James Bulger

[Monty27]

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

Thanks Sacha for answering my question. Unfortunately we live in a time where things can 'go viral' without prior intention.
I agree with daisychain: there has been research into the causes already, what is needed is action against them. Public cuts will not help. Also perhaps the language of 'evil demons' isn't helpful: but neither is any language that suggests excusing. It's a difficult line to walk. I won't bump this thread any more.

I've seen trailer with three excerpts, terribly sad, harrowing, but nothing that hasn't been done before. Well acted.

Twenty five years ago I had a young child, I remember he and his school friends talking about the case and being very annoyed at media headlines showing the 'luxury' placements that the killers would be detained. Very judgemental for children and quite wrong for the media to whip up public indignation, especially that of kids. We can't protect them from everything in the media. I remember trying to talk about it to them.

There is a very good episode of Law and Order UK, Season 3 episode 1 'Broken'. It's often shown on ITV3, I've seen it twice. It really does mirror the James Bulgar case, quite heartbreaking. Loraine Stanley is at her best portraying a murdered little boy's devastated mother. Although it fictional it is very realistic. If anyone is up that late and sees it is on, worth watching, it's so thought provoking (the American Law & Order did one before that and that is also good but we in Britain can identify more with the British version).

I remember all the shock and outrage on MN about ITV making and broadcasting See No Evil about the Moors Murders with Maxine Peake as Myra Hindley in 2006. And Appropriate Adult in 2011 with Dominic West as Fred West.

Oh, no I don't. I don't remember any shock and outrage at all.

MN wasn't around in 2002 when James Bolam portrayed Harold Shipman in ITV's Doctor Death.

He was nominated for an award but didn't get one from what I understand.
He's been nominated again (correct me by all means)
Now who would do this? Especially for an award?
It's beyond me.
The poor families

In fact John Venables behaviour is still deeply worrying and concerning, all those years of 'rehabilitation' have not helped.

AFAIK they both have PTSD from being tried as adults and the hate campaign, so at least part of what "society" is trying to rehabilitate was caused by its own reaction.

Jon Venebales has been caught viewing child abuse images time and again. Robert Thompson now leads a blameless life.

When I was at university, doing a module on paediatric mental health we discussed the James Bulger case. I have read a very lengthy transcript on his murder detailing everything that happened to him on that day and it was truly sickening. We then read the case studies of the two boy’s lives and the level of abuse and neglect they underwent at the hands of their parents and that too was very upsetting.

What they did to James was truly, truly awful and I will never be able to comprehend how two children could torture and kill a two year old. It scares me that young children are capable of such an antricious act and it makes me feel sick to my stomach when I think about what they did to poor James.

I would watch a documentary/film that solely focused on the killers because the human psyche fascinates me in terms of what makes people turn evil, but I would never watch the film being discussed here.

The idea of watching a re-enactment and seeing a little boy playing the role of James being led to the railway track horrifies me.

Some may think the writer has done nothing wrong, and maybe technically he hasn’t, but he’s crossed a moral line in my opinion.

He's done it for publicity.

In the US children commit crimes and are never released, there's some shocking cases of children who have killed in defense and to stop sexual abise and are incarcerated for 30+ years.

Likewise their treatment of Mentally ill people.

There's loads that he could have focused on. Why adopters aren't given proper checks and children can just be starved to death in cupboards, with no-one checking up, would be a good start.

But no, he decides on this case, all without speaking to the Family first.

He still refers to child abuse images as child pornography and questions our (UK) use of language.

He pulls apart the interviews, when, as said, he has enough to focus in his own Country.

It isn't our justice system, in respect of children and child laws that need addressing.

So he grabs his five minutes of fame and posters think its OK because they want their five minutes of entertainment and fuck the pain caused to a still grieving family and many others.

Good point Fairylea, there was a thread not that long ago about the police ramming moped criminals off their bikes. Lots of posters in favour & the scum bags were getting what they deserved, etc. Less posters concerned with the reasons why & the background of said criminals.

He pulls apart the interviews, when, as said, he has enough to focus in his own Country

He's not from the USA, he's Irish.

Isn't the whole thing with these 'double acts' that they are unlikely to happen without the other person. John Venables and Robert Thompson, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Fred and Rose West, Kim Edwards and Lucas Markham: They were all partnerships formed in a 'perfect storm' of their upbringings, circumstances, personalities, needs, etc., that allowed them to step beyond normal behaviour into murder.

