Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that Ian Brady...

320 replies

KittyFane1 · 17/08/2012 20:29

is playing a sick game.
His final victim is Winnie Johnson who is desperate to find her son Keith Bennet on the moors. She has terminal cancer and not long to live.
IB has been on hunger strike for years and wants to move out of the psychiatric hospital.
There is now, or rather, may or may not be a letter revealing where Keith is. Tormenting this woman in her final days.

Would it be unreasonable to tell IB that he can be moved if he stops this sick game, refusing to say where Keith is buried and if he does, not give him what he wants after all?

OP posts:
Shelly32 · 17/08/2012 23:15

I don't agree with torture!!! Just a little mild hypnotism Grin

TheDoctrineOfEnnis · 17/08/2012 23:15

Also, off topic, but I'm not sure which bankers you mean who have bee found guilty of fraud? I think Bernie Madoff and Andrew Stanford (is that who I mean? The Caribbean based financial criminal, anyway) have had pretty severe sentences - I know they are not bankers nor under UK jurisdiction but those are the convicts that spring to
Mind.

Shelly32 · 17/08/2012 23:20

That's just the problem... A LOT of bankers should have been convicted! Off topic though..

rhondajean · 17/08/2012 23:20

I could not advocate the death penalty for anyone. As soon as you do, you lose the moral high ground, you debase yourself and your legal system to the same level as the criminal.

I look in horror at americas history of executing black and mentally disabled criminals for example.

Brady is evil. He is broken, he does not work properly, his mind doesn't function the way it should. He has caused untold harm but he has suffered too.

I do not excuse one second of his vile crimes,

But I do say, as a educated, literate and ethical society, we must look at him and his like with some level of pity. To mythologise him into a monster plays to his desires - to view him as pathetic and broken and unfixable changes Thr power dynamics in this whole story from the point he was taken into custody.

Growlithe · 17/08/2012 23:21

The thing is we are a civilised, evolved society. We don't punish people by taking their lives. In Bradys case I think this is an ultimate punishment because he seems to need control, and he hasn't got any control over his own life. Ultimately society wins, I suppose

Shelly32 · 17/08/2012 23:22

I never once said 'execute' him btw.

Morloth · 17/08/2012 23:23

We have to give a flying fuck about justice because if we don't the next time we want to torture someone, the someone might be you.

Torture is either OK or it isn't. There are no grey areas.

Remove this man's power, no more talking - tell the poor woman her son has been found, let her die in peace. THAT could be done.

rhondajean · 17/08/2012 23:24

Wasn't to you Shelley, just in general.

Shelly32 · 17/08/2012 23:32

I think Morloth's was though! I never said torture him!!
I agree with your plan Morloth but I'm immoral. Don't take the moral high ground when you are advocating lying!!

EightiesChick · 17/08/2012 23:32

I agree we have to treat him in a manner appropriate to a civilised society. I don't think that obliges us to pity him. The decision has been made that he shouldn't be executed, rightly because as a nation we don't do that, but that he should serve a life sentence. So he can do just that.

As it happens, there's also a certain amount of satisfaction in that because it is what Brady himself doesn't want.

Agree, btw, Shelly32 has not said anything about wanting the death penalty for Brady. Nor did she want to torture him (there was something about slicing him up from a different poster). It gets a bit convoluted on long fast-moving threads though.

Shelly32 · 17/08/2012 23:34

Cheers EightiesChick Smile

TheDoctrineOfEnnis · 17/08/2012 23:37

Maybe because of my post - I used hypnosis, torture and coercion as examples of unacceptable judicial practice, not meaning any one poster had suggested the lot...

Shelly32 · 17/08/2012 23:39

Doctrine My name will forever be linked with those three things now Grin

rhondajean · 17/08/2012 23:43

Why would anyone not want to pity someone so incapable of normal human emotion and behaviour though?

To have amind that warped - that twisted - pity is not always a nice emotion. But it is one I feel for him.

EightiesChick · 17/08/2012 23:53

Rhonda, that's your choice and is up to you. I consider myself a civilised person and I don't pity him, nor do I think that's a requirement of being a cilvised person. We do not know that he is 'incapable' of normal emotions. He is a product of his upbringing, background etc but many people suffer horribly because of these same factors and don't commit the same crimes. There is an element of choice made by him to become what he became. Because what he did was so extreme, I don't believe that's something he had no power to resist. So I don't pity him as a helpless victim of circumstances. I don't think that's what he was.

However, it's one of those subjects where usually people don't find common ground, so we will probably have to agree to disagree.

I think the best thing all round would be for the letter to now come to light. I hope the MH advocate can be persuaded to 'remember' where it is.

PatFenis · 18/08/2012 00:03

I have no feeling but hatred for someone who has caused so much grief for so many over so many years. I can't feel pity for someone who has so little pity in himself than to give one woman who he caused a lifetime of grief one ounce of pity as to tell her where he murdered and buried her son.

I hope he dies a pitiful painful death with nobody there to ease his pain by caring for him - he chose not to tell where Keith was buried many years ago despite admitting to his crime, he allowed Winnie and her family to suffer all these years - he deserves the same.

rhondajean · 18/08/2012 00:15

Eighties - I don't think he was powerless at all - but this is the way I find to recover the power for him.

He would like us to think he is the monster, he is not, he is just a broken, pitiful, rather sad man from the moment he was arrested.

Does that make sense?l I'm not arguing with you - just coming at it from a different angle.

rhondajean · 18/08/2012 00:16

Not for him - from him! Sorry! Aargh!

omfgkillmenow · 18/08/2012 00:27

the best thing we can say, is "who the hell is Ian Brady" let him think we don't know who he is at all. Let him think the world has forgotten him.

EightiesChick · 18/08/2012 00:33

I do see what you mean, Rhonda. And I think yes, we both just have different perspectives on this. I don't think he has the same scope to be a monster from in prison, but I do think he is not exactly broken: he would like to exert the same wicked power and control and this shows in his behaviour re Keith Bennett. Anyhow, I'll stop there.

Have just been reading this Guardian editorial on how it's not in the public interest to pursue the Keith Bennett case any longer. Most people in comments strongly disagree. One person makes the good point that it would have more credibility if they had not had the story all over their front pages. I like the Guardian but don't think this editorial is one of their finest moments. As a piece it equates 'don't give Brady the oxygen of publicity' with 'stop looking for Keith Bennett'. Not the same.

rhondajean · 18/08/2012 00:36

Not the same at all.

We don't need to know every move that is made.

icecold · 18/08/2012 01:23

He is still torturing a dying woman

We could hurt him enough to make him stop

icecold · 18/08/2012 01:24

Although, I don't think he knows where Keith is

Morloth · 18/08/2012 01:47

No moral highground here. My personal feelings would result in someone like this strung up, tortured and kept alive in as painful a state as possible. If this were to happen to my son, I would want revenge, as bloody and as painful and as awful as possible.

I am not a nice person at all.

The thing is, I need to trust in the system a bit, I could end up accused of an awful crime, I want to know that people like me are not the ones making the rules. I want the rules to made as dispassionately and as calmly as possible, because one day it might be me on the other end.

It is not morality that makes me want him treated decently, it is selfishness.

Morloth · 18/08/2012 01:49

You also need to consider the person you would ask to torture/kill someone for the State.

Could you do it? Could you really actually do it personally? No? Then how can you ask someone else to do it for you?

Swipe left for the next trending thread