re Facebook and the pictures of James Bulger's killers

[NessieMcFessie]

A friend of mine on Facebook has posted the pictures of James Bulger's killers as they look 'today'. I have no idea where they have come from or if they are actually the two men involved (and I don't know if she knows any of this information).

AIBU to report these pictures? She has had loads of support under her post.

Why shouldn't it be understood by the mainstream Cortana?

Without any understanding of why this kind of thing happens, people wouldn't give a monkeys.

Why would they care whether another child has been murdered by other children?

'I think the book isn't raising any awareness of anything. It is just making money. I don't think it is necessary or in good taste.'

You don't think the book by Sara Payne (Sarah Paynes mum) wasn't raising awareness? And think the one by Kevin Wells (Holly Wells Dad) was in bad taste?

Were they just out to make money from their dead children too?

But it sickens me the people that pop up on threads like this going on about them as victims just because they were children with a difficult childhood

because every case is different and the circumstances which drive people (children in this case) to react as they do are very different too. It surprises me, if you work in this field, that you dont know that. What do you do?

(I can't do links but it won't take you long to search if you see fit)

When JV and RT were first identified in the press they used their school photographs. And those images were somehow the worst pictures they could find. (JV looks sneery and leering, RT looks smug )
Compare to the two pictures taken in Police Custody where they are holding the dated boards.

Then everytime they were pictured in the Press the papers re-used the photos to re-ignite the public hatred (not that it ever went away).

I have no interest in seeing their adult images or finding out where they are/what they are doing.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for what they did but I do for their background. Both were bullied and neglected so I can appreciate that a bullied child will pick someone smaller and weaker to bully themselves.
It doesn't make it right but it goes a small way to understanding why they did it (though in no way justifies it)

I have already said what I do chimneys.

You make a lot of assumptions, for example where have I said every case is not different? Im just very tired of people making excuses for all sorts of bad behaviour just because it is a child with a bad childhood who has perpetrated it. My DS was continually assaulted by one such 10 year old and I have personal experience of this attitude. Thankfully my DS didnt die unlike James Bulger.

Ok shesariver. I'm sorry to hear about your ds. I hope he's ok now.

You use very emotive language however, and I dont think you're seeing the bigger picture. Its unlikely from what you say that you work in this field in any meaningful manner.

'Its unlikely from what you say that you work in this field in any meaningful manner.'

Ouch LittleC.

You don't know what shesariver does or what she knows.

Hes fine thanks, but not before we had to move home to get away from the boy concerned. Its a very patronising thing to say though what follows chimneys, I would take offence if I didnt know how good at my job I actually am and how much satisfaction I get from helping people manage their emotions, relationships and ultimately their lives better. I dont think any of them would find my work not meaningful really. As I said I work with adults. And as it happens I know a fair amount about personality disorders, including psychopathy. But then again people don't think children can be psychopaths.....

Sure. I appreciate what you and zigzag are saying. So I will apologise.
But, what you said is still there:

But it sickens me the people that pop up on threads like this going on about them as victims just because they were children with a difficult childhood

I hate what you are saying, I dont agree with you, but I shouldn't have been rude.

sheascriver, I am sorry. for your ds being bullied, not good...

and agent zig that was a lovely post

Ok fair enough. And it does sicken me saying they are victims, sorry if you dont agree. Far too often the real victims get somehow minimised and the empathy and understanding is all on the bullies, in this case killers. Its like "oh of course I have sympathy for James and his family BUT......" I am not saying this is you obviously. Society generally has a real problem with children who commit serious crimes. And if RT and JV have endured what some of the patients I have treated have had to then of course its not "right" but they still had choices and no right to take another childs life. 10 is the criminal age of responsibility (in fact I think its even 8 in Scotland).

Thank you isle. And yes maybe it has affected how I think (naturally) but when you have had your child tormented, bullied and beaten the way my DS was by a fellow 10 year old, and for this perpetrator to think it was all a game....well of course it did. He had no fear of consequences and is one of the most convincing liars I have ever met in my life.

My children are nearly the same age as James. It's very easy to boil with hatred for James' killers.

But... In seven years, they will be nearly the same age as his killers... I had a bit of an abusive childhood myself. I'm not really sure I can get behind any argument that it reliably makes one a better person. Perhaps more importantly, I remember some of my peers at ten. How vicious some were to smaller or weaker children. With the hindsight of adulthood, I think now that they were themselves being abused.

And I think that maybe some of this energy spent on righteous keyboard-sharing on FB could be better spent. I'm not a psychologist. I don't know whether Venables is beyond redemption. But I'm damn sure he wasn't born destined for the life he's led. I'm also damn sure that whatever life he led as a child is being replicated somewhere by another child. Even on our sceptred isle. Again.

I googled the Scottish Age of Responsibility.
It was 8 but now 12 yo ( also checked the NSPCC Site)

Thanks 70, wasn't making 8 up then! Probably why our local council couldnt serve an ASBO on my DSs bully then until he was 12.

'But I'm damn sure he wasn't born destined for the life he's led.'

I'm not sure whether I subscribe to it or not (probably not), but what do you think about the idea that adults should take responsibility for their actions when they're adults, and what happened in the past isn't a reason/excuse for behaving in an inappropriate way? (as it all comes down to 'can you help who you are', can you blame someone for behaving as they do?)

Well, I think that when you get to adulthood you have to start taking responsibility. Otherwise the whole thing just continues. But in young adulthood you may not have the tools to do that. Where does it end.

Damn, I have to go to bed, football first thing. If the debate is continuing tomorrow night then I will be back. Night all. (sorry again to sheisariver, just to make sure I have cleared up any bad feeling).

