Just before Leon was born, the European Commission of Human Rights concluded that the publicity and ‘highly charged’ emotion surrounding the trial meant that Thompson and Venables had been denied a fair trial and fair sentencing – meaning their human rights had been breached.
In September 1999, I was invited by the European Court of Human Rights to make representations to them concerning what exactly the rights of victims should be in criminal trials.
I felt so strongly about it that I left Stuart at home with the boys and flew to Strasbourg to be there in person. The Strasbourg hearing would decide whether Michael Howard’s tariff was lawful or would have to be reconsidered. This was the final step of the sentence fight and I had to know I’d done all that I could. I was very emotional and all of that came to the surface when I bumped into Thompson’s barristers at the airport. One came over and offered to buy me a drink, and my reply wasn’t particularly polite, ‘Are you taking the piss? You are about to defend one of my son’s killers. Are you insane?’
He looked embarrassed and walked away, but I couldn’t leave it at that and so I marched over and shouted, ‘How could you?’
I carried on, ‘How could you defend a killer? Do you have kids?’
He sat there with his hands behind his back and said, ‘Yes I do, thanks.’
Well that was it, I spun round and addressed the other barrister, who was also standing there, ‘Do you have kids too?’ He replied that his wife had suffered a stillbirth and I shouted, ‘So did I and, on top of that, I have had to cope with a murdered child. I hope you are both proud of yourselves.’
I couldn’t help myself and the rage just overtook me. As a result we all kept our distance for the rest of the hearing. Sean spoke on my behalf, and we were invited to put across our views on how victims rights should be represented. We had been clearly told that we weren’t allowed to address the court on the direct issue of the tariff or the Home Secretary’s involvement, but we could talk about the impact of the crime on our family and how things could be changed to support other victims and their families.
Sean made two submissions. The first was that victims should be allowed to tell the court, after conviction but before the sentence is passed down, the impact of the offence upon them. This could influence how long the perpetrator should serve. This suggestion was accepted by parliament and led to the introduction of victim impact statements in England and Wales.
The second recommendation we made was that when prosecutors decide if they will accept a guilty plea to a lesser offence, they should consult the victim’s family before they accept the plea. What this means in reality is that if the charge is murder, and the criminal offers a manslaughter plea instead, then the prosecution should liaise with the family first. The family obviously wouldn’t have the right to veto anything, but we argued that they should be listened to and given fair warning about which way things might go. Both our recommendations were accepted and implemented.
Three months later, in December 1999, the European Court of Human Rights echoed the Commission’s conclusion and ruled that Thompson and Venables had been denied a fair trial and fair sentencing. They pointed out that the age of criminal responsibility for children in England and Wales at ten – as stated in the Children and Young Person’s Act of 1933 – is lower than most European countries, where the common age is fourteen (but not Scotland, where the age was eight until 2016). Given that the hearing was taking place in Europe, it was perhaps no surprise to see how they were ruling and that they were using the 1933 act as ammunition against us.
It had been explained to me in great detail that a large part of the trial was focused on proving Venables and Thompson understood their actions, but now it was being argued that Venables and Thompson were traumatised throughout the proceedings and therefore didn’t have a chance to fully grasp what was being asked of them. The argument was that, because of the trial’s public nature, it meant that they didn’t get a fair hearing – apparently it was distressing for them to be near the family of their victim and to be put on trial in adult surroundings.
I found this especially upsetting as I was well aware of all the special measures that had been taken to ensure their comfort. I also remembered very clearly how they had been in the courtroom on that final day and it certainly wasn’t distressed or traumatised. They had been laughing and joking, which didn’t give me the impression they were remotely upset or troubled by the proceedings or the reality of being confronted by their actions. Yet again, it was all about their needs and feelings without a thought spared for James or us. In fact, it felt like we couldn’t get anything right and even the concessions that had been made went against us. Apparently, the raised chair and dock, so that they could see over the rail, actually made them feel more uncomfortable and as if everyone was staring at them. Even though they had been close enough to their families and lawyers to share a laugh and joke as they were tried for the murder of my son, according to this latest report they weren’t close enough to seek any comfort from their defence teams.
At this point, given how badly my son had been let down, I truly feared that the ruling would mean Thompson and Venables would be retried, or worse, let go immediately. They had already served six years – what was to stop a system clearly fixated on the comfort of these two murderers from deciding they had done their time? Although we had been reassured by Jack Straw, the new Home Secretary, that the killers wouldn’t be released early, nothing would have surprised me. I repeatedly asked to meet Jack Straw once he took over as Home Secretary and he refused – he did eventually offer me a phone call but I have to admit to telling him what he could do with that offer. The idea he couldn’t spare me half an hour of his time was baffling and summed up our situation – it felt as if the government didn’t care about us. It didn’t help that just before the European Court of Human Rights came back with their ruling, the Chief Inspector of Prisons David Ramsbotham prompted an outcry by saying Thompson and Venables should be released soon after their 18th birthdays. He later apologised to Jack Straw, but as far as I was concerned the damage had been done.
