James Bulger's mother demands right to find freed killers

[suzywong]

as reported in the \link{http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news1.shtml\news of the world.

Should she have the right?

Discuss

Good point Jampot, or.. should the parents have served the full sentence for the crime thier children did? If they had such awful childhoods are they not then responsible?

The thing is, I have seen a lot of kids that have grown up in neglectful families. They are emotionaly scarred and dysfunctional, but what these boys did (and I assume what happened to them as children) is many, many orders of magnitude worse.

Most of us are capable or reasising that pain hurts, for example and we tend to avoid doing it to others. Even my most dysfuctional kids realise this.

Joash, I hear you but nicking your big sisters bras and filling them with tissue to wear to school aint exactly on the same scale as abducting a strangers baby and toturing it to death. That is called pscho-pathic personilty disorder.. or just f..king sick

Nobody, parent or not, could not but understand why Mrs.Fergus wants to know these details about the 2 killers. But she should not be allowed to. It is the collective price we pay for living in(for the most part) a civilised democracy with a legal system. We can argue till we're blue in the face about whether they have been punished "enough", and about her "feelings", and yes I'd want to rip their hearts out too if it had been one of my children. But none of this is the point. Also, to concentrate on their doubtless empty and generally appalling upbringings, many of us (me included) have anecdotes about being brought up in rough areas and not taking to drugs, killing, or in any other way not growing up dysfunctional. None of this is to the point either. Sorry if this annoys some of you, but it would put an intolerable strain on the fabric of society if every victim of crime were allowed to pursue those convicted of those crimes.

Well put stilltrue.

Here, here stilltrue.

Actually I never nicked big-sis's bra. I was talking about almost burning the bloody house down.

but if they hadn;t been released she wouldn't be looking for them

TBH I'm sorry but I cannot see how society in general can be blamed for waht these boys did or that they are victims, I suppose it comes down to the nature nuture debate and i think to do something so truly horrific there must be evil in their hearts. Lots of people go through traumatic life events and don't torture and murder 2 year olds.

Where was the help and support that should be there for children and their parents who are not coping? That is how society failed them. They were kids themselves in need of help and lots of it.

What is "evil"? How can you argue that society was not at fault but they had "evil" in their hearts? Is is a special force?

Blaming what happened on evil will not stop the same thing reoccuring. Making sure that other children will not have the same childhood as these children did might stop such a thing reoccuring.

Actually yes I think it is. I genuinely believe that evil is out there and in some people. Do you think society is to blame then for all crime then when people come from a needy background?

Jampot point taken, but the poor woman would be feeling the same in ten years time, had that been their release date. The NOW is at fault for feeding on her perfectly understandable but ultimately desperately wrongheaded quest. It's more about selling papers than actually helping her, and that makes me very angry. The situation is so tragic in that like the mothers of some of the Moors victims in the past, she just won't get over what has happened. I wouldn't either. But I stand by my view on this.

I certainly think it is far more complex than "evil". It is impossible to say any one thing causes crime, it is a multitude of things and yes lack of aprropriate support for certain families is one of them. I dont think evil is.

Please tell me what "evil" is.

It's all very well blaming society but i think there does need to be an individual responsibility as well. At what point do you cut off patting someone on the head and saying there there I know it's not your fault it's naughty society. I think that is part ogf the problem no one will take responsibilty fro their own behaviour anymore. FFS my dd ahs known right from wrong from a much earlier age than these two and to me that is fundamental.

I don't think that I could give you a definition of evil, but I do think that there are some things that are so repugnant that society as a whole is revolted by them. Killing someone. of itself may not always fall into this catagory but the torture and murder of an innocent does. Robbing someone doesn't of itself revolt, but the mugging of frail elderly people does.

I think in the end it comes down to the need of humans to protect the vulnerable, and that seems to be hard wired into us. But something happened to these boys and it didn't for them

I'm not posting this to 'hound' these boys, as I have posted earlier. But there are some things that revolt society and what they did falls into this catagory

People who are involved in such a personal way with horrific crimes such as this cannot be the ones who are allowed to change the law, just as relatives of those held hostage cannot be asked whether they want to 'deal' with the hostage-takers.

I'm deeply sorry for Jamie's mum, but I think that whilst it's good for the government to pay attention and possibly inform future policy to what people who are involved in crimes such as this have to say, it would be wrong to say 'you're a victim, you may have anything you want.' That way anarchy lies.

We either live in a civilised society where we trust our justice system to do a mixture of punishment and rehabilitation, or we live in a vengeful chaos - the former hopefully means that horrible tragedys like this are few and far between - the latter will just lead to more and more IMO.

I would honestly be interested to hear Coddy's views on this - anyone else?

If it is a separate force that is out there and in some people can we really punish the unlucky person it seeks out. Surely it is just bad luck then if it ends up inside you. Does it stay or move on?

I honestly think it is awful that people label two 10 year olds as evil etc. Noone is saying they should have a pat on the head. Of course they need rehabilitation and lots of it. To write them off is far worse than what they did.

I agree with hercules.

Not to go on about my own situation again, but take grandsons dad. His mother married her ex-brother-in-law who had just been released from prison after serving 10 years of a life sentence for the murder of his 18 month old son. Consequently, grandsons dad was taken into care. He was in and out of childrens homes from two years old, was psychiatrically assessed at 7, in a childrens residential psychiatric unit from 9 to 12, was frequently moved around the country from home to home and from fosterparent to fosterparent, for a variety of reasons ranging from verbally and physically attacking those around him (usuallty children smaller than him), to him attacking people and animals with knives or scissors. He was, and still is 'known' to the local police, Social Services, etc, etc.

Even in the care of a local authority - he never got the help he so obviously needed - as a result he almost bloody killed my baby grandson and has totally brainwashed my daughter and as much as I would love to take a baseball bat to him, I can still occasionally see in him, the young man that he might have become had he received proper help and support. Society does let these people down, vigilantes are not the answer - it makes us worse that those who do the crime because we definately know in advance what we are goiing to do.

Never thought I'd hear myself say this... but, I do hope, for grandsons sake - that his dad does get himself sorted out and he can only do that with the support of people around him.

Is it really far worse than what they did to that child? I think it is as bad, but by no means far worse

stilltrue - I think your post of 12:07:44 PM makes a huge amount of sense. I also agree with others that the NOW have a lot of answer for making a huge story out of this. It's grim the way they feed of such tragedy. Lets not forget they were responsbile for that frightening and dangerous 'outing paedophiles' campaign (with that poor Paediatrician who was mistakedly targeted). Lynch mobs and individuals getting revenge is not the kind of society i want to live in but that's exactly what these kind of papers fuel.