TheBigJessie

the girl that viciously bullied me at school was in a home, her mum had sent her there (she said) and was with her stepdad and other kids

i still cant forgive her for making ages 10 to 13 such a misery

but now i am older, i understand it better

The pics have unfortunately just started appearing on my feed. Some of the comments along with the pictures are disgusting. Talks of torturing them when they were kids, you know because that would have been ok. Talks of what people would do to the men in these pics now, we don't even know if it is them, and even then torturing isn't right.

Then there's other comments of, well I was abused as a child and I didn't do anything. People who had shitty childhoods do everything they can to protect those around them. What people who make these comments forget, or fail to realise is that the people who do everything to protect have somehow gotten through the childhood, and into adulthood with support to help them make the right decisions.. For those that didn't they are now in the prison system, currently walking the street looking for their next client/fix, deceased, or somewhere still being abused/abusing.

I am not condoning what they did. Nor am I going to jump on the eye for an eye band wagon. I do not, and neither do any of you, or any of those on fb, know the boys mental frame of mind at the time. But from what I have read about their home life, it surely cannot have been in a good way. The things they did to James, they must have learned that from somewhere. It sickens us as adults to know what they did, but we have the capacity to deal with that, do children have this same capacity to be sickened by things they are exposed to on a regular basis, when they have nothing to compare with? Children can only know right from wrong from being shown this.

Very good post ihearsounds

If you do something as a child ihear, it's possible to recall that event and have a different spin on it because you're understanding things in an adult way and have adult experiences.

T and V might not have known the severity of what they did at the time they did it, but it would be reasonable to expect them to reflect on those actions as adults, and fully understand why it was so wrong.

But because they're showing that maybe the disturbance of their early life hasn't been overcome (and them being in wider society hasn't proved incident free), that part of the child who did such terrible things is still there.

They've been shown right from wrong, but haven't learnt the lesson.

AgentZigZag

Simple. For me. Free will is variable. At one end of the scale, some people have the closest thing mathematically possible to free will. At the other end, there are people who categorically do not. These people, if they pose risks to others, go to what are legally termed in the Acts concerning them "special hospitals". Basically Broadmoor. Prison sentences are meant to act as a deterrent and rehabilitation, and thus are directed at people who have free will. There's a murky lot of slightly broken humans in the middle. That is why we need a judicial system that serves justice, taking into account mitigating factors and aggravating factors, and finding the best fit for that individual and society's safety.

Does it always work like this? Probably not. But it should.

Due to the wonders of chaos theory, luck, and generational dilution of abuse, I ended being someone who ended up reacting strongly against suffering in others. It does not always work this way. Otherwise my mother would never have repeated her abuse in any fashion when she became a parent.

what are legally termed "facilities for the mentally illlThen there's other comments of, well I was abused as a child and I didn't do anything. People who had shitty childhoods do everything they can to protect those around them. What people who make these comments forget, or fail to realise is that the people who do everything to protect have somehow gotten through the childhood, and into adulthood with support to help them make the right decisions.. For those that didn't they are now in the prison system, currently walking the street looking for their next client/fix, deceased, or somewhere still being abused/abusing.^

This. This exactly.

People are supposed to be capable of taking responsibility for their actions eventually. Different nations put the magic age at different quantities of days. (Meanwhile, scientists research myelination of the brain, trying to identify The Age. Last I checked, there was focus on the big 25.)

But really, the standards of nations on Legal Responsibility are simple start-points. They do not account for mental illness, psychological disorders, etc. They are not meant to, in the modern West. A great deal of time has been spent in the last century, filling in these gaps.

As I said before, I am not V or T's psychologist. I would not like to be. Whether either needs to be confined for life is not a matter I should decide; I am not fit for it, whether on grounds of qualifications or grounds of being over-liberal .

Posting these photos is probably not a good thing for lots of reasons already mentioned.
But I'm among the (apparently small number of) people who believe they should probably not have been released. The risk was always too high(as has been subsequent,y demonstrated).
Their difficult childhoods may have gone some way to explain their actions but not to excuse them.
Does anyone believe that high security institutions are populated with violent offenders who had idyllic childhoods?

As a civilised society we had no choice but to try and rehabilitate children. 8 years of your life when you're ten is a massive sentence.

Does anybody really want to live in a society that would have legally mudered two children? or one that would have thrown away the key. It's dubious that they were even tried as adults. They were horribly abused kids, the kind of abuse we'd all gasp in horror at but because they went on to become a product of that upbringing the stuff that went before is suddenly and completely negated. We don't give a shit now, I'm glad they had such horrible lives, what with them being born evil scum.

We should have learned from it, found out WHY such a horrible, horrible crime was committed by children in the first place. Yes we can all say how our ten year olds would never do that, well than god for that eh? if it had happened a year earlier they'd never have been tried. They both had cognitive and emotional delays, pretty important factors for consideration you might think considering they "were of the legal age of criminal responsibility". I also ask you to look at your ten year olds, how young they actually are and imagine them being so hated in 20 years time for something they did at this age, so hated that people want them dead.

Age is a mitigating factor in crime, this has always been an aggravating one.

I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, I don't ever play down their crime. It was sickening and disgusting. But have you ever heard the name Jade Matthews? No? she was a little girl murdered on the very same stretch of tracks a couple of years later by a 15 year old. Surely the 15 year old is even more culpable than a pair of ten year olds but 15 wasn't as shocking as ten so it barely reached public consciousness outside of Liverpool.

This whole attitude of kill the bastards is just so ridiculous and ironic and you can guarantee it's spouted by parents assuming they're empathising with James' family. James' family and friends have the right to be this angry, we don't. It's why jury members cannot have any connection to any part of the case they sit on. Objectivity completely goes out of the window with this case like no other I've ever heard of. Including those of adults with all their mental faculties who murdered children.

Flame away.