I felt happy that we had put our case across to the European Court in the strongest terms, but the ruling that really concerned me now, was the one that dealt with how long Thompson and Venables should serve.
This whole nightmare was rumbling on and we seemed to be bound up in much wider political and legal issues that we simply didn’t understand. I had genuinely hoped that when Venables and Thompson went away it would be for a long time and it would bring us some peace. Instead it seemed that the fight just kept getting harder and more unfair. The tariff issue was all I could think about. Michael Howard’s increased sentence had been overturned but a new one hadn’t yet been set, as the Home Office had been waiting for the outcome of the European rulings. Now those rulings had come in and a new tariff needed to be fixed, but the Home Office was removed from the decision-making process. The tariff decision would now be made by a judge, rather than a politician – in this case by the brand new Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf.
Chris Johnson says: ‘Once Thompson and Venables were sentenced, the whole system was geared towards healing them with no thought for James’ family at all in my view. The phrase: “they were only ten” should be said with emphasis on the depravity of their actions rather than sympathy for their punishment. It should have been about what they really needed to be helped, rather than glossing over their true evil in order to make the system look good. The fact they needed real intervention was ignored. Because they were young perhaps some nimble and professional “parenting” to get them out of the criminal mindset they were in could have helped them become valuable members of society. They needed to be treated like children who were perverse and needed the tightest possible boundaries. It felt doubly tragic that the system seemingly made them worse and not better.’
A new year arrived and we were coping with the chaos of three lively boys, which was a brilliant distraction. We were tryi
ng our best to put the legal issues to one side and enjoy family life, but it didn’t ever really leave me and I struggled to compartmentalise everything. Eventually there was a public statement from Lord Woolf that surprised us all: he was going to take into account our feelings about the sentence. Finally someone was going to ask me how long I thought my son’s killers should be detained for. They were going to put us in touch with the Director of Public Prosecutions, who was there to listen to the views of victims of crime; in the case where those victims had been killed, they would talk to the remaining family. The director would then be the mediator between the family and the court, making sure that all views were communicated back to the judge and relevant legal teams.
It didn’t take me very long to communicate my thoughts as I’d had them since the day James’ body had been found. The children who committed the premeditated murder of my baby should never go free. They should be locked up for the good of everyone and to prevent the further crimes I was convinced they would commit if they were released. No other baby, family or human being should suffer the way we had and the only way to ensure that didn’t happen was to detain them. Venables and Thompson were nearly 18 – the age they had been told they would be able to start again – and I didn’t believe for one minute they had changed. It was also a pivotal age because, if they were detained after their 18th birthdays, they would have to be transferred to young offenders’ institutions and be confronted with adult jail conditions, rather than the safe houses they were used to.
I prayed that Lord Woolf would increase the sentence, even by a few years. I felt sick to my stomach and I think it was the first real time Stuart saw the impact on me at home. Of course, I kept it away from the kids, but once they were in bed, everything swamped me and I started to slip off to our bedroom just to lie on the bed quietly and imagine what would happen if my son’s killers were walking the streets. I clung to every last scrap of hope that a sense of justice would prevail, that those deciding our fates would remember the only real fate that mattered – my baby lying in his coffin, covered by soil.
Chapter 22
Release
Isuppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Lord Woolf’s ruling came back in October 2000. Despite the pretence that our opinion as James’ voice mattered, regardless of the fact that my son had been let down at every turn, the system always seemed to put the feelings of two child murderers before James. Even when the signs are obvious, the human state is to always hope against hope that the right thing will happen. In this case it didn’t and my worst nightmare presented itself when Lord Woolf set the tariff at seven years and eight months. As if this wasn’t bad enough, when you stripped back all the legal speak, what that meant was that the tariff expired immediately and their release would be imminent.
We had effected two major changes in the legal process, but they were the only successes we had from James’ case – what we spectacularly failed to do was keep his killers locked up. We had changed a small section of the law, but I couldn’t keep the promise I made to my baby as I buried him: that his killers would be punished for what they did to him – because they haven’t been, have they?
Thompson and Venables had served just over seven years and, once the ruling came back from Lord Woolf, the case was sent straight to the Parole Board for their decision as to whether it was safe for them to be released.
For my family, the discussion had flipped in an instant from ‘How can we keep them inside?’ to ‘How soon will they be roaming the streets again?’ No one in authority seemed to understand how devastating this ruling was – even if it would take another three to six months, it looked like they would be free around the eighth anniversary of the murder they’d committed. It was argued that the time they had spent inside their institutions was the same as an adult being handed a 16-year jail sentence, with parole granted halfway through. Lord Woolf’s final word on the matter was, ‘The one mitigating feature of the offence is the age of the two boys when the crime was committed.’
