by Gitta Sereny
Some changes were eventually made, partly, I was told, as a result of public pressure after the publication of this story. Above all, the authorities determined never again to be found lacking in the provisions available for seriously disturbed children, and further secure units were set up, theoretically including psychiatric care.
But, as we saw again in Liverpool in 1993–94, it was all still too little and too late. The reason such tragedies happen is that there is still too much ignorance within families about how to live and how to love. And a state which is ruled by a dogma of non-interference in private lives—which, admittedly, of course, can save enormous sums of money—is showing ever less compassion for troubled adults, far too little care for troubled children, and entirely lacks the courage to separate children from parents when the relationship is manifestly destructive.
The fact is that, in a modern state at the end of the twentieth century, it should be impossible for social services to remain unaware of crises in crisis families; it should be impossible for children who behave conspicuously in school not to be noticed and attended to; it should be considered outrageous that either men or women caring for children on their own are not provided unstintingly with human and financial assistance.
Prevention of cases such as those described in this book is entirely dependent on knowledge: knowledge about relationships, between men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, extended families and friends.
In both of the extreme cases I examine here, all these relationships, which normally nourish children’s lives, were limited, faulty, damaged or had broken down. All these children needed to leave home in order to be safe, and all of the immediate families needed intensive social-service—and psychiatric—help if they were to be equipped to care for their children.
In this book, both I hope a guideline and a warning, I describe as much of the relationships as possible, though necessarily seen through the eyes of involved adults.
Ultimately, however, the only people who can one day help us towards complete understanding and thereby allow us to come much closer to achieving means of prevention, are the “children” themselves. So far, this has never been tried.
In the case of Mary Bell, she was released from prison in 1980 when she was 23 and has since, though living “under licence” (supervision by the authorities), achieved, I think, a kind of triumph, by creating a normal life for herself. It is my hope that one day, soon, she and I will talk again. This time I will hope to learn from her directly rather than through others, what happened to and in her during the first ten years of her life, and during her twelve years of detention—the last two of which, it is worth noting, under the stewardship of a wise prison governor, were evidently of benefit to her. Then perhaps, with the help of this intelligent young woman who has managed to emerge comparatively safely on the other side of a kind of hell, only some of which was of her own making, we can achieve a further step along the rocky path to understanding.
And, although the acts committed by the two boys who murdered Jamie Bulger were somehow infinitely worse, perhaps ten or more years from now Robert Thompson and Jon Venables—if they are lucky enough to receive sensitive help in prison—will also have changed and grown sufficiently to understand themselves and to communicate this understanding to others.
It is only if we learn to understand the impulses which preceded the acts described in this book that we may, at some point in a more enlightened future, manage to eliminate the circumstances which in Britain alone, twenty-seven times during more than two centuries, have driven children to murder children.
PROLOGUE
THE EIGHTH DAY of the trial at Newcastle Assizes was a cold, bleak day in December. It rained outside, the interminable mid-winter drizzle of the English north. The paneled courtroom—the central heating turned on to capacity “because of the children”—smelled of wet hair and wet winter coats. The room was packed but quiet. The lights were on, the faces of the onlookers as well as participants strained and pallid. The atmosphere was one of unease; the audience in the public gallery looked as if—no less than the jury—they were there out of necessity, not by choice.
“Members of the Jury,” Mr. Justice Cusack began his summing up. He sat on his throne-seat on the raised and blocked-off dais, in his white wig, red robe, and ermine; the High Sheriff in full regalia sat on his left, his Clerk in morning dress on his right. But he spoke quietly and slowly, in brief sentences, using familiar words and phrases. In a deliberate attempt to humanize and simplify the proceedings, he tried to bridge the gulf between himself and the Jury by speaking to them as man to man, as mind to mind.
It is an unpleasant thing for any Court to have to try a case in which it is alleged that two little boys, one aged three, the other aged four, lost their lives by murder. It is even more unpleasant and distasteful when it is alleged that the persons responsible are two girls respectively aged eleven and thirteen. . . .
