To be amazed they've released Mairead Philpott?

[MarylinMonrue]

After serving half her sentence for the arson attack? Apparently even a source from the prison was a shocked at the leniency and the fact she's going to get a new identity and protection. Six children in that fire - is there such a thing as justice in this country anymore?

Very disturbing, agreed.

Contrmary you appear to be saying if people are wrongly imprisoned then it's better to have them executed so they won't suffer psychologically?

Public executions? I assume this is a joke?

Headsoff, it is hard to get sarcasm online. I hope you're right.

Personally I don't agree with the death penalty but I don't agree with people doing such short sentences for such horrific crimes.

Watching that documentary it seems like she lied about her abusive childhood as well.

He seems insane, I don't know if he is in prison or somewhere like Broadmoor. He can't be right in the head can he.

Actually I don't think he is insane ,it's not like he's tried to claim he was mentally unwell when he did it , ,I think he's very arrogant and has an extremely high opinion of himself ,he never actually wanted to kill those children ,but clearly it was a very stupid Ill thought out plan ,I don't think he has a particularly high IQ either but he thinks he's clever which is very dangerous.

But the courts did not accept this argument as valid. Presumably she never set fire to herself? Put out candles, turned the oven off like everyone else? She knew fire was dangerous. It doesn’t matter if she believed he would succeed in rescuing six kids from a burning house, she knew they would need rescuing and otherwise they would die. Because she knew the risks of fire.

This. No amount of 'but he said' absolves this - I am not for one minute suggesting she wasn't deep into a violently abusive relationship that completely messed her up, but as many PP have pointed out, women in that situation still have a drive to protect their kids. She knew they would need rescuing or die.

Exactly. If he’d said, “Jump out of that fifth storey window and I’ll definitely catch you”, would she have ‘trusted’ him then?

No. She was willing to accept that risk for her kids.

@flaviaritt

Exactly. If he’d said, “Jump out of that fifth storey window and I’ll definitely catch you”, would she have ‘trusted’ him then?

No. She was willing to accept that risk for her kids.

The thing she may very well have agreed to this.

The thing she may very well have agreed to this

Would she bollocks! She had enough of a survival instinct to lie. Don’t tell me she doesn’t know the difference between a squashed cabbage and her own squished head. You can’t be serious.

On the question of coercion and control and how much she could have done - I may be wrong here, but I gathered from the coverage at the time that Mick Philpot intended to lay the blame on the girlfriend who got away with her children, that it was going to be his revenge on her.

it may have been indirectly intended as a lesson to Mairead - that she too could be framed for some horrible crime if she showed an independent streak.

So she committed a horrible crime - conspiring to set the house on fire with her own six children inside - in order to... avoid being framed for a horrible crime? It doesn't make sense.

, he’s definitely not insane. He’s just a very dangerous idiot who thinks he’s God of everything he surveys. Thing is, I think that it’s fairly evident that no-one who commits any of these types of crimes is mentally normal. Even the people who calculatedly murder significant numbers of others e.g. Fred West, Harold Shipman, etc. But there has to come a point where mental state does not make allowances for the crimes that have been committed.

There’s a fine line between mentally ill and being mentally sick. Iyswim.

Most criminals do not claim insanity or diminished responsibility on the grounds of mental health. That doesn’t mean they’re mentally healthy though, but they can be mentally not healthy and still capable of calculating the most horrific crimes.

it may have been indirectly intended as a lesson to Mairead - that she too could be framed for some horrible crime if she showed an independent streak. except he wanted to leave her and she refused to agree to a divorce. How does that tie in then?

The apologists on this thread seem to be prepared to twist everything that happened to make her out to be an innocent victim and driven by fear. Lots of criminals are victims. That doesn’t absolve them from their crimes.

But there has to come a point where mental state does not make allowances for the crimes that have been committed.

I think the idea of ‘lack of capacity’ means you can’t tell right from wrong - you might be psychotic, or so low on the IQ scale that you literally cannot compute right from wrong.

But of course you can be mentally ill in the sense that you don’t care about right or wrong. That isn’t lack of capacity and those who commit crimes because they just don’t care are still considered guilty.

I think given that MP had enough about her to tell lies, we can all infer that she isn’t incapable of telling right from wrong.

@flaviaritt

Exactly. If he’d said, “Jump out of that fifth storey window and I’ll definitely catch you”, would she have ‘trusted’ him then?

No. She was willing to accept that risk for her kids.

Agreed. Why didn't she stay in the house so that she could help her kids to safety? Because she knew perfectly well that it was dangerous, that's why!

By the logic of some of the posters here - what if Mick was trying to frame his ex because she was abusive, and he didn't want her to have access to the kids, and he felt that the only way to protect them was by sending her to prison? (I don't believe this for a second, but it's no more far-fetched than some of the explanations people are coming up with for Mairead's actions.)

Why didn't she stay in the house so that she could help her kids to safety? Because she knew perfectly well that it was dangerous, that's why!

I thought that. Got herself out nice and safe.

I apologise if I’m bringing up things that have already been said. I watched the BBC documentary on this tragedy a while ago. I remember that Mairead’s sister stated that both her and her family had offered to help Mairead and the children to leave Mick, even offering to pick up the children from school to help them escape. I know, first hand, that leaving an abusive relationship isn’t easy or straightforward. But she did choose to stay.
After they were taken in to custody, she chose to continue lying about the fire - repeatedly insisting that the fire wasn’t any of their doing.
Yes, she suffered horrible abuse, yes she has a low IQ. But a child knows the difference between lying and telling the truth.
People are outraged because she made choices that led to 6 innocent children dying. In the justice system that doesn’t mean she murdered them.
I wish it was that clean cut but I don’t feel it is. She shouldn’t have been released in my opinion.

It doesn’t help anyone to keep her locked up. It doesn’t bring back her children.

By this logic, we should release all murderers from prison, because locking them up didn't bring their victims back.

But he will have been assessed ,to see wether he was suffering with a mental illness such as psychosis etc ,as he ,s in a prison rather than one of England's special hospitals I assume he must have been assessed as not mentally unwell,some people can just be evil ,I don't know wether he's been diagnosed as a Psychopath or not it seems likely he would certainly have some tendancies .

ibter sting....my post deleted but the post calling for public executions still stands.

RIIIGHHHHT!

Well done MNHQ....peak idiocy right there.

A manslaughter verdict meant that the court decided she didn’t mean to kill them.

That’s why the sentence was so short.

If it was murder (where you mean to kill them) it would be life imprison with no release for killing six kids.

That’s why it seems so low. The court decided she didn’t mean to do it.

@Whiskyinajar

Trouble is, like it or not polls have shown that among tyenUK population as a whole most people still want the death penalty in the worst cases.

That’s not the same among educated people, of course, but like it or not if there was a Brexit style referendum on it we would have it back very quickly.