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

James Gilligan is a psychiatrist who has spent years working with violent prisoners. His book, 'Violence, reflections on our deadliest epidemic', reflects on this experience and argues that people who commit murders are often people who have been profoundly damaged in childhood. He argues strongly for an emphasis on rehabilitation over punishment.I would strongly recommend the book, one of the most impressive I have ever read. This little extract gives you a summary of the argument. gilligan

So what would make this better? To do it back to them?

The only thing that could possibly make this situation totally better is a time machine and someone to tap Jamie Bulger's mum on the arm and say 'someone's going off with your toddler'.

But in the absence of this device, we have to decide whether we want to be a society that thinks it's OK to want to pull children apart for revenge or to help them. I'd rather the latter, since I believe this kind of society is less likely to breed the kind of children who are capable of doing what these two did.

I've just spent ages reading every single one of these posts. I agree with Hercules, Caligula, Aloha, Beetroot and all the rest of you who favour rehabilitation, understanding and, above all, forgiveness. These were two young boys out for laughs. They started a prank ("let's get a kid") that escalated way beyond their control and descended into some kind of fantasy world where the boundaries between the real and the imagined became blurred. In a similar way, the Norwegian children were playing a game of Power Rangers, I believe, and had lost sight of reality in their total involvement in the game.
Yes, what Robert an Jon did was a terrible, terrible thing and I can't imagine how a parent would begin to recover from losing a child in that way. But it is wrong to punish them indefinitely. What good would it do? It won't bring back James, and it probably won't make Denise Fergus miss him any less. We cannot change what has happened in past; only learn from it.
To answer the original question as to whether James's mother should be told where his murderers now live, I think she should not, for all the reasons that have been so well put by others here.
For those who haven't read it, I recommend Blake Morrison's book, "As If."

JToo - their crime was unbearably horrific, and they knew they were doing wrong. They were, however, only children themselves, products of abysmal parenting, and as beetroot has already quoted, the fact that they could be rehabilitated should be applauded.
What would be the reaction if one of the appallingly neglected children fro the story earlier this week were to commit murder? Would they be considered "evil" or treated with more understanding? As far as I have read, the background of at least one of these boys was not much better.

she has the right to unlimited love support and counselling to help her re build her life but to track them down?Imagine the world if that was the case in other situations Agree with others that to have your child murder someone is almost as bad When I was growing up in rural Ireland we used to play in quarries old farms etc with broken down cars and machinery and when I look back it was lucky nothing tragic happened there as we got up to all sorts and were quite evil to each other at times

I don't actually think it's my place to forgive them. But I do think that the world and our society is a better place to be if people who do things, albeit terrible things, when they are children are rehabilitated eventually.
Also, I don't think that forgiving and coming to terms with awful things is somehow a sin or the 'wrong' reaction. There are people on this very board who have seen their loved ones hurt, abused and even killed, who are in a much better position than me to know how dreadful this is, but who don't appear, mercifully, to feel consumed and destroyed by hatred. It's not absolutely inevitable, though as I have said twice, and will say again, I cannot criticise a bereaved parent for their feelings, however extreme they may be.

"These were two young boys out for laughs. They started a prank ("let's get a kid") that escalated way beyond their control and descended into some kind of fantasy world where the boundaries between the real and the imagined became blurred."

out for laughs eh? well I'm sure Mrs Bulger is wetting herself! I think some of you should meet her with your eloquent arguments - maybe you could change her mind (but I doubt it). Don't forget its not only Jamie who has suffered horrendously in all this. His mother has those thoughts going around her head everyday of her life. Its bad enough that you should lose a child - but to lose one in those circumstances - you can't even BEGIN to know what its like.
And if we're saying here that it was bad parenting that caused these boys to behave as they did - shouldn't the parents and Social Services be in the dock too?
I don't claim to know what the answer is - but to put them back into society at still a young age seems madness to me.

I feel so profoundly grateful that I am able to give my son a life full of love and security. I sometimes look at this fragile, vulnerable little soul in my life and just feel so happy that he is so loved, and how easy it would have been to destroy him. Yes, some children survive the awful things that are done to them every day, but others don't. They don't all commit murder, but they are broken all the same. Some hurt other people, some get involved in other kinds of crime, others kill themselves in various ways. I was reading the stories in YOU magazine today about some amazing adoptive parents who worked so hard and so lovingly to undo the damage that loveless, neglectful, unpredictable parenting had done to their children before they got them. And it is plain how easy it is to damage a child.

Nobody posting here has forgotten James's mother.

I think the point is that Mrs Bulger is consumed with her grief and has been unable to move on at all. I'm certainly not critisizing her, but I feel very sorry for her that she is living her life this way. I would hope that she would be able to get some professional help to help her deal with her feelings, not necessarily forgiving the 2 boys, but accepting what has happened in all it's dreadfulness and learn to live with it. Her quest to find them certainly isn't helping her find any happiness, and it sure can't be good for her other children. I also don't think cooperating with the News of the World with this story is going to help her healing process either.

