James Bulger

[Monty27]

Hang your head in shame Vincent Lambre.
You low life creep.
Anyone?

I don't get how he was over the age of consent. He wasn't in school at that age?

Didn't they receive education while they were in custody? Which was until they were at least 18.

Yes, in custody, not in school as was previously stated.

The two murderers are definitely not the victims no matter what anyone says, the tiny child's Mother is a victim, picturing her toddler lying there being tortured by murdering scum must be an endless nightmare for her

Haven't read the whole thread but trying to find out what caused what they did isn't making excuses.

but there are millions of families who live in poverty which in itself is a social tragedy of our times, and yet their children don't torture and murder people

Well yes, that kind of reinforces why we should try to find out why they did this.

People find it easier to demonise children than accept that our society has created child murders. We are products of our society and those boys were let down
Only by understanding can it be prevented in the future

Extract from the article I mentioned above:-

The author Blake Morrison obtained notes from an NSPCC case conference on the Thompson family. "The Thompson report is a series of violent incidents," he reported, "none of them in itself enough to justify the kids being taken into care but the sum of them appalling. The boys, it's said, grew up 'afraid of each other'. They bit, hammered, battered, tortured each other."

The report is full of violent instances, with details of such incidents as Ann taking her third son Philip to the police station after he had threatened his older brother Ian with a knife. Ian, aged 15, subsequently asked to be taken into care and when he was returned home he tried to kill himself by overdosing on painkillers. The notes record that Ann and Philip had also previously taken overdoses.

The Venables household was also fraught but contrastingly so. While Susan and Neil Venables lived in separate houses a mile apart, they tried to bring up their children in a united way - Jon spent Sunday to Thursday with his mum and the rest of the week with his dad. But things were difficult. Jon's brother and sister both had learning difficulties and were being taught in separate special schools, while Jon himself was hyperactive and always playing up. It was Jon Venables, not Robert Thompson, who had a record of violence, having attempted to throttle another boy at school.

In January 1987, the police were called to Susan Venables' home because the children (then seven, five and three) had been left alone for three hours. Case notes observe that her "serious depressive problem" made Venables suicidal.

PotatoScone, the stuff about Mary Bell and the Norwegian case is pretty easy to find and the Guardian has good articles on both.

A lot of other stuff comes from this interview with his mother:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/20/james-bulger-murder-25-years-on-mother-denise-fergus

That covers the killing animals and two other kidnap attempts and they can also be verified with police.

Some of it comes from interviews will Phil Roberts who led the original investigation, some is from a book called ‘As if’ by Blake Morrison.

The stuff about the children’s respective childhood too is easy to find too. There was one incident where Venables mother left her children at home alone when he was primary age and his mother suffered mild depression. But there was nothing major, no physical or sexual abuse which could have explained why he did it. Thompson on the other hand had been severely physically and emotionally abused.

Some of it is from documentaries, in particular the one Denise Fergus appeared on with ITV and her book.

It’s all stuff in the public domain. It’s not hard to find.

Which bits came as a surprise to you? I’d rather you asked me specifics because I’m not prepared to entirely annotate the post like it’s an essay. It really is easy stuff to find.

I don’t think anyone is saying that they weren’t damaged or affected by their backgrounds. I think there is a leap between that and what they did though that can’t be explained by it.

I grew up in a very deprived area. Everyone I knew had parents that were drunk (mine), divorced, fought with each other, had mental illness, poverty, etc etc. The kids I went to school with used to take knives to school tucked into their socks as there was a lot of muggings about (I’ve been mugged myself). Kids used to come to school dirty, hungry and with holes in their shoes. None of us felt hard done by, although we definitely were. It was just normal. I’m sure people in different circumstances would have looked at it all in absolute horror.

I don’t think any of us went on to do anything except have some emotional and financial difficulties as adults - those I know of anyway.

We certainly didn’t murder a toddler.

I think those who’ve had a relatively good upbringing, in nicer areas look at the backgrounds of the boys and think how awful they are and feel like they’ve “solved” it by saying that was what it was... but the reality is actually for many people their childhoods were just an average deprived childhood. Which is a tradegy for any child, of course it is, but it’s not a reason, or an explanation.

@Augusta2012 nothing you wrote came as a surprise to me, I have heard it or read it over the years in books about the case and interviews with detectives involved, Denise etc as you said. It is all out there. I recall reading a book with parts of the transcripts of the interviews with the two boys quite some years ago but can’t for the life of me remember the book now. It was pretty harrowing.

That always gets wheeled out, the 1987 incident.

You’ve deliberately not included the part of that article which contradicts you:

"I don't think we went wrong at all," Venables maintained rather desperately in a newspaper interview she later gave. "He has had the love and attention that any boy would. He has had more love and attention than a lot of children I know. He has been educated. He has never really been a truant. He has had his holidays like everyone else. He has had Christmas presents. He is not a little urchin boy. He is far from it. He has had security with loving parents and a loving brother and sister."

Do you really think being left alone once for a few hours as a child makes it okay to kill a toddler?

Do you think it justifies downloading a manual telling you how to have ‘safe’ sex with children so you can’t be caught?

Do you think it justifies looking at pictures of babies being raped?

Thompson was a victim of constant, systematic physical and sexual abuse in a chaotic home with an alcoholic mother who was prone to suicide attempts. There’s no suggestion that anything like that was happening in Venables home, in fact JV’s solicitor said:

one of the hardest parts of the case was looking after Venables' parents who he described as "very respectable people who were going through a nightmare".
"They were good people. Lovely people.^
They didn't have a clue what was happening," he said.

