Brian Rudman: Pagan pyromania is misguided

Once upon a time a few muttered incantations and a sprinkling of holy water was enough to drive away the evil spirits lurking after a murder or other awful event.

But in these post-Christian times, the magic powers of the orthodox holy men no longer hold any sway over the common folk.

Instead they've gone all pagan on us, and are demanding nothing less than the cleansing and redemptive qualities of a great bonfire.

When the house in Wainoni, Christchurch, where two female bodies were recently discovered hidden under the floorboards, suddenly went up in flames on Saturday night, no one except the police seemed particularly shocked or outraged.

Inspector Dave Lawry named it for what it was - "straight-out arson" - and said commentators who'd earlier called for the property to be removed were "misguided both in cultural terms and in law".

But Christchurch's first citizen, Mayor Bob Parker, seemed to find it difficult to hide his delight when he appeared on television the next night.

"I think, if we're honest, right across the community there was a sense it would happen," he told the Press newspaper. "One positive thing is that that memorial to murder most foul has been erased. I hope this is, perhaps, a turning point."

A turning point to what, though? A more lawless society where decent folk look the other way so the fire raisers can do their dirty work?

All Mr Parker's relaxed attitude to this arson most foul has done is to encourage more cowardly lunatics with cans of petrol to prowl his city's streets and get their rocks off.

If the dwelling of an alleged murderer is a suitable case for arson, why not that of the paedophile's, the scumbag finance company director who bankrupted all his friends and acquaintances or the swine flu victim's?

Just last year, police used force, including stun grenades, to prevent a house near Durban in South Africa from being torched by hundreds of people angered by rumours of witchcraft killings.

But in darkest 21st century Christchurch, by contrast, Inspector Lawry said it was up to the bank holding the mortgage to protect the house from arson, not his people.

Police had kept murder scene guards on the site a couple of days more after rumours of arson arose, but couldn't guard it indefinitely.

Mr Lawry added that a neighbour who had been vocal about lack of police protection "has also elected to take no action to protect his property". But what was the neighbour supposed to do? Hire a fire engine and park it alongside his house?

By my calculations, this seems to have been the third such pagan incineration in the last year or so. Back in July, a perfectly good Housing Corporation home was destroyed by arson in Porirua's Titahi Bay just three weeks after two women were killed there.

Early in 2008, three attempts were made to burn down the remote South Otago home of murder victim Michael Hutchings, before it was finally gutted.

No doubt the endless reruns on television of the Bain family house going up in flames, that accompanied the retrial of David Bain, has encouraged this strange ritual.

At least the 1994 incineration of the Bain home in Dunedin after the mass murder of the whole family, apart from David, was in controlled circumstances.

The remaining relatives decided that given the house was in such a ramshackle condition anyway, and was an arson event waiting to happen, that it was better to do it under the supervision of the fire service.

The downside was that, as a scheduled event, film footage of this gothic conflagration with all its ghoulish connotations has lived on, and on. It's set a bench mark that lunatic vigilantes now seem to treat as some sort of norm to emulate or better.

While the fire-raisers of Christchurch were going through their primitive cleansing rituals, their vigilante crime-fighting buddies in the Sensible Sentencing Trust were holding a rally in Taupo, where hero of the hour was National Government's Madame Whip herself, Corrections Minister Judith Collins.

She gave them what they wanted: "Criminals are warned: your drug dealing, your extortion, your theft, your violence, your dangerous, life-threatening driving - none of it is tolerated by the Government, by the police, or by New Zealand."

Shame, it being just the morning after, that she hadn't added burning private property to that list.

The most bizarre aspect of the weekend was the inducting of the latest members into the exclusive round table of people who have had a relative murdered.

One presumes their presence was voluntary and that the group therapy aspects help them in their time of grief. But that conceded, the exploitation of the fragile and the hurting, to help peddle extremist political views on law and order, is a desperate and heartless tactic.

Especially when the views lead to mad irrational behaviour, like the torching of sound - and innocent - housing stock.