C4 now - the James Bulger case **Trigger Warning - Contains Info about the case** (Title edited by MNHQ)

[Hairgician]

Sat watching this now.

I do not accept the view that those 2 boys were treated unfairly. They murdered that poor little boy and they knew what they were doing and that it was wrong.

They should be rotting in jail. Aibu to say justice not served??

Yes, they are evil psychopaths at ten with what they did. It's not like they made a mistake, or did something unthinkingly - they would have know, moment by moment, that they were seriously hurting him. And they chose to continue. I dont think they can be rehabilitated from that. It's not so much a punsihment for them, but a precaution to keep society safe.

I will add that generally I think its important to look at people's backgrounds and situation etc (I have a criminal record myself) but choosing to torture is just too much. It's not like robbing a shop or something, it's actually knowing you are causing a human terror and pain and choosing to continue, in the moment. Pure evil.

After listening to the tapes, to me, they sounded like whiney whinging kids, who’d been caught and were crying because they’d been caught, not because they were sorry.

There’s one bit where they’re crying (and lying repeatedly) and the officer interviewing says he knows the truth. And the child switches to more aggressive ‘you weren’t there, you don’t know the truth, I was there right’ - and then back to high pitched whining.

They lied. They blamed each other. They repeatedly said they didn’t kill him, so they knew they did. Their small voices, and small stature should make no difference.

They didn’t get upset when they were torturing James.

I felt the interviews from police were gentle, and not in any way how an adult would be treated.

During the trial, the jury listened only to the tapes, is that correct?

So how were they tried as adults? (Not being goady, just interested).

In an adult trial the adult would be questioned and interrogated by the prosecution, in front of the jury.

Anyway. Not after death penalty. Equally not after mob mentality. Equally not after letting them off Scot free for being children.

Children at 10 who can do such things are mentally damaged and tbh can they be helped? Venables has proved that nothing can be done for him!

Calling them pure evil is a very convenient way for our society to wash our hands of any responsibility in contributing to what they did, and any responsibility of attempting to rehabilitate them. Which surely we must at least try with two 10 year olds.

Haven’t read the whole thread but, for all those saying they knew what they were doing, should have spent life in jail, should never have been released. How is it that:

You have to be sixteen to consent to sex, and plenty of threads on mn about fifteen year olds having sex where the presumption is that they’re vulnerable, easily led, won’t realise what they’re doing until it’s too late, etc etc.

You have to be sixteen to get married although no-one would advise doing so.

You have to be seventeen to drive a car.

You have to be eighteen to vote, to drink alcohol, even some television shows are shown after a certain period because they’re not suitable for under eighteens.

And even once you make it to adulthood, anything under 30 is practically still considered a child. In fact there’s a thread around just now about how at nineteen Princess Diana was too young, too vulnerable and naive to have married charles and this was taken advantage of. People posting that they want to be sterilised under the age of 30 are told that they’re too young to realise the implications of their actions.

And the list goes on.

But at ten you’re old enough to know right from wrong, to be tried as an adult and to never see the light of day again?

Given that that is what some people genuinely seem to believe, surely you then have to concede that there are no vulnerable adults barring those with sn who need protecting from the big bad world, that alcohol should be freely available to all and that sex is merely something which we should be free to enjoy as and when the relationship takes us? No? Why not?

The fact that this crime was so horrific is what leads opinion on it. Fact is that ten year olds are not routinely going round killing toddlers, so when it does happen people are so shocked because they think that they must have known what they were doing. After all, most people would agree that their own ten year olds wouldn’t likely do something along those lines, most likely because they know their own ten year olds.

Yet fifteen year olds are routinely having sex and yet society has now decided that they need protecting from themselves because they’re too young to realise what they’re doing.

if violent crime became a regular pursuit of the over ten’s we wouldn’t be saying that there are a lot of evil children out there, we’d be asking what has gone so seriously wrong with society that ten year olds are committing these heinous crimes on such a regular basis. Only because it’s so unusual is it easy to vilify the children, because they are one single entity in a society which thankfully rarely sees these kinds of acts from children of their age.

But most likely wouldn’t. Woukdnt then and very possibly wouldn’t now, if a similar trio walked past them in the street. People going about their daily business, they don’t see pay attention to others, turn blind eyes to questionable things they should see clearly for what they are.

Very true. Years ago, I saw a mum smack her son so hard on his head in the high street that I thought she could have killed him. He screamed. And I did nothing. I tell myself I was on a bus, that I couldn't have caught up them. But I could have, and I did nothing.

ChaosNeverRains I agree totally

@ChaosNeverRains I didn't even read your whole post, it was that ridiculous.

@ChaosNeverRains yes it doesn't happen often because it's not normal

ChaosNeverRains - sorry, but none of those examples work.

Someone at 30, doesn’t want kids, gets sterilised and then regrets it at 40. Someone who has sex at 16 and regrets it. Someone who marries at 19 is very young, and might regret it.

These all show lack of experience, not compassion and empathy.

Someone who repeatedly tortures and cause pain to a toddler, despite begging to stop. That is another level entirely and not simply ‘they were too young’.

They were tried as adults. No they shouldn't have been let off due to their age. Of course they should be punished. But the aim of a prison sentence for any one is usually punishment, protection of others and rehabilitation. For two 10 year olds rehabilitation should have been high on the list. Yes, they did lie and try to blame it on each other. That's true of most children in trouble. That's the point. They were children. Could they be helped? I don't know. Should we try? Yes, they may be too damaged to be helped but surely as a society we can't lock up two ten year olds and throw away the key. You may as well hang them.

