Venables - one of the James Bulger killers - back in jail

[LadyBlaBlah]

here

Not a good advertisement for the rehabilitation programme they went on. I did hear that it was in Ireland and he tried to strangle a girlfriend..........but obviously that is not based on any factual evidence, just internet gossip.

Anyhow, difficult difficult difficult

Milly it does matter wrt to this case as the age was set to enable them to prosecute as adults. Before tehy woudln't have been (I think I remember that as the case anyway).

DS1 knows hitting stealing and lying is wrong but he still does do it: his condition is diagnosed and noted but not compeltely different in terms of presentation to what the children who ahve bneen abused present with (albeit the vast majority never killing anyone, and certainly the case for ds1's dx although there was a case a few years back where his dx received a pertty nasty verbal also)

MoreCrack - I'm trying to put the other side of the argument across and then I get all undermined by the "BURN ALL PEDLO'S AND THEYRE ILK!!!!!!!!" (misspellings intentional) brigade.

Yes peachy the LOL was mine, LOLing that you feel I am advocating the killing of children.

If a dog had ripped that baby to bits it would have been put down.

I can see you are on a roll so you carry on, you have your views and I will have mine.

Some crimes are so vile that there is no point trying to fix the ones who committed it.

If we are not allowed to hang them then the very least we should have is life means every single day of their stinking lives spent sitting in a jail cell.

Maybe if we did not have so many bleeding hearts and do gooders the justice system would be allowed to hand out proper sentences without someone shouting human rights

I amy have a different view to you Kimi, i'm not barking. I ahve studied ethics to defgre elevel though so do ahve some foundation for my views,, reagrdless of whetehr they match anyone elses.

And no of course if James was my baby I wouldn't feel the same: that is a given.

the others you listed were all adults and some multiple offenders..

As Rhubarb has said that there are professionals here who know about these things I'd like to ask the following..

If someone was truely rehabilitated how do they deal with the remorse & guilt they must feel - how could they live with knowing what they've done in this case.

Kimni I can't enage with your opinion in any way: I can understand most POV's here but not yours, and I am glad it is alien to me.

Which is a really good point to break off for the school run, I think.

There you go fifi, one for you.

Does anyone know what happened to Mary Bell?

When she was released, did she ever offend again?

Mary Bell

I have to do the school run too and may retire from this thread as I have nothing more to add.

Well far be it from me to start flaunting my qualifications..............Actually I didn't anywhere say that anyone wasn't entitled to an opinion but was just a bit aghast at some of the assumptions in some of the posts.

Anyway I think Elsewhere's point is the big question. Because if someone is so damaged as to commit such horrific crimes, their lack of empathy is one of the ways they manage to do it. The rehabilitation process has to help people come to terms with what they have done but I we know that once they face up to that, once they reawaken that feeling for a victim, it must be mindblowing. How could you cope with knowing what you've done? Their lack of empathy is what protects them.

With 10 year olds their personalities aren't fully developed so the potential to rehabilitate is greater. Of course for some they never make it, their personalities are too damaged.

There is a film called Boy A I think which is about someone who commited a horrific crime as a child and what happens to them on release. It's worth seeing - if not really sad.

Oh how very articulate MoreCrackThanHarlem.

Also I forgot you have to have a PHD in any subject you want to post on on this public forum.

In some case's I am sure rehabilitation works, in the case of these two boys it was clear it never would, I strongly feel that in some cases life needs to mean life, and not 8 years and a fresh start.

There needs to be a shake up of the system.
Some people are too damaged to ever be made decent citizens.
In all honesty would you want one of these boys living next door to you?
Do you think they tell the women they get involved with, have children with?
They should not have been allowed to just blend back in to decent society, as clearly it has been proven it was not possible.

Hopefully what ever he has been sent back for will mean his license is revoked and he will now serve life, and hopefully that will be more then 8 years.

'In some case's I am sure rehabilitation works, in the case of these two boys it was clear it never would'

Please elaborate, kimi.
How is it clear it would not work?
Do you know something I don't?

"In some case's I am sure rehabilitation works, in the case of these two boys it was clear it never would," and you know that how Kimi? You have no idea why Venables has been recalled, and Robert Thompson has not reoffended since being released.

"In all honesty would you want one of these boys living next door to you?" well do you know who is living next door to you? You have no idea what kinds of people you walk past every day, you probably talk to murderers and paedophiles on a daily basis, except that it wouldn't bother you because you don't know, iyswim. It's not the people you know of you should be afraid of, because invariably the authorities know of them too, it's the people you don't know of... and who the authorities have not yet caught up with...

"Do you think they tell the women they get involved with, have children with?" Who knows? I would imagine that there are procedures in place to ensure the women in their lives are protected. I would imagine it's unlikely they can tell them because of fear of their identities being revealed.

From what was said on the case at the time these boys stood no hope in hell.
The back grounds they came from were a long line of neglect and abuse (and I know not every neglected or abused child becomes a murderer so please don't twist what I am saying in to that).
They had no concept of right from wrong, they showed no remorse, and (without going in to too much) what was said in that court room left massive doubt that in 8 years they were going to be turned in to decent people.

It takes a special kind of sick mind to do what those boys did and not see how any of it was wrong. I have a 9 year old and he knows right from wrong,

In a lot of cases rehabilitation does not work, if someone finds a 3 year old a sex object can you truly believe that you can rehabilitate them not to (not related to the Bulger killers) but the point I am trying to make is some people can not be helped.

