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??

I agree chaos. . I think people think that adoption is like it was in the 50s or 60s....being handed a newborn baby that has been born to a completely normal woman who just happens to be too young or whatever.

I wonder if people realise just how bad thing a have to be for a child you be taken into care these days?

TheBrilliantMistake absolutely agree.

" If [insert terrible event] happened to me, I could murder two 10yr old boys and sleep like a baby "

Yet, the thought that two children could have experienced terrible things and then hurt someone else as a result, escapes them now.

So you can't find an extreme view that I have expressed here?

I didn't say your comments were extreme. Was that someone else?

Go back and check, and present a summary please.

Then I'll accept your apology.

It's bizarre the cognitive dissonance around children that do abhorrent things.

There are threads on MN about how to tell a 10 year old who believes that Father Christmas isn't real. Threads about whether it's okay to leave a 10 year old at home alone for a few hours - the answer always being no. Threads about whether a 10 year old can get a public bus to school alone or walk home on busy roads.

A 10 year old can't vote. Isn't deemed capacitous enough to decide if they want to smoke, drink alcohol, have sex - those things would quite rightly be seen as child abuse and child neglect.

But do something horrendous and you're suddenly judged as an adult would be. Evil, they know right from wrong etc, psychopaths.

Strange that.

*Meh, posters like elendon are so desperate to prove how understanding and liberal (and clever) they ate. Sometimes tnat's great. Other times it comes across as if their sympathy is in all the wrong places!
*
And what exactly are you trying to prove, Rebecca? That you "care" more than anyone else. That you have sympathy in the right place, which makes you superior somehow?

It is awful that some adults on here think it is okay to attack or kill 10 year old children.

It will only derail the thread.

Oh the irony! You are the one derailing the thread, calling people desperate and implying they have no sympathy for DF.

Just let it go now.

No it's not nasty.

But Elendon lashing out desperately at a previous poster and accusing her of being gutter press and then swearing at me and asking if I've "licked any arses recently" is perfectly ok and not at all nasty, is it?

Please don't come on this thread to throw around accusations of abuse when none exist.

Feck me. If you think what I said was nasty?

I wasn't desperate, I'm not mother superior - whatever that means - nor am I lashing out.

For goodness sake. Show some respect to the issue in hand. Name change if you're so desperate to make your point of view.

And watch the programme in question and keep on topic is my advise.

interestingly it’s been suggested on other (unrelated) threads that baby P could easily have gone on to commit the kinds of horrific crimes which Venables and Thompson did due to the abuse he suffered as a baby.

Im an adoptive parent and I explained a few pages back why children like Peter Connolly (would) have had an increased likelihood of severe social issues later in life.

Funny how no one currently travelling on the outrage bus with respect to Thompson and Venables has addressed the points I made.

I will attempt for a final time to explain why it's important that we try to understand some of the factors that may have contributed to their crime...

Because if we just throw them in prison, out of sight and mind, we neglect to look at how our society managed to shape then within 10 years. We then run the risk of another similar murder in the future. We may not prevent all future instances, but we might prevent some. That is why we need to learn and try to understand at least some of the factors involved. Without doing this, we might as well reinstate a Witchfinder General and see how we fare second time around with that strategy.

Without doubt Venables is a very mixed up and disturbed adult now. Thompson perhaps not so. That should give encouragement that very troubled kids can be brought back from the brink, and some are more difficult to rescue than others. We keep learning to rescue as many as possible whilst also figuring out how to avoid them needing to be rescued in the first place.

They were in secure homes managed by Social services. Some of the children in there were not even criminals, yet housed with notorious child killers

The homes they were both in were some of the most expensive rehabilitation units the uk has to offer they are small bed units and it is highly unlikely that any child or young person in them was not a serious violent or sexual offender granted they may not have been convicted as we don’t normally consider it in the public interest to have full on adult trials for 10 year olds when the outcome if unconvicted is likely to be identical as if they were not. We have a tiny number of these units each with a very small number of beds, they are not giving these spaces to kids who don’t need them and being in care is not the required need

Having been inside almost every single secure children’s home in the uk including every one both those boys stepped inside they are prisons. They are just prisons with a focus on rehabilitation and are suitable for 10-17 year olds most of them tend to stick to the lower end of that age group with the children moving on to training centres that cater to a minimum age of 14 and a max of 16.

People always use the argument that Baby P could have gone on to kill.

It's a ridiculous argument, he didn't kill anyone, he's dead.