I agree Chaos bit most people won't. The English age of criminal responsibility is very low compared to most countries, where it is recognised you have to be a lot older than 10 to be fully responsible for your actions.

Chaos that you are equating having sex to committing murder makes your post beyond ridiculous.

Stupidity beyond reason. However well meaning.

@PoorYorick amen!! Agree with everything you just said!

Except the outcome is the same. We tell a person wanting to be sterilised at age 30 that in ten years time they may regret it and as such they’re not allowed to have it done.

At ten the child knows what they are doing is wrong, but they do not have the adult thinking to know what the life-long consequences of that could be if they end up spending the rest of their lives, how long would that be? 70? 80 years? In jail.

A ten year old does not have the capacity to grasp the concept of twenty, thirty, forty years in reference to their own life.

No-one said they shouldn’t have been held accountable at the time. But given the justice system in this country is based around rehabilitation rather than revenge it stands to reason that we don’t lock children up for the duration of their lives just to satisfy the public’s desire for their own form of justice.

Do you think that countries where the death penalty exists should put ten year olds to death for instance?

It is not saying murder and having sex are the same thing. It is the capacity to understand fully what you are doing. The age of consent is 16 because below that we do not believe that children have capacity to consent. The age of criminal responsibility is 10. At ten the law says that children have full capacity to know they are engaging in a criminal act. The question is should there be such a disparity between the two .

If you think that children at 10 are criminally responsible then you must think that in countries with the death penalty they should should swing.

Oh come on!

I remember being 10. The idea difference between having sex and killing a child was pretty bloody clear.

Nobody has compared having sex to murder ffs. But feel free to resort to personal insults and name calling if that’s what justifies your warped thinking.

The fact here is that under 16s are not considered competent to consent to sex on the basis they do not have the maturity to understand the long-term implications of doing so, teenage pregnancy, STD’s etc. Anyone with a sixteen year old son with a fifteen year old GF would be told that their child was breaking the law and that the girl was too young.

Nobody has said at any time that those two ten year olds should have been allowed to skip off into the sunset after what they did. But that at ten you cannot presume that because they committed crimes which are generally committed by adults, they can have an understanding of the implications for the rest of their lives and that they should be treated as adults because society deemed that it be so.

Bearing in mind that legally children under sixteen cannot be named if they commit a crime. But a special exception was made for these two in order to satisfy society. It also means that they had to be given new identities when they left prison because society felt they had the right to go and find them. Not because the courts believed they deserved special treatment.

Mary Bell also murdered at the age of ten. It was recognised that she was a product of her upbringing. She served a sentence and went back into society, had a child of her own and has by all accounts lived a normal life.

But it suits people to remember these particular two because most of us were alive when it happened. But while they needed to be held accountable, so did the adults who were responsible for the way they turned out.

How many times when a child is brutally killed do people ask the questions “how did no-one notice the abuse? How did no-one flag to the authorities that there were issues?” Surely this is the same? You can’t tell me that two children woke up one morning and decided to go out and murder a toddler having gone to sleep the night before dreaming about Disney. There must have been noticeable issues with them both which could have been flagged long before all this happened? By the parents, by the school? And yet nobody did.

Perhaps nobody could have foreseen that they would have done what they did given it’s so unusual. But they didn’t go from well-behaved lads to cold-blooded murderers overnight. Someone was responsible at the very least for knowing that there were issues there, and for never doing anything about it.

ChaosI agree with your argument. This case quite rightly disgusted the nation,I was 19 at the time and I remember being the only one among my peers asking what could be done to help or rehabilitate the children that had carried out this crime. It didn't make me popular but if you are going to say that 10 year old can be held entirely accountable including a life sentence then you are saying every example you gave. You cannot argue that 10 years old is old enough to be tried as an adult but not old enough to consent to seX. There is either an age where you can make an informed decision free of outside influences or there isn't. This is no way diminishes the horror of poor James death.

To you, of course it was. To me as well. To the vast majority of children. I'm sure if questioned it was different to the boys in this case. But that still doesn't mean they had the capacity to fully understand what they did at 10 years old, in the same way they wouldn't be able to consent to sex at 10 years old. If we still had the death penalty would you hang them? If you are saying they had the full capacity to understand exactly what they were doing then you must agree they should hand for it at 10 years old. Maybe you do think that

fifteen year olds are routinely having sex and yet society has now decided that they need protecting from themselves because they’re too young to realise what they’re doing.

if violent crime became a regular pursuit of the over ten’s we wouldn’t be saying that there are a lot of evil children out there, we’d be asking what has gone so seriously wrong with society that ten year olds are committing these heinous crimes on such a regular basis

@chaos You were the one who conflated 15yo having sex and 10 yo killing.

But carry on pontificating with your sermons. You clearly have an audience

Sorry for the typos. 2 glasses of wine after dry January! If as a country we died that at 10 you are legally able to understand the consequences of your actions then you have a valid argument for under age sex, it is a fine line to be drawn.

It comes down to we as a society will not give capacity to children in any way apart from criminal acts. By giving them capacity for criminal acts and calling them evil we absolve ourselves from any responsibility to either try and help prevent children from doing such things or rehabilitate them after.

Royal I am not an 'audience'. There are many of us who agree that 10 year olds are so young, whatever they have done, calling them evil bastard and locking them away for ever is not something we wish to see. Capacity to consent to sex is not something different, it is a recognition that children do not have the capacity and understanding that adults do, and that includes violent crime.