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 tend to agree that evil is made not born
And I agree that some children will survive hideous abuse and some tragically don’t and then go onto to do this

I think the judge did what was right and I think this individual will find his chances slimmer and slimmer

Frankly I am more worried about what’s available on the darknet and the Children being abused as this is happening right this very minute . The darknet is a bad bad thing and I fear that it’s turning abuse into an industry . Sentencing laws will eventually catch up.

In this case I do wish the sentencing remarks were not quite so ‘out there’

These threads do bring out the ghouls don’t they

We know what happens . Just not nice reading it

Hi Chaos,
Yes, ta, we did see it and we have made SEVERAL deletions and suspended posting. We have directed the posters over here, in fact, in the hopes that things will calm down.
We do understand why parents in particular wish to discuss this case; it's horrific and upsetting for everyone, but we would very much prefer it if people would stick to the facts of the case and steer clear of lurid speculation as to what form they might prefer the punishment to have taken.
Thanks again to all who are reporting this and the other thread.

Exactly HarveyKietelRabbit

To suggest as sleeping did, assuming Sleeping is an adult, that the answer is to throw a ten year old in prison and then throw away the key is barbaric and shows no empathy and lacks humanity.

Yes I am an adult. And no, I have no empathy for that scum.

I think some posters on here need to remember that Venables is no longer the 10 year old he's pictured as. He's now in his 30s and is clearly a danger to children. That's the key thing now, more so than how far he can be held responsible for what he did as a young boy.

I think I’ve read this correct, Venables sentence was 40 months. Sentenced today.

We all accept his current situation and he's going to pay the price for his current crimes.
The debate really though is how two kids arrived at this situation and how seemingly one managed to recover, and one didn't.

His current situation isn't really the James Bulger case.

If we are debating was the right decision made all those years ago, it could not be any more divisive - as one's continued to commit crime and the other hasn't.

I don't think anybody doubts Venables needs to go back to prison. I don't have a lot of confidence that much can be done to help him there, and I'm certainly not convinced he should warrant any special treatment because of his past / who he is.

I merely challenge the assertion that he was born evil, or that no child killer can ever be rehabilitated. I firmly believe some can (and have been). Since we can't know which before we try, I believe we have to try with them all and hope it helps at least some of them.

I agree with The BrilliantMistake.

Evenin' Granny!
(that man across the road is still a c....) :-)

I think some posters on here need to remember that Venables is no longer the 10 year old he's pictured as. He's now in his 30s and is clearly a danger to children. That's the key thing now, more so than how far he can be held responsible for what he did as a young boy. but nobody has suggested he can’t be held responsible for the crimes he has committed as an adult.

The initial discussion however was started about the James Bulger murder, and the fact is that both Thompson and Venables were just ten years old at the time of the murder, and yet several posters came on to the thread and talked about how both boys should have been locked up for life and never again been allowed to see the light of day.

Everyone knows that Venables is an adult now and is responsible for his crimes that he has committed as an adult. Truth is that had he not committed the murder of James when he was ten he might still have gone on to become a convicted sex offender. There will be others who will have been convicted of downloading child images in the past week. Indeed Venables will have had contacts, people he received and sent images to or whatever it is you do with these things. Some will have been previously convicted of other crimes, others won’t.

There is a discussion to be had around sentencing of people for downloading images of children. There is valid discussion to be had around rehabilitation (and the possibilities thereof) of convicted sex offenders. And there is discussion to be had around how we can limit the opportunity for individuals to have access to the kinds of depraved places where these images can be found and downloaded. I asked the question earlier why the authorities cannot simply have the dark web blocked via ISP’s and also whether sex related crimes have increased due to the existence of the internet but no-one answered me.

Venables is a convicted sex offender. Anyone who knows that should be repulsed by what he has done. But his crime of being a sex offender should be held against others who have committed the same crimes in order that all sex crimes be stopped wherever possible. Because Venables won’t be the only one with a previous conviction, indeed he may not even be the only one who has served time in a juvenile institution, but people are singling him out in particular because of the high profile nature of his previous crime, and because he is one of the only children in recent history who has been allowed to be named in order to placate the public.