Mr Lee said as far as Venables was concerned his background was "no worse than any kid in Liverpool" and at the time he had actually been given a responsibility by his schoolteacher.

There’s plenty of this out there, here’s one story:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/the-bulger-murder-fatal-meeting-of-disturbed-young-minds-killers-from-broken-but-contrasting-homes-1506473.html%3famp

My ds is studying GCSE drama and has 2 set pieces to perform. The first was the tragedy of the little boy found washed up on the beach who was a refugee and the second is the James Bulger murder.

Why are either of those suitable for GCSE drama? I don't get it

fairylea, with the case of both the Edlington brothers and Thompson I can understand because it was so extreme. I read something a detective said about both the Edlington and Liverpool households as being steeped in brutality from the start. The way he describes it was Dad beats up Mum, Mum and Dad beat up the eldest child, the eldest child beats the second oldest child so the second oldest child beats the next one etc, etc, etc.

Thompson was already living on the streets most of the time when he was ten.

I can understand how a child like that would see nothing normal or wrong in violence, but Venables case was nowhere near that, it was just mildly dysfunctional.

No one can prove that coke taste better than pepsi, so no facts are involved, it's subjective, that's what an opinion is (unless it's something like "the earth is flat")

But the point is that that is still an opinion based on evidence. An opinion on a programme you haven't seen self-evidently is not.

Surely there should be some sort of law to protect families and to stop these money grabbers trying to profit of people's grief

It would be incredibly difficult to frame any such law. Where would you put the limits? It would, for instance, stop people from writing articles about 9/11 because they'd have to get the permission of all the victims' relatives; what do you do about cases where you can't even identify the victims? Arguably it would stop any reporting at all because, after all, journalists are paid and newspaper owners need to sell papers, so they're trying to profit from people's grief. And where do you draw the line between people writing up the products of academic research for publication, people writing a book to stimulate debate, and people writing books just for the sake of selling them?

I agree that they had much better lives as a result of the crimes, than they otherwise would have. That doesn't sit easily with anyone, I don't think,

But that is only because they had such appalling lives before. Are we seriously saying they should have carried on being abused and neglected just so that their lives wouldn't be made any easier? If anyone seriously thinks life in a youth justice facility is a bed of roses, they are deluding themselves.

At least once a year an documentary pops up to lecture us about how we should feel sorry for the killers. It’s practically a liberal right of passage that you have to be involved with some sort of documentary which is choc full of emoting about poor Venables and Thompson.

Really? What was last year's documentary, and the year before's?

The only person in this situation is Denise and James. The liberal media constantly portraying her as a jumped up slow witted chav because she had the temerity to be upset that her child was tortured, beaten, daubed in paint, sexually assaulted and his body chopped in two

I have never, ever seen an article which portrayed Denise Fergus in this way, or suggested that she wasn't entitled to be upset. Can you link to some of them?

My ds is studying GCSE drama and has 2 set pieces to perform. The first was the tragedy of the little boy found washed up on the beach who was a refugee and the second is the James Bulger murder.

If this is true - it’s unconscionable. How is this even possible? I’m genuinely staggered. Hell would freeze over before my child took part in that. How unspeakably wicked!

Shame on anyone who condones this!

Augusta those comments are disgusting completely agree.
How anyone can have the audacity to judge Denise after the strength of character and dignity she’s shown since she lost her son - it’s beyond me.

Yes it is true over the drama pieces but from what ds has told me it's the aftermath of the crime rather than the events leading up to it which clearly makes it very different.
I am still uncomfortable with it to be honest but am aware that this crime happened before ds was even alive so he knew very little about it when told what their pieces would be.
I am going to speak to him when he wakes up and find out a bit more information.

Augusta, none of those documentaries were "choc (sic) full of emoting about Venables and Thompson". The fact that you can google and discover that documentaries were made does not answer the question I put at all. It is however very revealing that you accuse other people of being lazy because they do not do your research for you.

it was you who claimed that "liberal media constantly portraying her as a jumped up slow witted chav because she had the temerity to be upset", it is for you to justify it. After a lot of trouble, you have managed to find two articles that are critical of Denise Fergus and, more significantly, her followers; that is hardly "constant" given that 25 years have elapsed, is it? An MN thread is not "liberal media" and, if you read those articles properly, none of them are in fact blaming Denise Fergus for being upset at her child's death.

But all of this appears to be a bit of an attempt on your part to derail this thread from the documentary and TV programme which is its subject and which, although you profess to be disgusted by them, you admit you haven't seen. That also is quite revealing.

"But the point is that that is still an opinion based on evidence. An opinion on a programme you haven't seen self-evidently is not."

Opinion based on subjective evidence, such as "this taste sweeter". Still can't be proven to be right or wrong. Such as "I think the filmmaker is a twat and did it to garner sympathy". Again only he knows his true intentions, he's already lied regarding not doing it for awards etc and then oh look, a tweet saying he told everyone they wouldn't make the shortlist, but not once did he think about an award ) so there's every chance he's being disingenuous about his intentions. We already know he wouldn't want the film making if it was him.

My opinions have not been based on the film, quite right, given I won't and will not be watching it.

I think we should leave it there too. I am not wrong in what I'm saying and neither are you. And frankly I've got better things to do today than constantly try and explain what opinion and fact wnd subjective etc means, the article a pp linked to earlier explains it pretty well.