Parents’ plea for action after five-year-old boy left seriously injured in golf club attack

Two parents are demanding action after their five-year-old son was allegedly repeatedly bashed with a golf club by another child.

William Brooks-Chiplin was playing in the front yard of his friend’s house in Tamworth, NSW, on Thursday when he was allegedly attacked.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Five-year-old boy suffers serious injuries in golf club attack.

His face was extremely swollen, and left dizzy and unable to move his jaw.

“The people who came out and saw it thought he was gone. He didn’t make a sound, and he wasn’t moving,” his father, Kayleb Brooks, said.

“My thought was he was going to die. No kid should ever experience that,” his mother, Marrisa Tisdell, added.

William “is having nightmares, waking up and screaming in his sleep”, his parents said.

He must return to hospital for further scans to determine if he has any hairline fractures or issues with his eyesight.

NSW Police said they identified the 10-year-old accused of hitting William, and he had been given a warning under the Young Offenders Act.

The aim of the act is to provide an alternative process to court proceedings for children accused of crimes.

Hugo Law Group’s Linday Stankovic said for children aged between 10 and 14 years, the act is design in such way because, “ a child cannot be held criminally responsible for their conduct because they don’t understand right or wrong”.

Williams parents want the government to change the age of criminal responsibility following the incident.

“The kid pretty much just got a caution,” Tisdell said.

“(It’s) is unfair, because in the meantime he is suffering and nothing is being done about it,” Brooks added.

But in other parts of the country where there is a political agenda to lower the age of criminal responsibility, many legal and medical experts have voiced grave concerns about the implications.

Lowering the age ‘not the answer’

The Australian Human Rights Commissioner wrote to the NT government this month urging it not to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10-years-old.

“This plan by the NT Government goes against what all the evidence has shown we need to do to achieve that. It is absolutely critical that they reconsider,” National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said.

“The younger a child comes into contact with the criminal justice system, the more likely they will go on to commit more serious and violent crimes.

“Lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10 years will not make communities safer, it will only see rates of child offending increase.

“These are primary school age children, and harsh, punitive responses are not the answer. “

NT Children’s Commissioner and Larrakia woman Shahleena Musk found in a recent report more than three-quarters of children had mental health needs or cognitive disability, and 47 per cent of children had multiple diagnosed cognitive disabilities.

Every child involved in the audit had significant and ongoing contact with the child protection system, she said, with one child the subject of 70 harm notifications.

-With AAP.