And meanwhile Robert Thompson is, as far as we know, leading as normal a life as is possible given the nature of his licence and release conditions. He isn’t a ten year old any more either. But he hasn’t gone on to commit further crimes, therefore his treatment at the hands of the law should be looked at in reference to the age he was when he offended.

Some great points Brilliant. However I can't get my head round that after being convicted of murdering a child and twice being found with indecent images of children, that after a couple of years, Venables will be free again and able to mix in the community. Moreover he will protected by his new identity. The boys were given new identities to give them a chance to rehabilitate themselves. This has clearly failed with Venables and now the public interest must prevail. He should not be able to hide behind a new identity.

New identities not just to rehabilitate but to,prevent them being murdered by vigilantes

Notasingle thats a very disturbing video (and wouldnt be made like that today) but interesting nobody has watched it. Children who behave like this are damaged and troubled- they just are. Agonising the moment when she seems to start to feel but pushes it down and he tells her she is doing well but doesn't acknowledge it. You might be interested in the doc I posted earlier in the thread - shows how some children in the uk are treated now (they also have intensive psychotherapy but not shown in the film as not appropriate)

Thompson may have been rehabilitated, against all odds; all very well and good. But how many posters here would welcome him as a partner for their own DC? A father to their grandchildren? I wouldn't want him anywhere near my family, despite the fact he so far, has not reoffended and was a child himself when he murdered James.

Venables is quite clearly still a danger to children despite efforts to rehabilitate him, how could any parole board ever consider him to be no risk to children and release him?

If we are going to say that the boys weren't responsible for their actions. Surely a secure unit wasn't the place for them at all really.

In theory they should have been sent to live with loving families, given therapy and socialised back into normal life.

This is where I struggle with it. On one hand I do believe that 10 year olds deserve a second chance. On the other I don't really believe that 'the system' works all that well.

I don't think there are enough cases like this to really know. People use the example of Mary Bell, she was a different set of circumstances again, her childhood was different, the killings were different.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the boys weren't responsible for their actions, Woolly - just that it's unreasonable not to take their age & backgrounds into consideration.

We already know, as a society. that 10 year olds are not just small adults...their thought processes and ability to reason are very different. So why treat them like adults in this instance when we wouldn't in any other?

If anyone on here truly thought they were't responsible for their actions, then they'd be advancing the argument that they shouldn't have been put on trial at all. And no one has, you'll notice.

I was 11 when this happened and it made me sick to my stomach. Every time I read or hear about it I just want to cry. They were not too young to know what they did was wrong, they set out to do it. They even went to school and told their classmates they were going to 'kill a kid'. Sorry but they should have been left in jail and tried properly when they were old enough.

I think they were responsible. I just hope one day we better understand how they got to that stage.

Mary Bell is arguably the most similar UK case. Not entirely different circumstances (imo), and similar levels of violence, and detachment.

Personally, I don't 'the system' is any better equipped to handle this sort of situation any better than we as a society are. We don't really know what to do with them. Some good people inside the system probably move heaven and earth to try and turn things around for them, whilst others in the same system would happily see them strung up.

I do agree that few of us would trust either of them with someone we loved, but at the same time, that only serves to illustrate how messed up their new lives must be. Always looking over their shoulder, never knowing who to trust. It must make for a very troubled existence which probably messes with their minds further still.

I do recall Mary Bell having a few issues when she was released and needed some help. Finally she got by, but it can't be an easy transition having spent so much of their childhood in institutions, with the notoriety that went before them. Nothing was ever going to be 'normal' for them not even amongst other kids in a secure unit.

They even went to school and told their classmates they were going to 'kill a kid'

This is news to me. Do you have a source for this information?
They had discussed the idea of 'taking a kid'.

Chaos

No-one has answered your question on why the "authorities" can't just block the dark web but in case you are still wondering, it is, in simple terms, impossible. Surely you cannot seriously think that could be done?

Law enforcement agencies would need to monitor everyone with a computer. It is just not possible. There are probably far more detailed explanations you could find on google search engine if you care to research that. The dark web is not all for illegal activity either.

