OK BigMomma so evil children are just born that way? This is a quote from the Independent article:
"No child is born evil. But they are creatures of their parents and of circumstance. Children who commit violent crimes almost always share a similar background. Their parents are poorly educated, unemployed and often suffer from depression or other mental health problems; many are drug abusers or on the fringes of criminality. They often have large families but are also divorced or separated.
An authoritative survey of the mental health of young offenders published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2006 studied 301 young criminals aged 10 to 18 years. It found that 74 per cent had a family structure which had broken down, with only 36 per cent of their biological parents still married or cohabiting. More than a third of them had been in care Â? with many moved frequently from one home or foster home to another. One in three had a borderline learning disability, and one in five had an IQ below 70.
Â?ItÂ?s very rare for a child involved with homicide or torture to come from a background with none of these risk factors,Â? says Dr Eileen Vizard, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who runs the National Clinical Assessment and Treatment Service for the NSPCC, and who gave evidence at the Bulger trial.
These risk factors expose such children to a range of damaging experiences. They may witness repeated domestic violence or sexual abuse from an early age. They may be exposed to adults having sex in front of them and may routinely view slasher films or pornography left lying around the house.
Â?They are brought up with no boundaries, or inappropriate ones,Â? says Pam Hibbert, who was until recently assistant director of policy at the childrenÂ?s charity Barnados and before that was a manager at Red Bank secure unit, where Mary Bell and Jon Venables served their sentences. Â?Children develop empathy from the way they are treated, not just fed and sheltered, but cuddled and stimulated. But the mothers themselves are often so needy.Â?
Many were themselves brought up by dysfunctional parents who transmit their inadequacies to a new generation.
Inconsistency is one of their hallmarks. Â?One night they get a crack around the head from their mum because sheÂ?s pissed; the next they get a cuddle; they just never know where they are,Â? says Gareth Jones, one of the countryÂ?s senior Youth Offending Team managers Â? who are the first members of the justice system to come into contact with such children when they break the law.
Typically, the inconsistency extends to discipline. These children are often allowed to roam the streets unchecked, but then arbitrarily subjected to harsh punishments.
The father of the Edlington boys was a violent alcoholic whose idea of instilling discipline was beating his children with golf clubs. He enjoyed forcing his sons Â? one of whom has been serving a sentence for mugging a woman of 68 at knife-point Â? to fight one another; if they refused, he hit them. He showed them violent and sadistic DVDs. Their mother, who has seven sons by three different fathers, admitted that she gave the boys cannabis to calm them down afterwards. At other times, neighbours reported, the young brothers were left to their own devices and were regularly seen scavenging for food or clothing which they pulled from skips.
Â?Such erratic and inconsistent behaviour, veering from the extremely harsh to the indifferent, cannot be called discipline,Â? says Pam Hibbert.
Though the tabloid press routinely uses phrases like Â?evilÂ? and Â?monstersÂ? to describe children who commit horrendous crimes, it is hard to escape the bald conclusion that such kids are victims too. The criminologist Professor Gwyneth Boswell of Boswell Research Fellows and the School of Allied Health Professions, University of East Anglia, researched 200 children convicted of extreme offences throughout the Nineties. She discovered that 91 per cent of killers and violent kids had experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse or had experienced some form of traumatic loss like the death or disappearance of a parent. More than a third had undergone both abuse and traumatic loss."
They were just born that way though eh?