Jon Venables is getting paroled.

[BOF]

Denise Fergus is understandably devastated. I was surprised not to notice a thread on this yet- what do people think?

[YoungBritishPissArtist]

Had baby Peter Connolly survived, it's not unthinkable that he wouldn't have done something similar. I imagine people'd be out in the streets baying for his blood.

When I find myself thinking 'lock 'em up and throw away the key' I imagine JV and RT as a defenceless Baby P.

[timidviper]

personally I do not thin he should be released, not just for what he did to James Bulger, but for the combination of that with the child porn offences when he was supposedly rehabilitated.

I think if the parole board release him again it should be on the proviso that if he commits any further offences he will not be given any more new identities.

[bottleofbeer]

I've never read anybody apologising "for those boys".

I'm just as sickened by adults who called for their head's on plates as I am about what they did.

Yeah yeah, we all know not every abused child goes on to abuse (or indeed, kill) but had the extent of their abuse come to light before they killed we'd have been hand wringingly appalled. They finally act as a product of their upbringing and the abuse that went before suddenly doesn't matter. Hell, the evil little bastards probably deserved it.

The ONLY thing a civilised society could have done was try to rehabilitate children. No, I won't go and read what they did thanks all the same.

Venables has continued to fuck up, he's an adult now with presumably an adult's rationale so throw away the key for all I care but people who try and understand what happened and the terrible chain of events that led to that point, who don't and never did want to see children hang or even spend the rest of their lives in prison are not apologists.

Seriously, you want to live in the kind of society that wrote children off and threw away the key? think about that...

[IWantATowel]

God help this sick world.

[Orianne]

Are there statistics on the rehabilitation of convicted paedophiles? I've heard they can't be 'cured' but wondered if that was a made up media thing or statistically proven.

[pumpkinsweetie]

& it goes on....

I'm entitled to my opinion & so are you. These weren't normal 10yo, for venables he has continued to carry on a strange path of evil.
I'm all for rehabilitation regarding children that steal, damage property and take drugs etc, but these 10yo killed a 2yo in a prolonged attack in cold blood. Sorry that my heart doesn't bleed for them, and i never said i wanted their heads on sticks. I said they would be best locked up to save other children.

Thing is, rehabilitating him could cost more children's lifes, after all venables is a murderer and a paedophile to boot, not quite someone i would want being around the community, neither do most people i rl, only on here weirdly.

The only ones i feel sorry for are the parents of james & his family. Their child had his life snatched.

[bottleofbeer]

Yeah but it's easy to think of them in an abstract way as evil little psychos.

Got kids? got them ten or over? if so, imagine how you'd feel if they were so hated as adults that they had to have totally new identities for something they did at ten. Think how young a ten year old actually is.

Only on here? you sure? because strangely I live in the real world too and plenty of people live around me. I'd prefer it if anybody who was a threat to children wasn't in any community but they are. You're just not allowed to say out loud that you don't hate ten year olds.

No, they weren't normal ten year olds, surely that goes without saying? are we not interested in what brings a child to the point they can do something like that? or should we just wait for them to do it and then lock them up for life? like it or not, no matter what they did they were still children and they were abused and/or grew up in an abusive environment. Do abused kids only matter as long as they grow up to break the cycle?

Oh and nor does it mean I don't feel sorry for James' family. I was 14 when it happened and two miles from the idiots banging on a police van to show how righteously angry they were (so angry, they wanted to kill children for uhm, child murder) and my thoughts at the time were the same as they are now. An utter tragedy for three children. I do not care on iota about Venables as an adult who made adult choices to reoffend. I will not write off ten year olds.

[PrincessFiorimonde]

But, pumpkin, rehabilitation worked for Mary Bell and seems to be working for Robert Thompson too.

Gwendoline, earlier, ConfuzzledMummy (unless I misread her) did indeed say that these two 10yo boys should have faced the death sentence.

[BOF]

Yes, bottleofbeer, I totally agree.

[Panonabike]

'Rehabilitation' works every day, even with some of the most difficult-to-reach people. We just don't hear about it because it isn't newsworthy and doesn't sell newspapers or on-line sponsorship.

[Pixel]

i wish they had had better long term psychiatric care within a family/foster family setting

Really? You think foster parents should have taken into their family a boy who was capable of torturing a baby? The possible results of that don't bear thinking about.

[Growlithe]

I agree with you too bottleofbeer.

What stopped these two being 'normal 10 year old boys'. It starts with the nature or nurture debate doesn't it? What brought those two boys to the point that they would do this? Was it in them, or was their upbringing so appalling that it lead to this?

I watched a Horizon programme some time ago about what makes you evil. Scientists thought they could spot something common in the brain scans of murders. They went further to also identify a common gene. (This is from memory so don't shoot me if I haven't got it 100% right, it was on years ago!)

Anyway, it turned out that one of the scientists tested himself, and he had both common traits, yet he obviously wasn't a psychopath. His family weren't actually surprised that he had them. But the difference was he had had a very very happy childhood. They aso suggested that a lot of CEOs of big companies could also have the brain and the gene bits, using the traits sort of to the good.

