James Bulger Case, on TV now

[Lizzylou]

I remember this from when I was a student, but it didn't connect with me (although I was horrified) as much as now, as a Mom of 2 boys (one of whom is a toddler). James Bulger's mother seems so dignified, I'm not sure I could be in that situation.

Crush: being treated with that level of depravity.
I have spent a lot of time this year staying in a children's ward, listening to other people with their children. I was shocked at a lot of the insensitive parentsing that went on, but ine in paryicular sticks in my mind.

A 5 yo boy, just back from surgery (abcesses and decay that had damaged his gums and jawbone), woozy, confused, in pain and distressed. The mother was holding him while a nurse tried to attach a monitoring clip. In struggling, he lashed out and apparantly hit his mother. She slapped him really hard, shouting "don't you hit me you little bastard, do that again and I'll kill you". For the next 8 hours every time the child cried or complained of pain, she said 'oh don't be such a baby, what's the matter with you?" "stop crying or you'll get something to cry for" and similiar.

And I thought "I'm listening to the making of a man who will not care about what others feel or suffer. if no-one cares about this child's pain, or allows him care about his ow pain, how on earth is he going togrow up caring about anyone else's pain?"

I'm not saying he would have turned into a child-killer, but brutalisation is going on, in home after home after home.

Blu...... that incident you witnessed at the hospital between the boy and his mum is so so shocking, but you are right, this goes on all the time. it makes me cry so much.

i see where you are coming from Crush, but when a child only ever sees violence, they will spend a lot of their time mimicking that behaviour.

they do know it is wrong, but when they did this, they become the 'strong' one and not the victim, and i think this is the reason for this sort of thing.

i am not excusing their behaviour, just trying to make sense of a truly awful crime.

Oh god blu, that has made me feel so upset and tearful and frightened for him. Could you/did you contact social services? I am absolutely serious. I am so worried for that little boy. God knows what happens to him behind closed doors. He should be in care.
And you are right. This sort of thing warps and breaks children.

Oh god blu, that has made me feel so upset and tearful and frightened for him. Could you/did you contact social services? I am absolutely serious. I am so worried for that little boy. God knows what happens to him behind closed doors. He should be in care.
And you are right. This sort of thing warps and breaks children.

I watched the programme and was left feeling, the experts have hopefully done the right thing for those boys and so hopefully poor little James Bulger's terrible loss will not be in vain - hopefully others will be safe if the experts have actually made the right decisions regarding the two 10 year olds now who are now adults. I especially hope that his mother will be able to set up the school she so desperately wants to set up and be able to help other children so once again poor little James Bulger's short life will yeild some goodness. Still cannot understand it at all though. I was shocked to hear how deliberately they set about their day.

Oh my goodness, I haven't seen the program but Blu wha an awful thing to hear

I hope someone did something to help that poor little boy he should be in care with a family who will love him.

I have read a lot about little James' horrible murder, I have a son whois 2.5YO and somehow that makes it all the more horrific, I was only 5 when James was taken away from his parents but I remember my mum telling that a little boy called James had been taken away by the bad boys and they sent him to heaven. Until I was 15, when those 'animals' were released that's all I knew.

IMO I'm not sure that level of evil, disregard for human beings or wanting to be the big man and not the victim whatever you want to call it can be rehabilitated and sadly in this case we will probably never know, one day though they will be found one way or another and when they do I would'nt like to be them. Now I'm not saying I would encourage something to happen to them but I believe that these things always catch up with you and personally I hope they suffer the most awful guilt everyday until the end, that's the worst way of punishing them as far as I'm concerned.

RIP James and all the other agels who were taken too soon x

What would have happened if all those people had managed to get to the prison van?

This is the page to donate for the school

It doesn't bare thinking about tiredemma because whilst that was going on there were very high emotions and I don't think anyone would have thought twice about killing them there and then

CrushWithEyeliner on Fri 12-Dec-08 11:30:44
"Last night the DI in the docu stated that they were actively looking for a child to hurt or kill that day. I feel that it is a horrific case all around, but these boys did know what they were going to do was unspeakably wrong but wanted to do it for some kind of sick enjoyment. How does a 10 yo get to that level of depraivity?"

From the evidence I've read, it seems this was the way one of the boys had been treated by his older siblings all his life. He literally cannot have known that there can be interactions between older and younger children that do not involve hurting for pleasure. How was he to know?

The other boy had fairly obvious mental health problems.

Background evidence about the two boys was not admitted in court, or their verdict may have looked different.

I think it is worth remembering how awful a childhood some of these kids had. One of the things that stuck with me on the baby P case was the general background - even without all the awful things that were done to him, just the conditions in that house are almost unimaginable for me. If you're not a nurse/police/teacher/social worker, it's so easy just to forget. I'm never quite sure what to actually do about it, apart from trying to vote for a party that might do something. Does seem that Labour's high hopes are not to be realised.

I'm probably too much a bleeding heart liberal, but I do feel that I or my children could be very different if we didn't have the lovely backgrounds we have. To imagine a child who has never been loved. I can't hate the children who killed little Jamie, as much as it sickened me then and now. The whole stinking mess sickens me.

