Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte – a brutal moment for humanity.
What is Seen Cannot Be Unseen
“A word after a word after a word is power.” – Margaret Atwood
Atwood’s words remind us of the lasting impact of reading: how language can shape our thoughts, stretch our imaginations, and transform the way we see the world. Reading allows us to choose what we engage with, to put a book down if it overwhelms us, and to process information at our own pace.
But in the digital age, what we see often arrives without warning, without context, and without consent. Unlike words on a page, images and videos burn themselves into our memory instantly. And once seen, they cannot be unseen.
The Train Stabbing Video of Iryna Zarutska
The recent tragedy of Iryna Zarutska—a young Ukrainian refugee brutally stabbed on public transport in America—has shaken me deeply. Beyond the horror of her death, what fills me with moral outrage is that footage of her final moments has been shared across social media platforms, circulating as if it were entertainment.
Even more disturbing is that schoolchildren—our students—are stumbling across this content. They may click out of curiosity, peer pressure, or simply by accident, without realising the profound psychological impact such violent imagery can have. Unlike fictional violence in films or games, this was real. A real life lost, a real person’s dignity stripped away. That weight is not something a young mind is ready to carry.
The Lasting Impact on Young Minds
Research shows that violent visual content can:
- Heighten anxiety and feelings of insecurity.
- Desensitise viewers to real suffering.
- Trigger intrusive thoughts, nightmares, or even trauma responses.
- Distort a young person’s understanding of what is “normal” in the world.
Adolescents are particularly vulnerable because their sense of empathy, resilience, and moral judgement are still developing. By being exposed to such shocking violence, often without context or support, they are left to process images that even adults struggle to handle.
My Moral Outrage and Personal Reaction
I cannot escape my own anger and grief over this. A young woman’s life was ended in an act of senseless violence, and instead of treating her death with dignity, the internet has turned it into a viral moment.
I will admit that watching the footage overwhelmed me in a way I rarely experience. As a parent, seeing the moment she cried—realising what had happened to her – her disbelief and her fear at not knowing what to do—broke something inside me. The emotion and anger I felt in that instant are hard to put into words. It is not often that I am brought to tears or to outrage by what I see, but this time I was, and it is haunting my waking moments.
And then came the disbelief. How could no one step in to help her? How could passengers look on as a young woman was attacked so brutally? It speaks to what Robert Burns once called “man’s inhumanity to man”—the chilling capacity for people to turn away, to protect themselves, and to leave another human being alone in their darkest moment.
Iryna deserved better. Her family deserved better. And our children deserve better than to be subjected to images that will stay with them long after the screen has gone dark.
The Absence of First Aid
What troubles me further is the absence of any visible first aid in the footage. Even after the attack, no one appeared to step forward to try to stop the bleeding or offer comfort. While fear and shock explain much of this, it highlights a stark truth: many people simply do not have the training—or the confidence—to act in those critical minutes before emergency services arrive.
This must change. Schools should not only teach digital literacy but also basic and advanced first aid as a core life skill. Every student should leave school knowing how to control bleeding, perform CPR, and respond in emergencies. Such training does more than save lives: it builds courage, resilience, and the instinct to step forward rather than shrink back when someone needs help. We must do better as a people and we must be bold and brave in these moments.
What Schools and Teachers Can Do
- Strengthen Safeguarding – Ensure filters and monitoring systems are updated to block access to violent media but also teach students why they should avoid it.
- Digital Literacy Lessons – Embed discussions on harmful content into PSHE, IT, and pastoral care. Teach students to be critical of what they see and to understand its impact.
- Provide Safe Conversations – If students are exposed to disturbing content, create spaces where they can talk openly and without judgement. Silence compounds harm.
- Staff Training – Equip teachers with the tools to recognise when a student has been affected by violent media and know when and how to escalate concerns.
- First Aid Education – Campaign for every school to provide comprehensive first aid training, preparing young people to act with skill and compassion when lives are at risk.
Advice for Students
- Protect Your Mind – Be careful about what you allow onto your screen. Remember: you cannot unsee what you’ve seen.
- Don’t Share – Forwarding or reposting violent content only spreads harm further.
- Talk About It – If you’ve already seen something distressing, don’t deal with it alone. Speak to a teacher, parent, or friend you trust.
- Take Control – Use platform tools to block, report, and unfollow accounts that push harmful content.
Closing Thoughts
Reading has the power to shape us. But so too does what we see—and often with even greater force. As educators, parents, and communities, we cannot stand by while violent imagery finds its way into the lives of our children.
The bus stabbing of Iryna Zarutska was a tragedy beyond words. To see her final moments replayed for clicks and curiosity is an injustice that wounds us all. My moral outrage comes not only from what happened to her, but from the way our digital world now compounds that suffering.
What is even more disturbing is the way such footage is amplified by voices online. Commentators have already used the video as material for political commentary, dissecting and re-broadcasting it to vast audiences. However well-intentioned or not, this constant replaying of Iryna’s final moments transforms her death into content—her humanity into a talking point. That is not justice; it is exploitation.
Even now, the video of Charlie Kirk’s assassination (RIP) — shot fatally in the neck while speaking on stage—is being shared across the most popular platforms, uncensored and freely available for children to view. That, in itself, is a damning indictment of how little control exists over the circulation of violent material online.
Here in the UK, we have recently seen attempts to curb young people’s exposure to harmful online material through new internet safety laws. Age-verification requirements for accessing pornography and violent content were brought in as part of the Online Safety Act, alongside stricter obligations on tech companies to remove harmful videos. These are important steps, but the truth is that enforcement remains patchy, and children are still able to bypass restrictions with ease. Legislation alone cannot protect them—it requires vigilance from parents, schools, and society as a whole.
Some things should never be witnessed, and certainly never replayed. What is seen cannot be unseen—and we must do all we can to shield young people from carrying such unnecessary burdens. At the same time, we must demand more from governments, platforms, and ourselves to ensure dignity in the digital world.
Because if we do not act, we risk raising a generation for whom human tragedy is just another trending clip. And that, perhaps, would be the greatest inhumanity of all. My thoughts are with her family and friends and although I did not know her – I will remember her as more than a headline or a video. She was a young woman with dreams, with dignity, and with a right to live — a right that was so cruelly taken from her.
As Primo Levi once wrote, “It happened, therefore it can happen again.” But that does not mean it must. We cannot allow our silence, our screens, or our inaction to make us complicit in man’s inhumanity to man.