The conclusion seemed to be, there were 3 elements - the brain make up, the gene, and the upbringing. Nature and nurture.

So that could explain how those two boys got there. And they were failed nurture wise. But how did one get rehabilitated (assuming he did) and one didn't? Is that the nature bit?

So that's the thing that I don't agree with you on bottleofbeer. I think we should care a lot about the choices Jon Venables makes as an adult. I think even if free he should be placed in some sort of close supervision situation, for an extended period. I think we should continually try to reverse the nurture part of his story. I think we could learn something that may help us as a society rehabilitate others who could be capable of this.

[bottleofbeer]

When I say I don't care, I just mean that I'm not gnashing my teeth feeling sorry for him for the things he's done as an adult.

I think they were very damaged kids, I think a horrible set of circumstances came together at once. I don't think child murder was ever really some big plan. I think things went too far. Kids pulling the wings off an insect on a much, much bigger scale.

They walked right past the main exit/entrance of The Strand (the butchers was on the ground floor, Mothercare where the CCTV captures them with James was on the first floor and to get to the first floor you've walked past said entrance) if the big plan was to take a child and murder them why have they walked around the shopping centre in full view and not just taken him straight out? and intention is a huge part of this.

I hate what they did, but the media is so bloody irresponsible in this. Two years later a little girl was murdered on the very same stretch of rail track by kids. Does anyone even know her name? the kids who killed her were older. The very fact of their young age is always what's given this case it's fuel and why we're still talking about it 20 years later.

[mercibucket]

yes, i do, pixel
i do not think 10 year olds should be put in a young offenders prison and they should be placed in a setting that closely replicated a home environment but where they can receive the psychiatric and psychological care that would give them the best chance to be rehabilitated, if that is the right term for this situatiin.

[mercibucket]

yeah, cheers for that comment too gwendoline
nice to see the level of debate from the hang em flog em brigade

[Growlithe]

I know the area well. Someone I knew said at the time that the boys must have lived by the railway because when children are in trouble they head towards home. He was right.

The thing is, that wasn't the roughest area I knew at the time. Why were there two lads this way inclined together there at once? I think there was only one, but reading the papers at the time, that one was Thompson. Venables seemed to be easily led. Yet he was the one that ended up most screwed up. Or is he transparent, and Thompson very clever and able to play the game. And if that's the case, who actually is the most dangerous?

[bottleofbeer]

I think it's entirely possible he's institutionalised. He wants to be incarcerated. He also happens to be a paedophile.

My brother had been ill that day and my parents had to account for his whereabouts. My husband put himself right in the bloody frame, he'd bunked off school that day and had to be informally interviewed by the police at school (with his mum and dad present) he'd bunked off at a friend's house and rather than blow his friend up he said they'd been at The Strand . Bloody wally.

[PeterParkerSays]

I agree with Growlithe, looking at the background to this on the internet (sorry but I wasn't old enough to remember the boys' backgrounds when the murder happened) Thompson had the roughest deal as a child - violent, abusive alcholic parents, siblings who fought each other and bullied each other - another brother asked to be put into care when he was tarred and feathered by his older sibling (not Thompson). This was a really abnormal background and Thompson was reported at the time fo the trial to be a psychopath, with no seeming feelings or remorse, not crying at what he'd done etc.

He may now be reformed, but it may just be that he's not capable for feeling guilt or remorse for his crime so he toddles along on his way. There is a theory that Venebles keeps revealing his identity as a guilt / seeking punishment thing as a reaction to his crime.

That obviously doesn't cover the child abuse images image, but there is no evidence from the time that he was sexually abused, only that he was exposed to 18 certificate horror / pornography films by his dad.

[bottleofbeer]

There was pretty strong evidence Thompson had been sexually abused by older brothers. It's thought he probably in turn abused his younger brother.

His mother kept on having babies she wasn't prepared to care for properly to 'get a girl' but I think she had six or seven boys by the time it happened. I'd certainly hope he was just successfully rehabilitated rather than he's a genuine psychopath but either way he's obviously keeping his nose clean and head down.

'As If' by Blake Morrison is well worth a read if you're interested in this subject and the whole background. It's well balanced and not hysterical like the vast majority of anything else's you'll read on the subject.

[matchpoint]

First thoughts on reading this thread: I'm glad Venables and Thompson are under the purview of a professional team who are capable of separating their emotions from logic. I find it genuinely troubling to read adult women being so bloodthirsty towards children. What they did in February 1993 was horrifying but they were 10 years old.

I think a point being missed here is that Thompson has lived in the community, seemingly without incident for the past twelve years. I think this rebuts the 'we should have locked them up and thrown away the key' brigade quite nicely.

[middleclassdystopia]

He is a psychopath I am convinced. He cannot be rehabilitated, keep him locked up.

[bottleofbeer]

Luckily you're not a psychiatrist then eh?

Why do people throw the word psychopath about? do people know what it means, genuinely understand what it means?

[pumpkinsweetie]

Whatever he is, he needs locking up.
And he needs to stay there