Lord Woolf argued that transferring them to young offenders’ institutions would ‘undo much of the good work that had been carried out to rehabilitate them’. This marked another change in the law too as it was the first time that a judge had set the tariff for any child detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
My devastation was all-consuming and I spent hours talking to Sean and Stuart about it, to see if there was anything more I could do. Sean explains, ‘[Thompson and Venables] were ten-and-a-half when they committed the offence so reinstating the eight-year tariff actually meant that they would have to go into youth custody once they reached their 18th birthday. Lord Woolf therefore set the tariff at seven years and eight months, basically so they didn’t have to go into custody. He was satisfied that the rehabilitation efforts lavished upon them had been successful and didn’t want those expensive efforts to be undone by the prison system. Putting them into a young offenders institution would have meant time in a prison environment, instead of the secure children’s home where you felt they had been mollycoddled. This wasn’t a witch-hunt on your part, but we wanted them to hear the clang of the prison gates and feel some of the fear that James felt. It was a crushing blow to you and the family.’
Not knowing what else to do, I organised a rally to galvanise the support the public had shown us so far – anything to make noise. The government would have loved me to disappear but I was extremely happy to be a thorn in their side for as long as I needed to be. I was even more ready for battle when I heard that their lawyers were planning to go to the High Court and win Thompson and Venables lifelong anonymity. Not only were those boys getting out, but when they did there was a chance no one would know who they were or what they were capable of. Suddenly, the newspapers were full of James and the crime again, and various groups of people enjoyed having their say on whether my son’s killers deserved lifelong sentences. There was also much debate surrounding the question of anonymity and if their lives would be in danger once they were released.
I will never believe that they were transformed by their time inside, in fact, we know that is completely untrue given Venables has re-offended twice, that we know of. I have been told of allegations of violent behaviour from both of them, assaults on other inmates and that Venables had had a longstanding sexual affair with his housemother. We weren’t privy to any of the psychiatric and behavioural reports, but if even a tiny portion of the allegations were true, these were not reformed characters. I vowed not to let this go.
Chris comments, ‘It was like a conspiracy of the establishment to self-heal. If they had seriously addressed the issue of those two and what they did, the system would have fallen down. Why hasn’t there been a public enquiry into the failings by Liverpool City Council? The boys had gone to school in Liverpool where their behaviour was witnessed and developed. Their truancy was not even addressed – it was unusual in primary schools for kids to be absent so heavily and their behaviour should have raised alarm bells.’
Nobody in authority could sit down and say, ‘What is the best thing for everyone? How can we do something for everyone?’ Lord Woolf had been told that Venables was a good kid and that just simply wasn’t and isn’t true – how can it be? He’s been recalled to prison twice. It is a lie and so why was no one ever prosecuted for perjury? I feel like I wasn’t embraced by the system because I was trying to show that the system hadn’t worked in this instance, and that is not what people wanted to hear.
Nevertheless, lawyers acting for Thompson and Venables carried on right to the top in their pursuit of a new and trouble-free life for the boys once they were released. The Right Honourable Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was the next person to protect my son’s killers. In January 2001 legal teams acting for Thompson and Venables won an unprecedented court order from the High Court when Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss granted them anonymity for the rest of their lives – ostensibly to protect them from revenge attacks by the public and, insultingly, from James’ family.
There was an outcry from the media, who argued these stringent conditions rendered their jobs impossible, as well as making a mockery of the freedom of the press to report stories in the national interest. The story had also gained international interest, due to the ages of Thompson and Venables, which meant publications abroad would also be hindered by these constraints. Their obvious concern was to sell papers, but there were some corporations who were genuinely outraged that two lads who had committed the most shocking crime of recent times would be allowed to move freely alongside the unsuspecting public. But none of this carried as much weight as the concern voiced by Dame Butler-Sloss that Thompson and Venables would be in grave danger if they were uncovered. This was of paramount importance even, it seemed, if it left the public at risk and silenced the press.
I couldn’t quite process it all – somehow all the campaigning, all the tears, all the sleepless nights, all the fighting, had led us to this disappointing moment. It also opened the gates for others, who had committed similar depraved acts, to be given lifelong protection if there was a reasonable chance that society might rebuke them once they were released. I didn’t understand why it was different for Thompson and Venables when there were other examples of criminals serving their time and later making new lives for themselves without getting new identities. Did it also mean that other adult killers could apply for the same special treatment if they were ever released? How could society function if we were going to end up living alongside murderers with new names and no idea of the crimes they’d committed? We were categorically told there were no grounds to challenge the ruling of either the Secretary of State or the Lord Chief Justice. In short, they wanted us to disappear.
I Let Him Go (Revised And Updated Edition) Page 19