Jon Venables jailed for 2 years

[Ewe]

2 years? It just doesn't seem long enough to me.

I find my usual liberal attitude really challenged by this situation. Downloading and distributing images of children as young as two and of eight year old girls being raped.

And he gets two sodding years and no doubt a new identity to boot when he leaves prison.

'he must live in constant fear of being found out.'

Yet he is known to have revealed his identity of his own accord more than once. There is no evidence of Thompson having done so.

Foxytocin, my memory is that Thompson was held to be the prime mover at the time. But I don't recall whether it was said that he was more likely than Venables to be rehabilitated . As far as I know, nothing has brought Thompson to attention since his release.

Shaz10, don't know about CRB checks in that job, but the papers do seem to suggest that Venables was employed as a nightclub bouncer. Perhaps this was a cash-in-hand, 'under-the-radar' type job?

Mamatomany, yes Mary Bell was in a young offenders' place till she turned 18 (I think) and was moved to an adult prison, but have no idea what sort of regime operated there in the 70s.

I doubt whether it's possible to rehabilitate a paedophile by painting him as a victim.

I also doubt whether Jon Venables gets off on looking at images of small children being tortured because he was abused by 'the system'.

It's obviously a lot more complicated than that, and it was never addressed.

I don't think anyone is saying that the criminal system damaged Venables. I think people are saying that his parenting which existed within a wider and dysfunctional social context were the first abusers of Venables and that the justice system by trying him as an adult added to this process.

on a different note, last week or the week before there was a news article on radio 4 about rehabilitating paedophiles who are living already in the community. It was quite interesting though I could not listen to it in its entirety because I was picking up my child at nursery and when I came out it was nearly over, missing vital parts of it. It was about volunteers creating a social support system within which released paedophiles could form normal social networks with people who know who they are and what they had done.

I read an article about a similar scheme run by the Quakers, foxy. Amazing. Very brave volunteers. But not sure how successful it is.

that is the critical part I missed edam. They interviewed on man who was an ex-offender and apparently it was working for him. I can't remember how long he was 'out' though.

can you remember hwat it was called?
have just traweld through radio 4

no, it was in the afternoon between half 4 and 5 I think.

I am just going out but will try to look for it.

OH feck. can you still search radio 4 articles by date and time?

I think you are talking about Circles of Support and Accountability? But didn't hear the programme you mention.

If pedophilia is a sexual orientation, how can a pedophile be "rehabilitated"?

That would be like "rehabilitating" a homosexual. Such fallacy was attempted some decades ago and failed miserably.

Well workers in the probation services are not fuckwits (as evidenced by the timely actions of the supervising one re his computer use) and as I indicated a couple of days ago the decsions on recall are not their sole decisions - these incidents would have been escalated to the Parole Board, and the balance has to be struck between what risk he presented, via simple drug possesion and a fight, compared with the conseqences of recall.

I can easily see why regular drug testing, and 'enforced' alcohol interventions were favoured over a return to prison.

that is it PrincessF but I couldn't find the story on radio 4 now.

Picking up on what Ewe said about Thompson perhaps living abroad with a boyfriend, I had read that too, and have a suspicion that this rumour was put about by the authorities; the reason I think this being that Venables was rumoured to be a born-again Christian having joined the army and settled down with a girl. Obviously we now know nothing could have been further from the truth, so I wonder whether the probation service or somebody like that decided to throw the public and press off the scent with these cover stories.