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.

So sorry vinegar tits

I do agree we need to stop arguing about it at the end of the day I have my views and you ahve yours, James was a real child not a media frenzy and sadly these boys are real too. Its a fact we need to face, how many more are there wondering our streets living amongst us, its something Id like to know and wouldnt be happpyy about if some of you would like to live near these people go ahead I am not one of them and never will be.

I hope they suffer everyday like a few of you have said because they deserve everything and if they dont suffer i wish them nothing but pain !

I am guessing that you research most of your facts from teh Daily Mail BigDaddy.
I look forward to reading some more of your articulate and insightful posts.

I guess u get most of ur view out ur anus coz i smell shite!!!!!!

If you like.
don't allow the fact that i actualy have experience in this area and an educational basis for my opinion allow you to be swayed from your oh so articulate argument.

sorry HRh?

revolting thread.

Bigdaddy, have you ever committed a crime? Of course you must have done.

?They are 26 now and they should not be walking our streets hidden amongst us.? But it is precicely because of some of the views on this thread that they have to be ?hidden?.

What happened to James Bulger was horrific beyond words. I was still living in South Africa at the time and the crime was reported even over there.

But regardless of the crime itself, people seem to lose sight of the fact that the perpetrators were 10 year old children. Children who would not be allowed to vote for another 6 years, drink for another 8 years, have sex for another 6 years, drive for another 7years, presumably because they were not mature enough to have a full understanding of what they are doing. And yet people expect them to be mature enough to take an adult punishment for a crime which they committed as children.

Nothing can make right what those two children did. Nothing. Even if they have been rehabilitated they can never make up for what they did.

We have a justice system that decides what punishment criminals should serve, and in this instance that justice system, along with several other professionals, decided that those two boys should be released from jail after 8 years.

But the justice system did not decide to give them new identities so that they could sail off into the sunset and have fabulous new lives, they had to have new identities because of people who feel they know better than the law, and who feel they have a moral responsibility (to who exactly?) to take the law into their own hands and give out their own justice.

If we lived in a society that was based on compassion and acceptance rather than the musings of the news of the world and its illk, then perhaps these two boys would be able to live open lives and publically face up to what they have done. But as it is the op and her cronies are largely responsible for the fact that they will for ever be ?hidden amongst us?.

Okay last post on here then I am going cant be bothered saying my point anymore.

I can't speak for anyone else but I do not want kill anyone but I'm not saying I'd stop someone else if they knew them, I never said I wanted to kill children in no way shapoe or form did I say that.

They are 5 years older than me so wouldn't really make sense would it.

Also this thread has gone way off topic at the end of the day everyone is entitled to their opinion regardless of what others think it is an opnion freedom of speech etc.

And to 'big'daddy did you have anything that made sense to say or were you just onto spout random crap?

And there is the thing WannaBe, we live totally in a society that is prepared to punish and judge, rather than understand and fix.

I would not wish pain and suffering upon anyone, but what those evil boys did to that baby makes me want to kill them with my own bear hands, i can still clearly see his smiling face and ruffled blond hair, and the picture of those 2 boys leading him away My ds1 was quite similar looking, i remember i was in a queue in a shop with him not long after and an elderly lady behind me looked at my son and broke down in tears, i guess seeing another toddler, same age, height, hair colour and cheeky grin, reality was just too much to bear for her

i am not the right person to answer this thread though, somebody stop the world now cos i want to get off

Can we please keep such threads in NEWS?
Or at least give some inkling in the heading what the thread is about?

I block news.
I dont ever open threads about children being mistreated. Or killed. Brings on anxiety attacks.

This does not belong in Aibu. It is not sensational. It is a tragedy.

Oh no. Now it is in "my conversations". QS just shut your mouth and go to bed.

OneLieIn but tbh I think it should be possible to do both.

At the time a crime is committed of course we judge. And it goes without saying that any crime should be punished according to the severity of that crime.

But then we should also seak to understand and rehabilitate. Because if we don't try to understand, then how can we possibly hope to prevent such crimes being committed in the future?