Please, you and other posters, stop going on about Thompson not having committed other crimes unless you qualify that statement with "as far as we know" or such like. I posted earlier on this thread to comment that the probation system is not without flaws / problems. It is not designed to nor is it capable of watching / monitoring anyone 24/7 and guarantee that they are not offending in some way. That is why we have 'experts' to identify / assess and recommend on risk and management of those risks.

It has clearly spectacularly failed in Venables case. In 2010 and now again.

There is no guarantee at all that joe public would know if Thompson had reoffended. Possibly, and that is not a definite either, we would know if he was brought before a court for prosecution, but despite being on life license and all the conditions attached to that, he could still be offending "under the radar". Just not getting caught.

I think some people on this thread and just generally too think that police forces, the national crime agency, etc have unlimited resource, power and reach when it comes to identifying and apprehending sex offenders. They don't. They rely on intelligence gathering from many sources and techniques, many quite sensitive and many of which will never see the light of day in a UK court of law. They have to get a case to court by gathering sufficient evidence to withstand defence attack, then the prosecutor needs to convince a jury, they can have all manner of evidence ruled out and deemed inadmissable, they have restrictions on what they can do within the bounds of the law, application of the ECHR, far from unlimited resource, etc etc etc. Intelligence does not always convert to evidence. Someone can be as guilty as sin and the dogs on the street know it but proving it in a court is another matter entirely.

You refer to people singling Venables out due to the nature of his previous crime, presumably you mean when he killed James Bulger, and you have forgotten about his 2010 sentencing for sex offending, or is that not relevant?

How many chances should he get? I think the key should be thrown away where he is concerned.

It's like swiss cheese theory/a perfect storm, though, isn't it? All the holes lined up. If some circumstances had been different this might not have happened, or somebody might have stopped them before it was too late. Or it might simply have been another child, another place, another pair, a different outcome. Not all disturbed children do terrible things but there is certainly the potential there. And I don't know that being sent to live with "loving families" would have been enough - I believe children with serious behavioural problems generally are considered unsuitable for foster care, partly for their own safety, partly the safety of foster carers and their families, but partly just because there is only so much that the presence of a loving family can actually fix. Sometimes a secure unit is the only possibility, even though you can see intellectually that it might not be the right environment to learn empathy and remorse etc.

To be honest I do not even really know if we understand this well enough to design a better system.

If we are going to say that the boys weren't responsible for their actions. Surely a secure unit wasn't the place for them at all really

What else are you meant to do with small children who are so badly damaged that they commit horrid acts on other people. Capicity doesn’t change the immediate risk nor the need for competant and adept supervision of the type that cannot be provided within the comunity.

We have hundreds of these kids and they cannot receive the treatment supervision and type of intense routine and consequences work whilst normal family life is going on.

We can only judge on the evidence we have so far, and there's no evidence that Thompson has reoffended.

Yes, he COULD be reoffending and hasn't been caught. The entire network of MNers could be in that situation too.

I don't disagree with anything posted about the possibility, but everybody who was ever released from prison might be an undetected re-offender.

Needsasock I don't claim to have the answer, I really don't. Hence I said 'in theory'.

I think Mistake and Bertie make very good points.

I think this discussion could go on forever. It’s one of the most complex cases heard in modern criminal history. No one really can ever pin point exactly what these boys had planned. What we are sure of is that they planned to abduct a child that day. Whether they actually planned to murder James or that idea came into plan afterwards I don’t know. It’s hard even thinking about this.

But surely the parents have some element of responsibility? And the school? These boys played truent regularly or atleast Thompson did. Perhaps if the adults around them, who were responsible for their care actually did their job, then those boys would have been at school that day. The adults in their lives turned a blind eye. As indeed the public who saw these boys, who innocently let them go.

Surely schools working with parents, to keep children in school is a start. If the children truent, prosecute the parents. Until they get the message. If during school hours, children are roaming about, let the police question them.
It’s a start atleast. Maybe if these boys had some discipline in their lives this tragic event would never have happened.