The Bulger killers: was justice done?

[WannaBeWonderWoman]

Following on from previous thread which was filled.

What would have been the correct way to deal with these little boys who subjected a tiny two year old to protracted agony and unimaginable suffering then?

Interested to know what all the bleeding hearts on here believe should have happened? Whether they attended an adult court and were convicted of murder which they confessed to anyway, was this crueller to them than what they put that child through? They were well treated and even when they were serving their 'sentence' they were protected and given all they wanted (more than they would have got if they'd been in their own homes probably) and had all the help and therapy it was possible to give them. Did they suffer? You could actually argue that they benefitted from killing. They have to live with what they've done, yes, but if they did I find it hard to comprehend that Thompson especially (who came across as the leader in the interviews) can.

The Norwegian case which is often compared to this is nowhere similar IMO. The perpetrators were a similar age to their victim. They were 6 which is almost half the age V&T were and they wouldn't have been tried here anyway. Most importantly that crime was not premeditated or drawn out for hours like the many horrors inflicted on James.

He was the only victim here.

I'm about half way through reading this thread. One thing that puzzles me is why did they go infront of a jury if they had already admitted guilt in interviews?

Something a lot of people fail to understand is that kids from different areas have vastly different levels of exposure to, and so understanding of, various things.

I grew up in north Liverpool and am just a couple of years younger than T&V. We spent all of our time 'hanging' on the streets and playing truent. Our primary school regularly had the police called in because pupils had brought in weapons. The majority of my class had tried/regularly took drugs by the time we left for secondary school. Alcohol was a staple at weekends and kids were sexually active pre-puberty.

This was normal. I was incredibly street smart and had seen my fair share of fights, involving weapons, and understood the consequences when I was half their age.

Travel a bit further up the road to where my DH was brought up and it was a different story. He went to a great school and spent his spare time attending various clubs and classes. He had his first drink at 17, had never seen a fight and was never involved with drugs.

His parents believed T&V were so young they were incapable of understanding the gravity of what they'd done. My parents believed T&V were pure evil and deserved a harsh sentencing.

It's the difference between kids who have a youth and deserved to be treated like youths because they know no better and those who have had to grow up very fast and understand the consequences of their adult actions because that is the world they live in. That's all that matters, not shifting blame to the parents to alleviate the liability.

I was living abroad at the time of this case so I only knew the basic facts. Some of the details which were discussed on the two documentaries were just horrific. I can't imagine how Denise Fergus has managed to cope with knowing what happened to her son. I also can't imagine how the police who had to deal with case coped either.

Absolutely, Ariadne.

Before that, a child can say that it's wrong to do something, but he's only parroting what he's been told, not actually experiencing the feeling for himself. So the boys knew that what they did was wrong at the time they did it only in the sense that they'd get into trouble if anyone found out.

That's rubbish. Are you saying children have no morality or empathy for other living beings? "Not fully developed" doesn't mean not developed at all - otherwise all children would be abusing others.

Of course children can feel fucking empathy and feel upset if they've hurt something else. I pulled leaves off a plant and when my mum said "do you know it's alive and hurting", I burst into tears not because it was a telling off but because I realised the consequences. That was age 3 and most kids are similar - that's why kids don't hurt their pets, etc. In fact if children abuse animals, it's often an early sign of psychopathy.

Their "troubled upbringings" are not an excuse, plenty of people have troubled upbringings and do not go on to commit crime. And plenty of people grow up in loving families and become sociopaths.

@Grumble, but some people are. Brains are not a blank putty that fill in depending on upbringing. A lot of personality traits, intelligence etc. is just genetic. Even twins have vastly different personalities, with exactly the same upbringing.

They were tried, found guilty and given life. What fhe fuck else do you guilliotine knitters want?

They aren't serving life though are they. Nobody really knows what RT is up to, he might not have been caught doing anything wrong but it doesn't mean he's an upstanding citizen. Venables is continually caught perpetuating the abuse of children by, at the very least, being a customer of the people doing it.

Arguably the only people actually serving a life sentence are the family of poor Jamie.

The fact they were 10 at the time conflicts so harshly with the nature of their crime. Such young children and such an adult and horrendous crime that is is hard to pair the 2 together.

I'm not surprised there are such conflicting views, I'm conflicted myself and couldn't begin to imagine how this 'should' have been handled. There are bound to have been mistakes, explosions of opinions etc. I don't think anybody at the time really knew the best way to handle it and the sad thing is, 25 years later, we still don't

I'm about half way through reading this thread. One thing that puzzles me is why did they go infront of a jury if they had already admitted guilt in interviews?

I wondered that last night and from what I can see it's because there wasn't a guilty plea entered. I'm trying to find out if that's an age thing, or if it's because the grounds/level still had to be found (Mary Bell was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of finished responsibility for example).

I'm about half way through reading this thread. One thing that puzzles me is why did they go infront of a jury if they had already admitted guilt in interviews?

That would be because the jury had to decide whether it was murder or manslaughter, I suspect. Often the defendant pleads guilty to manslaughter but the CPS doesn't accept the plea and tries them for murder.

Justice wasn't served. Venables should have his anonymity revoked.

From what I've read Venables seems to have been the more stupid and reckless of the 2, evidenced by him disclosing his identity and downloading images etc.
Thompson the more cold, calculated detached one

Here so go again "from what I've read", none of us actually KNOW anything, it's ALL speculation.

I watched the other programme last week. I'm watching the Trevor McDonald programme now.

Tbh I actually don't understand why anyone would want to watch these programmes, seems like rubbernecking to me.

Berry - not meaning to be goady, honestly, but then why would you read/post on the thread?

Tabby your 'guillotine knitters' comment are childish and pathetic

The OP set the bar for pathetic comments with her opening post.

Tabby’s doesn’t even touch the sides.

Justice wasn't served. Venables should have his anonymity revoked.

May as well give him the rope then. It would be a more humane death for him than what’s in store when the lynch mob find out his new identity.

Yup. The rope is no less than he deserves.

Yup. The rope is no less than he deserves

And yet we don’t have the death penalty in this country. Which is what revealing his identity would amount to.

Mores the pity butch

Yolo I'm not disputing that to commit terrible crimes seem to inbuilt into a tiny minority of people. I'm just not comfortable writing it of as evil aka the work of the devil. Is it the result of in utero brain damage? Abuse/neglect at a critical time in a child's development? A personality disorders? A genetic fault? A combination of all the above? If it can be identified it can be stopped/treated. If we throw our hands in the air and blame evil how can we ever be sure that any baby born isn't evil? That way lies voodoo rituals to "cure" innocent children.

Yolo - I said that children reach milestone developments at different times. Of course some children are more empathetic than others but even they are not fully developed. The psychologist said it was a fact that the frontal lobe which deals with morality, judgement, etc., doesn't start developing until the beginning of puberty.

Whether some people are born with homicidal tendencies, whether psychopathy is innate, has been debated for centuries. The Victorians used to measure the lumps and bumps on murderers' heads - phrenology, long discredited - to try to find an answer. When we know more about the workings of the brain, perhaps we'll find out.

Diagnosis of psychopathy isn't an exact science. It depends on the opinion of experts. It was decided that Mary Bell did show psychopathic tendencies and diminished responsibility. Afaik, V & T's medical records have not been released, but they were convicted of murder not manslaughter. I don't know whether the criteria for a diagnosis had changed in the interim.

No one knows whether rehabilitation of children is possible because there are so few cases of child murder to provide evidence.

@Sleepingbunnies the death penalty is the last thing we would want. It's a massive step backwards and I think a lot of people, myself included, would be (and should be) vehemently opposed to it