I know someone who worked in the prison Rose West was in for some time, and they said they found her a quiet and charming woman but that aside they would never want to see her walk free as she was too damaged.

Life in prison needs to be something feared not a case of oh well I will be out in 10 to 15)

The analogy with sex offenders isn't a great one to make because alot of the time it is an entrenched pathology and I agree at this level it is often difficult to change that. With people like this you can only seek to put things into place to control and manage them - it can be done and not necessarily in prison all of the time.

I think with damaged 10 year olds, there is always hope you can change them. Their minds and personalities are still developing. Some research has shown that the gaps in the brain where some of the cognitive deficencies are evident (on mri scans) can be 'repaired'.

so do you think that they should never have been tried to be rehabilitated?

Do you honestly believe that someone can look at a ten year old child and say "they can never be helped so throw away the key"?

We are not looking at adults here so you cannot make the comparison between a ten year old child and an (adult) paedophile, because there is no comparison. In nine years time there will be no comparison between your nine year old child and the eighteen year old adult he will grow into.

Of course there are some people who cannot be rehabilitated, but that judgement needs to be made after trying not before.

Fifitot I am sure some people can be "fixed" and do go on to live productive lives, But it is foolhardy to think everyone can and that is my point.

Despite everything that was offered to these boys one is back in prison (hopefully for a nice long time).
Also 8 years is a very short time to have worked with them, as they were very damaged.
Children being murdered is a very emotive issue and when the killer of a child is another child it rocks the very core of civilization because children are supposed to be innocent.

These two boys took a baby away from his mother, tortured and killed him, for what?
Because they could? Because it was fun? Because they knew no better?

What they did was sickening and they should have paid dearly for it but they did not.

But whoever deemed them fit to be released was wrong in this case.

Why is that your level of education or 'profession' quantifies whether your argument on this topis is valid or not? What snobs you lot are.

Can I just add that I have 8 year old twin boys and they DO have an understanding of empathy. They both know it is wrong to harm another living being.

Thompson and Venables were not brothers brought up in the same house with the same level of abuse aimed at them. They came from completely different households and I find it hard to believe that they were BOTH abused to such a level that they would think it OK to torture and murder a toddler.

They knew it was wrong because they tried to cover up what they'd done by making it look it like James had wandered onto train tracks. Now unless they both had SN or learning difficulties (which they were not reported to have) then they can not be anything other than evil IMHO and having had twins and seeing it with my own eyes, I do not believe that all behaviours are 'learnt'.

Personality traits are at play from birth and I would not have believed that until I had twins who I have been at pains to treat exactly the same since the day they were born and who have developed completely differently. I do not believe rehabilitation was the best course of action for these two, I would not have wasted time and money on them - my views are probably a bit too strong for the wooly liberals on here to deal with. Even if they were deemed to have a low risk of offending, considering what horrors they inflicted, is'nt a low risk too high a price for them to be free.

no you don't know that. You don't know why he is back in prison. He is on strict licence and it could easily be for something minor.

And eight years is a long time in a child's life. There is massive development between the ages of ten and eighteen.

My dds are aged between 19 & 27. I wouldn't want any of them to be forced to live someone elses lie because their dps'/dhs' identities had to be protected. Shouldn't any relationship be built on trust? How awful would it be, say 20 years down the line, for their partners/children to find out the truth about the person they had lived with for so long?

What to do though? I have no idea what the answer is really, just wanted to put it down in print.

It just seems wrong to lie to the person you are supposed to love for your whole life. My exh lied to me about his sexuality for 20 years and it was devastating when the truth came out. It felt like my whole adult life had been stolen from me. I guess that probably colours my view on this.

I do agree very strongly with Rhubarb's posts on this topic. It's not always a case of 'shoot the bastards' whensomeone says they think they should never have been released.

Obviously though, the fact is that the system seems to be working as JV has been imprisoned again. As I said before, no matter how trivial his breach of the terms of his parole, he knew the rules. If he couldn't stick to them then tough. I don't subscribe to the 'poor bloke' POV, he's not a child any more.

Exactly wannabe - we have no idea why he is back in prison. Could be as simple as returning to Liverpool from where he is excluded. Doesn't mean 'the system' has failed. Actually shows it works.

BTW BigMomma I am not sure anyone is saying you can't have OPINIONS on this but if you put things in posts such as 'they cannot be anything other than evil' you can't expect that people will respond!

Of course people have personality traits from birth and they are also subject to learned behaviour. However children are not 'born evil'. Can you even quantify what evil is or where it comes from? It's too emotive. As a description it is unhelpful as it takes away any level of personality responsibility by saying 'they were born this way'.

Children commiting murders are thankfully rare. Their motivation is a probably a mixture of things. Your boys probably do have some empathy, most kids do. The point I was making was that kids this damaged probably DON'T. That is how they can go on to commit such horrible acts.

I don't think anyone argues that the killers didn't know right from wrong.

scotia I read somewhere that these types of offenders often never do form long-term, lasting relationships precisely because of the level of deception involved.

Mary Bell iirc didn't have a partner but she did have a daughter who didn't find out about her mother's past until she was about sixteen iirc.

That must come as a horrific shock to a child, but then such a past is not something you could reasonably divulge to a child either.

oh look this thread has gone the normal way...
more concern for the crimianl than the victim...
ths little boy who was tortured and them murdered by theses $$$$$
how lovely it would be for that littlle lads mum or family to come on here and see you all running arround making excuses for the murderers........
spare a thought for her please.