"By solidgoldskullonastick on Thu 09-Oct-08 22:46:03
The thing is, quite a lot of 10 year olds could go nearly that far, egging each other on, not really understanding what they were doing or not believing that some hurts are more life-threateninng than others, but mostly when children start getting too violent with each other, someone or something intervenes. "

Is exactly the point. I too find it really bizarre that so many here feel children should be more responsible than adults. Children need to learn to behave decently and be protected from their worst instincts. These boys were not properly cared for. They did the most horrific and appalling thing imaginable. But they were children.

They baying stupidity revealed on this thread is miserable - you are presumably adults, adults incapable of pity for those children. Adults who are cruel enough to think that "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."

I remember watching a programme a while later about a child of a pretty similar age who killed a much younger child somewhere in Scandinavia. They were not prosecuted, but received a package of psychological support, remaining in their home at the time. The Scandinavians interviewed from the town where it had happened were appalled at the UK's approach.

I can't understand how it is that people who know very little about such cases apart from what gets reported in the press think they know more than the experts, who with all the information available are asked to make very difficult decisions on release. Yes of course they may get it wrong, but they know much much more about psychology, reoffending rates and the particular of each case than anyone else, and in notorious cases like these will err on the side of caution. What is the point of speculation without any understanding or knowledge? It is simply gossip, and fairly salacious at that.

some of the 'hope they kill themselves' and 'they should be dead' and 'let's hope their lives are miserable' comments on this thread are truly horrible. Yes it's a horrible thread. It's horrible because it's an excuse for mawkish rubberneckers to spout vitriolic nonsensical claptrap about evil and retribution.

The boys who killed this child were 10 when it happened. They have had a serious amount of counselling, help, education, care and rehabilitation. Surely this is what we SHOULD be doing for young damaged children? Nothing can bring back james Bulger and thankfullly in this country we do have a system where people are not only punnished by time in prison but they are also offered the chance to turn themselves around. If I had a ten year old who did something terrible I would hope that they would be offered some kind of help.

No amount of hand-wringing and sobbing will bring James Bulger back - and, as someone has already said, one child lost a life and that is horrible for that child's family, but two other children were hopefully saved.

The issue of counselling, care and rehab is entirely separate from a just term of imprisonment. It should be possible to provide any necessary support services in prison.

Personally I think it was a just term of imprisonment, but I am not sure if they were released 'early' or not.

OneLieIn. Don't misunderstand what I said. I don't think that every 10yo who goes down the wrong path is a write off. I am talking specifically about those people who are diagnosed as psychotic.

I probably didn't make that clear. Once you are psychotic I don't think there is any cure. Like any mental illness you can live with it very peacefully as a member of society. But if you are made that way because of your childhood, or if you were born that way and then had a bad childhood on top, then you become a dangerous person to be around.

Psychosis is a little like Aspergers in that sufferers do not understand feelings of other people. Only it goes much much further obviously, they do not understand consequences, they are not capable of empathy, they feel nothing.

Those boys displayed those qualities which makes me fear for them. They may never be cured of their psychosis but I do hope for their sakes that they receive help every single day, because they will need it just to be able to get through each day.

Remember this wasn't just a killing, like the shaking of a baby, this was like torturing a kitten. They got enjoyment out of what they did. And that's the scary bit.

Were they ever diagnosed as having Psychosis by the professionals they came into contact with?

The issue of personality disorders is a very tricky one. If you are missing those parts of your emotions or capacity to function normally then there are serious questions as to whether rehabilitation is actually possible. It is one of the reasons why mental health professionals were so unhappy about the latest mental health bill, as it proposed incarcerating in high security mental health units those with such disorders (regardless of criminal acts) despite the fact that at present there are no effective therapies, for what could indeed be hard wiring as opposed to simply the choice to be "bad". However if the children in this case had been felt to be psychotic is is likely they would have been moved to a forensic unit rather than released.

Haven't read all the posts, but the fact that the two children who did this to James Bulger were abused children themselves is highly relelvant in explaining their behaviour. If you look at Alice Miller's website, she explains the direct connection between childhood abuse and subsequent aggressive behaviour.

Alice Miller is a psychotherapist and expert on the causes and effects of child abuse.

www.alice-miller.com

In the link below there is an explanation of the causes of violence towards others.

www.alice-miller.com/flyers_en.php?page=7