The whole story is so sad and tragic, but to read about how she is reacting still at this stage is even more so.

Very beautifully put K&TG.

Did the boys have a history of violent misbehaviour prior to this? Were they known as being amoral? I am honestly interested. Could they realy not know at the age of 10 that what they were doing was wrong? And these are all honest questions. I just find the whole thing utterly overwhelming and can't understand any of it, tbh. I don't think that they should be hounded, but at the same time I just cant understand how they couldn't know that what they were doing was wrong, had they done anything very violent before? Did they behave in school?

One last thing before I go to B&Q...I think you can simultaneously believe:
1 What happened to James Bulger was awful beyond belief.
2 His mother's suffering must be truly dreadful and deserves our sympathy
3 The News of The World is a cynical, nasty operation exploiting her grief for sensationalism and sales
4 It is better to rehabilitate criminals - especially ones who were children at the time - than to hound them for ever more
5 Children shouldn't be treated the same as adults who do the same things.

I think when discussing this none of us (at least I truely hope none of us here) can actually even vaguely understand what Jamie's mum has, and is, going through and so none of can say how she feels. Everyone deals with grief differently and I beleive that if in some similar position then yes, many people would want some form of vegence - rightly or wrongly. Imagine what this woman has been through - to hear what these bys did to her baby. An what they did was no prank - their actions were evil. They tortured a baby. What they did was so gruesome and horrific that much of it couldn't be reported on fully. This baby ended up in two pieces literally, with horrendous injuries - many inflicted on him whilst he was alive. The pain and suffering that baby went through, probably begging them "No no" over and over again as it happened. And this women knows this - she knows how her baby suffered, in a way only a mummy would ever feel that pain and suffering herself.

I don't think she should be allowed to find them. As I suspect if she did she would want to make them suffer in the way they hurt her baby. And if she did that she would end up in trouble herself - and this isn't beneficial. But I don't think that anyone can blame her for wanting these boys to suffer either.

Agree and NOTW are scum for profiting from all this sadness

hmb, I don't think they went to school very much. They were truanting when it happened. At least one of the boys was subject to very violent abuse at home and was neglected.

I agree with K&TG completely. Also, this so-called "newspaper" is not airing a debate on our legal system, they are printing words from a woman ripped apart by grief. I would sooner receive information from pet food labels than from the NOTW.

Aloha, I agree 100% with all 5 of your points.

I find it hard to hear people commenting on how she is still suffering reacting and pulling her down for this. Of course she still feels it, and every time it is plastered on Tv and papers will only bring it back. I doubt there is any professional help that can help her get over this and move on. I suspect her life stopped at the same time little Jamie's life stopped. I suspect her heart hardened and saddened at that time, and that she just wanted to be with her baby again. But she can't be. She must think about him every day and, let's not forget, not only does she have to live with him dying - but she has the torture of knowing what he went through. How do you live after that and move on? It's our job as a mummy to look after and protect our babies - and she couldn't do that. Obviously this women must be heart broken beyond repair. When these boys murded and stopped her baby's life, they also did their saeme to his mum. But she has to live through her nightare for years to come. I suspect she will never find peace until the end of her life - when she may be reunited with her baby again.

Hulababy, powerfully written. Indeed, how can any of us even imagine what it is like to stand where this woman stands. Please God none of us ever have to face anything approaching what she has lived through.

Just don't think we should be judging her and her emotions at the time or now. Neither she would judge how she feels about these boys.

I wonder if the worst part for Jamie's mum is the "if only". Shops sold out of reins in the aftermath. He was out with her when he was taken and she can never forget that.

I wish the NOTW and the Sun could be banned from "reporting" this kind of thing at all, let alone stuff like "evil eyes".

This was such a terrible way to lose a child. I doubt Denise will ever be able to 'move on' from James's murder. It's still all too public, and in some awful way perhaps all the publicity is the only way she has of keeping James 'alive' in some sense; just as many bereaved people start up charitable causes or something similar (like Sarah's Law, for example) to try to make sense of their loss or to make some 'good' come out of it.
It's sad that many people are missing the point that the only 'good' that can come out of this tragedy is the rehabilitation of the murderers themselves. Surely that is something to be glad about?

Jools2, I'm sorry if I offended or upset you by using the phrase 'out for laughs.' Perhaps that was ill chosen. Please be assured that in no way do I condone or excuse what Robert and Jon did. It was a dreadful, cruel murder. But what is different about this case is that the murderers were only children themselves. Yes, they were older than their victim but they were still children nonetheless (I gather that one of them had a mental age of about 5 or 6 at the time of the murder).
Do we not believe that childhood is different to adulthood, or should 10-year-old children really be tried and sentenced as if they were adults?
I too am aappalled by the way the 'gutter press' stirs up hatred in the way that it does. Using the terms 'monsters' 'beasts' 'evil' and 'caged' is totally unnecessary and downright irresponsible.

Hulababy, are any of us judging her or her emotions?

Agree about Sun and NOTW - it's almost incitemnet to hatred. Same with their determination to get Maxine Carr for something and try to expose where she lives.