, he lay huddled and wretched, curled up and sobbing, with a broken wrist.

Now it so happened that a senior civil servant came to pass that way, and as he drove by, he saw the boy, and recognised him, for over the years, he had dealt with the home in his capacity as administrator. And he had appointed the supervisor of the home, and had only recently written a fulsome letter praising him for all the good work that he had done, and he knew that the boy came from a troubled background. He was in a hurry to an important meeting of a local charity, and thought to himself that the supervisor would surely come in search of the boy anyway, and he was a good man, and would know the best way to deal with the runaway.

A little later in the day, along came a politician, in his expensive car, and he wound down the automatic window as he saw the boy. Then he thought of how the press might get hold of the situation, and politicise it, and how it would look bad that such matters could happen in care, and he might be a material witness in court. Only yesterday, afternoon, he had been having lunch in his club with the senior civil servant responsible for such matters, and he was sure that such abuses could not happen now. It was a matter for the police anyway, and was it not he, himself, who provided them with all the resources they needed to deal with such matters, and had declared that publically. So he wound his window back up, and drove on.

Then came a senior judge, and he was on his way to church, already late, and he saw the boy. He reasoned that he did not know if anything had happened, and if an investigation took place, then it would be his place to be involved, and deliver a balanced judgement, so that the truth would come out. And anyway, he would pray for the boy when he got to church, and the prayers of such a righteous man as himself would surely be heard. So he, too, drove on.

Finally, as the day was getting dark, a journalist, one of those derided as the gutter press, and not an Islander at all, came along in his scruffy car. He saw the boy, and gave him water to drink, made a makeshift sling, and took him along to the casualty department for his bruises to be tended, and his broken wrist to be mended, and left word and his number so that the boy and the department would know how to contact him; and he told the boy he would return to make sure he was cared for properly, and tell his tale publically if needs be, so that the injustices of the past would be brought to light.

Now answer this: who was the "good Samaritan" to the boy?