I missed the programme but did it say whether the parents of the two boys faced any charges or consequences over their treatment of the boys and the rest o their children. It seems so wrong that they were ultimately responsible for the way those two boys were 'brought up' that nothing ever happened to them.

After all, why would we spend all these years protecting our own children from harm, showering them with love, keeping them from hurting others, teaching them to be gentle and caring, explaining to them about the world in a way that prioritises caring- if we didn't think it made any difference?

If it makes any difference to our children having all this, why should it not make a difference to Thompson that he was neglected by his alcoholic mum and constantly tortured by his older siblings.

Olihan- I think that John Venebals came from a fairly 'stable' background ( although his parents had seperated when he was 3). he appeared to have baehvioural problems, self harming and attention seeking - some adolescent type mental health problems ( which would explain why most of the sentence was served in a mental health forensic secure unit, as opposed to 'prison')
I think that his parents were 'normal' not alcoholics etc.

Robert Thompsons mother apparently sorted herself out after his conviction, cleaned herself up and would visit him almost once/twice a week with his younger siblings.

Both mothers were attacked in the street in liverpool and moved for their own safety

I can't remember which one it was but I remember reading that one of them was sexually abused by his older borther and one of his other siblings killed himself because of the stress.

The other child was disowned as soon as he killed James no one showed up to court or anything not sure about now as obviously new ID's.

Either way as far as I am concerned they did an awful thing regardless of what happened to them any scum who abuses children should be locked up and seriously mentally assessed before being let out. A person who has been abused loses any sympathy from me the minute they abuse someone else it's the cowards route simple as.

Thing is though Robert Thompson knew he did wrong because he was actually pictured by the media before he was caught leaving a rose at the crime scene later saying it was 'so the baby wouldn't haunt him'. I have heard the interview tapes and neither of them would own up to doing anything except throwing stones, if they thought it was right then they wouldn't have lied surely?

I've heard much the same as tiredemma, from a prison officer who worked with one of them. The perpetrator is now in another country and has been in trouble there.

And I can have some limited sympathy for their horrible childhoods. But I'm not convinced it was safe to release them, however much their treatment by their families may have gone towards explaining this horrific crime.

Sorry that sounded verty argumentaive. Wasn't supposed to be

I used to have very strong feeling of hatred towards those two, I think I posted it on here once, oops, but still now I can sort of see the sense of well they were treated badly so they reacted how they thought was right. But surely anyone who goes out to seek a child to torture is evil? This is the point I cannot seem to get past, whether it is a child/adult/mentally ill/learning idfficulties whatever if someone actively goes out seeking to kill someone then they are evil and should be locked away for a long time that's just my opinion but surely there is some if very little sense in what I say.

i am so torn between utter hatred of Thompson & Venables and then some pity for the horrific lives they led that shaped them into the kind of 10 year olds who could make a conscious decision to abduct, torture and murder a toddler. children are not born like that, their upbringing or lack thereof and all the things their parents and siblings did/did not do, must surely have shaped them.

the one thing that is beyond doubt is the quiet strength and dignity of Denise Bulger, when it would have been so much easier to bay for blood.

it is a testament to how unusaul and how horrific the crime was that 15 years later it is still something we discuss and feel so strongly about

It is possible for a young child to know on one level that you are doing wrong, and still be unable to stop yourself. I caught ds's friend banging his (ds's) head against a brick wall; he was devastated afterwards and cried and said he knows this is wrong but can't stop himself. He is a very unhappy little boy, due to problems in his own life and possibly a degree of SN. Fortunately, he is getting help and has a caring family who makes sure he is supervised- but call him Scum? No, I couldn't, even if he had happened to injure ds seriously. He wouldn't lose my sympathy, because I'd still know the horrible things that are going on in his life. And what went on in Thompson's life was an awful lot worse.

The boys' solicitor said he didn't reckon they understood anything about what went on in court; he could never know if they were just answering what they thought the grown-ups wanted to hear.

i think on balance i do agree with edam, that releasing them is possibly not for the best. i don;t see how they could ever be normal and the damage from tehir childhoods and what they did could be undone

Mamadiva, don't you have any experience of children who know they have done something wrong lying about it in order not to get punished? I can't believe anyone who is a parent has never experienced this. It's normal.

But seriously, if James Bulger had survived and had been caught 3 or 4 years later abusing another child, would we then have called him scum? Would you expect somebody like James to grow up unscathed by his experience?

Denise Fergus found them at one point due to a tip off and she sat frozen staring at them.

Much better woman than me I think I would have killed them.

Wasn't there a big thing about them in Ireland and Australia? One is apparently in jail for murdering a little girl and the other is apparently in jail for trying to murder his pregnant girlfriend and her daugter, he went around boasting he was Thompson never been confirmed but has been denied.

Also it had been stated that when Denise found them one of their mothers has a new identity too and is a childminder and there is nothing stopping him going in and out of the house whilst children are there.

I wouldn't be happy about that reformnedor not wouldn't want him near my child or me for that matter

Have any of these reports been confirmed, MamaDiva? Even at the time of the murder, there were an awful lot of unconfirmed reports about what the boys were supposed to have done to James (including shoving things up his anus), which hadn't actually happened.