to be unbelievably annoyed by this twatting report??? May be upsetting!

[loudandproud]

I have been doing some reading up on the James Bulger case recently for a project we have been doing.

It's such a horrid case my heart really does go out to his family and friends.

But whilst trawling the many many stories and articles about it, I have found one that seems to be all in the anuimals who killed hims favour. It seems to be a case of well they were abused so yes thats what abused children do.

NO IT'S NOT! I worked with abused children for a while and never once have I heard any child or anyone working alongside saying they knew a child who had done something anything like this.

That poor child was tortured and left like a piece of meat to be cut in half by a train at 2Years old, but thats okayt becaus ethe killers were abused, I don't think so.

I do apologise if I am offending anyone by saying this but they lost the right to breath the day they did this perhaps they should have been put in a cell with a big tough cell mate see how they like being tortured, terrified and abused by someone who should know better.

ARGH am so sorry but had to vent.

No, ridiculous idea, the chinese execute people and sell their organs, some are sent to trial convicted and executed for that alone!

Agree these boys should be punished, but you can not execute children no matter what the crime!

aye because thst is a really good idea.i can nominate a free loading family who are criminal

the Windsor's.fit for any friggin bullet those inbred horahs

step up to the plate Camilla and Charles, and Betty too

Oh come on, the "Chucky" thing is a ludicrous excuse. These boys weren't collected from school, fed hearty snacks and left to watch expensive films in the privacy of their own warm bedrooms. It was the banal horror of their day-to-day lives which is more likely to explain it.

Oh and LOL @ Elizabeth Windsor the one-woman crimewave

so all you hang em flog em does your intolerance only extend to adolescents

or are you scathing about all criminal justice and rehabilitation eg
adult
child
adolescent
vulnerable
ill
prisoners

do all meet the hang em flag em criteria?

This story was in the news before I had children. At the time, I remember thinking that 10 year olds were quite young in terms of understanding etc. Now I have ten year old twin boys, my thinking is different. They ARE aware of their actions and they are aware of the consequences. I do think that their upbringing MUST have had something to do with it...It's just all so sad

child awareness of behaviours does not equate to full understanding of consequences and impact

children and adolescents are emotionally and cognitively experientially still developing.this is not static so a ten yo awareness is not a 12 yo awareness

thus still have propensity of change and learning and rehab

Presumably neglectful parenting might also delay emotional growth?

btw I was not in any way advocating we adopt a shoot first ask questions afterwards legal system. It just sometimes seems that little things like knowledge, expertise and evidence escape these highly judgy threads. The logical extension is to drop any pretense towards rehabilitation, or indeed anything other than retribution, and if we are going to do that we might as well go for the cheap Chinese option rather than the incredibly expensive American one. In fact I'm not even sure if the Chinese system is still so cavalier.

agree Nooka, neglectful parenting is very likely to retard emotional development

According to reports Venables family disowned him none of them showed up to the trial he was sat besides a social worker throughout.

One of the boys spent the trial knitting for their baby brother not sure which one.

Thompson's family had to flee their houses three times whilst he was locked up as their ID's were not chnaged until afterwards. There were many revenge attacks and she fled as she was worried about her younger childrens safety when someone tried to set fire to the house.

It's quite often the case that the bucketheads who scream the most about hanging and flogging child-killers are not the greatest of parents themselves, I have noticed. ANyone remember the Portsmouth mothers who were all over the papers around the time of the NOTW's grim and ludicrous paedo-panic campaign? At least one of these bingo-clink-dripping brick shithouses had her kids on the at-risk register...

Whats the peado panic campaign?

No, they did actually re-enacte some scenes from there. Obv not every child who watches horror movies commits this crime, but I was trying to point out that the boys had no real understanding of the line between reality and fantasy. It was another symptom if you like, of psychopathy.

And yes, there are child abusers on Mumsnet I'm sure. There are probably a lot of child neglecters on Mumsnet, who would rather surf on the internet all day than actually spend time with their kids. We can't get away from the horribleness of society at times. But awful as it is to say this, parents who abuse tend only to abuse their own children. These boys and Mary Bell abused children picked at random. Just for the hell of it.

I don't condemn them. I don't know what treatments they underwent in prison, I don't know how successful those treatments were, I don't know if you can successfully treat psychopathy or if you just teach them how to live with it. I don't know what their home environments were really like.

What I do know is how frightening it all is when children kill children, not in a war, but just for kicks. For fun. And then wonder what they've done wrong. It's not just their parents to blame. It's society. Those boys were known to Social Services, neighbours knew, friends knew, the school may have known. Who takes responsibility? Who looks out for these children?

We're all to blame in some way.