I think it's fascinating, in many ways. How do you go from normal, every day conversation to 'let's kill someone....'? Because someone has to say it first, and whoever says it first doesn't know that the other person is going to take it well and agree with them. It's not something you can just chat about, normally. There must be some chain of events that transitions them from a normal friendship/relationship to a criminal one.

"AFAIK they both have PTSD from being tried as adults and the hate campaign, so at least part of what "society" is trying to rehabilitate was caused by its own reaction"

Perhaps they shouldn't have been released after only eight years, on the cusp of Adulthood, at 18?

Personly I think that they should have served time as Adults. Services should have been forced upon them, if they didn't engage in Therapy, they didn't get released.

If it was my child I wouldn’t want the film made if I hadn’t even been consulted. You can look at reasons why without sensationalism.

I've just seen that he's Irish. Disgusting that he uses 'Child Pornogaphy' then.

He admits that he didn't contact Denise because he knew he wouldn't get permission.

He's a piece of shit.

I just watched the trailer and it raised strange emotions in me. The boy who was being interviewed by the police who was sobbing and saying “we didn’t take a kid” over and over to his mom between his tears made me feel a bit moved. It portrayed a very vulnerable and scared child and it felt strange to watch because it didn’t make me feel angry like I thought it would.

@Birdsgottafly Genuine question, not being deliberately goady, but does that apply to the director, screenwriter and producers of those other TV films I mentioned earlier about Hindley and Brady, Fred and Rose West and Harold Shipman as well? I seem to recall Martin Clunes playing the acid bath murderer Haigh for ITV many years ago too.

I'm pretty certain they didn't get the permission of all the victim's families either.

Shame he didn't focus on another child incident, that's never been solved.

But thays the difference between an upper MC child disappearance and a WC child's murder.

In fact there's loads of cases were WC Families have had to fight for justice and he could have been their champion.

I think it is far more productive and intelligent to attempt to understand how it happened and why the two boys did it. More intelligent than baying for blood and screaming mobs bellowing 'throw away the key' at two ten year old kids at any rate.

Agreed. People absolutely disgust me who do that. Ignorant vanbangers.

Do psychopaths really only come from severely dysfunctional families?

Jon Venebales has been caught viewing child abuse images time and again. Robert Thompson now leads a blameless life.

People conveniently forget that at the time Robert Thompson was viewed as the more dangerous monster/demon/scum and a possible psychopath.

i often wonder when I see these threads. would you want these men in your home, near your kids? living in your street?
I bet not. I don't watch the grief porn stuff on tv. I do not find real life murders entertaining. I have no wish to try and "understand" or humanise these vile people.
the blaming of the mother (she could have done this or that) is sick.
her child should have been safe.

Of course James Bulger's mother wouldn't give permission. In much the same way, she wouldn't ever consent to her son's murderer's being released, and probably would happily see them strung up. As is her right. We can understand and empathise with her (especially as we, ourselves become mothers). But in society, punishment, understanding and insight is not and cannot be decided by a grieving mother.

Is it not important that actually, yes, we DO humanise the murderers? If not, isn't it just a case that we are ignoring humanity's ability to commit murder, even as children, thus failing to develop our understanding of the human psyche?

I totally agree with this, if you make the murderers uot to be demons we do nothing to stop the next baby / young child being killed.

There was a recentish documentary with the confession tapes and the letters written to the parole board. Thy also interviewed professionals involved with both murderers in their secure units.

As a society we failed the murderers and by implication James Bulger.

What 9 or 10 year old gets up, dressed and out of the house before their parents? And then doesn't come home until the parents are asleep?

The school had made multiple referrals to SS but it wasn't followed up.

Had that child had proper support for SS would James Bulger be alive? What if one of the 20+ adults who met the boys with James had intervened effectively?

Why is it that a 10 year old improved their educational chances by committing a heinous crime? How can that be right?

If they are only seen as evil and demons then there can be no discussion of how they came to be murderers.

The government of the day exploited the crime to remove safeguards for children in court. But it is difficult to discuss the ramifications of those acts because if you mention the case people jump up and down and cry 'evil'.

sash If you can point out something in this film that hasn't already been identified and discussed by the media, legal experts and academics over the past few decades please feel free to post it.

I have a DS who is now a little older than they were when they killed that poor baby, so I know that their age at the time was absolutely ZERO excuse for what they did.

How does this work, ThumbWitch? Did you abuse and neglect your DS? Presumably not, in which case it simply isn't a valid comparison.