Thousands of children all over the world have bad starts in life, abuse, neglect and so on, most don't go on to murder, especially not in the circumstances of James Bulgar.

That doesn't mean that there aren't mitigating factors, but I don't know why people make out that it was inevitable that they'd do what they did.

Also, you have only to go on to the adoption threads to look at the incredibly difficult time parents of adopted children have when adopting children from circumstances of severe abuse and neglect, or look at the stats on adoption breakdown and the destruction of families due to behaviour problems brought on by severe abuse and neglect prior to that adoption.

Good point. Pages ago a poster had posted that attachment is key. If the child has attachment issues, all the other developments (such as remorse) can't happen.

@PoppyCheery - was that your post about the stages of development?

I've worked with children similar to the ones in this case.

Children who did awful things. Not one had not experienced awful things themselves.

It's not an excuse. It's a formulation around why these things happen that we NEED to understand to try and stop awful things happening in the future.

And yes, before anyone says it, lots of children who are abused don't go on to harm others. A higher proportion do when compared to children who were not abused.

We've all got examples of people who smoked 60 a day and drank whiskey every day and lived to 90. That doesn't mean we don't know that smoking and alcohol cause most cancers.

Eledon:
"You don't frighten me."

No. I'm not a "thug vigilante".

With all due respect to those who have adopted children with Attachment Disorder (and believe me, I have a LOT of respect for them), we are talking here about two boys who were assessed by leading child psychiatrists who assessed their mental state and their ability to tell right from wrong. The issue of doli incapax was raised by the defence at trial and the prosecution were able to call expert evidence to prove they knew right from wrong, and that they knew it was wrong to take a boy from his mother and seriously harm him. Surely the evidence of experts who actually assessed the boys in question has to trump generalisations made by people who never met the lads in question based on their personal experiences of dealing with abused children....

PoppyCheery - was that your post about the stages of development?

It was.

Nobody has suggested that troubled backgrounds leads to an individual inevitably becoming a killer.
What some of us are suggesting is that particular children can be less resilient to troubled backgrounds, that in 500,000 troubled homes there will be a higher prevalence of disturbed children and in extreme circumstances, when fantasies and opportunity collide as they did on that day, some children will fall over the cliff and commit horrific acts, just as happens with adults.
It is easier to fathom the murderous acts of am adult as we can imagine their inner badness has had 20 or 30 years to grow, and that shifts the blame crop society. It is much more difficult for us to suggest a 10 year old has done so all one their own without unwitting influence from society.

We've all got examples of people who smoked 60 a day and drank whiskey every day and lived to 90. That doesn't mean we don't know that smoking and alcohol cause most cancers. and there’s an endless list on that one isn’t there which people will always happily dismiss as anecdotal and not worth mentioning: “oh, I put my baby to sleep on his front and he didn’t die of SIDS,” and yet the government guidelines exist for a reason. “I was smacked as a child and it didn’t do me any harm,” yet we now don’t generally condone smacking of children and it’s only a matter of time before it’s banned entirely. “I never wore a seatbelt and there were no booster seats in my day and here I am.”

And yet even on those types of topics people are selective according to whether or not they feel something is worth talking about. Parents are discouraged from co sleeping, the safest place for a baby being considered to be in its cot, on its back, and yet there are thread after thread after thread which advocates the introduction of co sleeping and anyone who dares challenge that is shouted down.

The evidence against weening at sixteen weeks is in fact incredibly small and yet you would be ripped to pieces on here if you talked about weening a 22 week baby given that the guidelines are six months and “you are damaging your baby.”

Using phone, so typos galore!

Elendon
Sorry I misspelt her name in the previous quote.

But I see she's moved onto other posters now!

'Knowing' something is wrong as a 10 year old because that's what you've been told is very, very different to ^understanding^ why it is wrong and understanding the gravity of what you have done and the effect it has on other people. Particularly if you have deficits in emotional understanding and empathy.

Great post TheBrilliantMistake

What they did was unspeakable. They knew what they were doing and both are pure evil imo.

Justice wasn't done for James and his family - 8 years is a pathetic sentence to serve for a crime as horrific as the one that comitted.

I have absolutely no sympathy for either of them and I think they should have both serves sentences significantly longer than what they did. The only sympathy I have is for little James and his family.

I find it hard to believe that anybody so evil can be rehabilitated.

In all honesty, I hope their lives remain as miserable as possible for the rest of their days.