Race With a Heart
Chapter 69: Looking for a Solution

Chapter 69: Looking for a Solution

Martin finally found the correct address and stood uncertainly in front of the gate. What should he do? Jack was his friend. The boy should not create situations that could appear ambiguous. But there was Sid, the boy in trouble, and no one to help him. Martin couldn’t leave him alone if he could do anything, anything, to help him.

Well, Jack should trust his boyfriend and he should trust Martin. Martin had no reason to be unfaithful to Steve, and Kevin had no reason to be unfaithful to Jack - at least Martin hoped so. But he knew that although Moore was very handsome and attractive, he certainly did not attract him. For the young mechanic, there was only one man as a potential partner, and it was Steve Paxton.

Martin boldly pressed the doorbell ...

The gate opened before anyone asked who had come. This question was not asked at all. The owner of the house was either very trusting of people or he knew it was Martin.

The boy shyly entered the property and saw a really beautiful, modern, though not very large house surrounded by greenery, which was a bit neglected here, as if the owner had more important things on his mind than mowing the grass regularly or trimming the bushes.

Kevin appeared at the front door with a wide smile on his lips and with his hands up like a surgeon’s hands before an operation.

"Come in, come in!" he greeted Martin but did not wait for him. The boy quickened his pace. "Make yourself at home, and everything ..." Kevin ordered as he disappeared in the kitchen. "Actually, I will treat you like family, so don’t expect to receive guest honors."

Well, Jack’s boyfriend was certainly an interesting individual. His house looked quite original too, as the very modern house had lots of furniture that looked like solid wooden antiques and a heavy, patterned and colorful oriental carpet on the floor.

"You have a really beautiful house," said Martin admiringly as he slowly entered the living room.

"The house is beautiful, but inside I have a terrible junkyard. Most of these things were still collected by my great-grandfather, and I didn’t have the heart to throw them away or stuff them into a container or warehouse, so I stuffed them here. As long as they are fit for use, they should be used. "

"They are beautiful. Wait! Your great-grandfather? So these are really antiques? " Martin looked around carefully, admiring the dark wooden chests of drawers, tables and a leather couch.

"Almost everything is from before the First World War," Moore admitted.

"Wow!"

"The carpet you’re standing on was brought from Persia in nineteen hundred... seven, if I’m not mistaken. But take it easy, it’s lying on the floor just to be stepped on. Oh, could you come closer? It’s a bit uncomfortable for me to raise my voice like that. "

"Oh yes, of course!"

Martin approached quickly, however, trying to step as little as possible on the carpet, which probably cost more than his monthly salary in the good times he was working for the Fergus Stables.

The kitchen completely surprised Martin, because it was an example of a completely modern interior. The boy saw such cookers and refrigerators only in advertisements. Even the kitchen furniture looked like real granite. Maybe it actually was real stone?

In this modern but functional interior, dressed in a gray kitchen apron with a pink teddy bear printed on it, Kevin Moore was placing a roasting pan filled with chicken legs and vegetables into the oven.

’Wow! Can you also cook then? " Martin was very impressed with Professor Moore’s talents.

"Not a bit," Kevin laughed. "Jack likes to play in the kitchen. He has everything ready and I just need to take one out, insert the other and press the button. Hope you will have dinner with us? "

"You mean with you and Jack?"

"Of course!"

"I do not want to bother you..."

"Nonsense!" Kevin wiped his hands on his apron. "Sit down, sit down! I have a few more things to do, and I want to talk about your friend Sid. "

Martin busily took up a tall bar stool. Kevin put orange juice and cookies in front of him and started washing the vegetables.

"If you are counting on sending the boy’s father to jail," began Professor Moore, "it’s not that easy. You must provide evidence that you are dealing with repeated domestic violence, not a single act of aggression. "

"Is this not the same?" the confused mechanic asked.

"Is not. Not in the face of the law. If you had hit me now, you would have legally committed a one-off act of aggression - it happened, you lost your temper, you were probably provoked by something by me. It’s just like a regular school fight. None of this makes much of a problem, at least they shouldn’t. But if you hit me every day, or less frequently, but also almost regularly, we are dealing with repeated violence and you have to fight it. "

"But parents shouldn’t hit their kids at all!" Martin was indignant.

"I agree with you, but don’t forget that corporal punishment has been used for millennia to educate and discipline children. To this day, many mothers spank their babies to stop crying. The vast majority of society accepts this type of discipline. It is different if such ’disciplining’ exceeds certain limits, i.e. it happens for even the smallest offenses, where a simple admonition would suffice or it is too brutal. Is Sid beaten regularly? "

"He says no."

"What’s the reason his father beats him?"

"A father becomes aggressive when he drinks too much."

"But he has to give a reason. Sid is too loud or he hasn’t prepared dinner ... "

"But that’s not a reason to beat someone!"

"But this is an argument to defend the perpetrator. Martin," Kevin put the vegetables on the counter and looked at his interlocutor, "we are not talking right now about what is right and what is wrong, but about how to help a specific person in a specific case. To do this, we cannot focus on ’the father cannot beat his child’ because it will do nothing."

"So it is not enough to report the matter to the police ...?"

"If you thought that was enough, would you come to me with it?"

The young mechanic was little ashamed.

"I didn’t even think about the police ..." he admitted.

"Filing a report of domestic violence is necessary and important. However, it rarely gives the expected results. "

"Why?"

"The police will accept the report, pay a home visit to check the extent of the violence. If the victim has no injuries that require medical attention, such as a broken arm, they will end up reporting that the police have received a report and that they hope they will not have to come again. Usually this admonition helps for a few days, but sometimes it only makes matters worse. The torturer beats harder, but intimidates the victim that if he or she sings a word, something much worse will happen. Such a victim is afraid to report again. "

Martin shivered. Did Sid hear such threats?

"Do you think Sid might be in this situation?"

"In fact," Moore sighed, "the problem of domestic violence is very complex and many books have been written on it. What I have told you are just some of the possibilities. They may not apply to your friend at all. I would need to speak to him directly, and I would be happy to do so. I just wanted to warn you that it would not be easy to put Sid’s father in prison without hard evidence such as forensic examination, the victim’s testimony, a witness testimony, and preferably also prior reports to the police, which would indicate that we are dealing with repeated domestic violence. "

"But if his father doesn’t go to jail, how can we help Sid? Can we do it somehow? "

"It would be best to take the boy out of that house. There are different centers ... "

The very thought of such a center gave Martin a shudder. Sid would be torn from his home and found himself in a strange place full of strangers ...

"These centers aren’t bad places at all," said Kevin. "I have contact with a few, and admittedly the children cannot count on family warmth there, but they can learn safely and sleep safely. They also have contact with peers who have had similar experiences, so for many it is also a place of natural therapy. Sid, however, is almost of age, right? "

"Yes. Does that change something? "

"It gives him additional opportunities. Sid can become legally independent, or just start living on his own. Finance is a problem. He would have to prove that he is financially independent, and this in his case will be rather difficult ... "

Kevin sighed and went back to preparing the vegetables. He seemed to think about Sid’s problem all that time.

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