The two girls, Mary, eleven, and Norma, thirteen, separated by two policewomen in plain clothes, sat not as is customary in the dock, but in the center of the Court, in the second row, behind their counsel, near their solicitors, in front of and within reach of their families. Their hair brushed shiny, their gaily colored cotton dresses always freshly washed and ironed, their cardigans spotless, they sat there, five and a half hours each day, throughout the trial. This was their duty, and their privilege; the law prescribes that the Accused hear all that is said for and against them; only this way can they protect themselves and be protected. Only this way can justice be preserved.
I have no doubt [continued Mr. Justice Cusack] that some people may feel that it is out of place to try girls of that age by Judge and Jury with all the formality of an Assize Court. But, leaving aside altogether for the moment the details of this case, it is an unfortunate fact of human experience, isn’t it, that quite young children can be wicked and sometimes even vicious. . . . Who, Members of the Jury, could hope to understand and assess the intricacies of this case and reach a fair judgement upon it, if they had not heard the evidence which you and I have listened to for so many days, and heard it probed and examined by advocates whose duty it is to place the facts fairly and squarely before the Court? I say these things to you so that you may understand why this trial takes place at all and in case you should be puzzled by it. It has had many painful aspects. It has had its distressing moments. But, distressing moments sometimes arise too in the trial of adults, because it is an unhappy thing that the Criminal Courts, for the most part, are not concerned with the successful things of life, but are concerned with life’s shadows.
Members of the Jury, the truth of the matter is this: that Parliament in making the Law has said that any child over ten years of age may be tried on a criminal charge. You and I are bound by the Law and we must administer that Law as it is and not as it might be if it were re-written, perhaps nearer to the heart’s desire. And you above all, in reaching your decisions, must be governed, not by hearts but by your heads, and that is an important thing to have in mind. There has been, of course, every kind of emotion in this case, and everybody who has listened to it, must have been subject to . . . astonishment, dismay, horror, pity. Put all that aside. Judge the case only on the facts as you find them to be, having listened to the evidence. Don’t be swayed either by sympathy for the two girls who are so young and find themselves on so serious a charge, or by sympathy for the parents and relations of those two little boys who lost their lives tragically, whoever or whatever may have been the cause of their deaths. . . .
PART ONE
SUMMER 1968
IN THE EARLY afternoon of Saturday, 11 May 1968, the police and an ambulance were called to the Delaval Arms, a pub in the Scotswood district of Newcastle upon Tyne: a small boy, John G., aged three, had been found injured in the vicinity of the pub. The next morning the police took statements from two girls who had found him: Norma Joyce Bell, thirteen, and Mary Flora Bell, ten, who wer
e neighbors but not related.
Norma Bell’s statement read:
I am 13 years of age and live with my mother and father at 68 Whitehouse Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I attend Whickham View Benwell Lower School.
About 1.30 p.m. on Saturday, 11 May 1968, I was playing in the street with my friend Mary Bell and we met John G. We took him to the shop at the bottom of Delaval Road for some sweets. We then took him back to the top of the steps at Delaval Road/Whitehouse Road and told him to go home.
Mary and I then went and got some wood from the old houses in Coanwood Road and brought that home to our mothers.
We then went to play on the car park beside the Delaval Arms.
While we were playing there Mary told me that she could hear some shouts from the direction of the old sheds beside the Delaval Arms.
We went over the grass and through the wire fence and found John G. behind the sheds. He was bleeding from the head.
We jumped down and picked him up but could not lift him up onto the grass. We climbed back onto the grass and pulled him up by his hands.
We shouted to a man who was passing on Scotswood Road but he would not help. Then we saw another man on Scotswood Road and shouted for him and he carried John to the Delaval Arms where an ambulance and the Police were sent for.
I have never seen John playing down there before and I have never taken him down there.
signed: N. Bell
Taken at 68 Whitehouse Road between 11.30 a.m. and 11.55 a.m., 12 May 1968 by Sgt. 462 Thompson.
Mary Flora Bell’s statement read:
I am 10 years of age and attend Delaval Road Junior School. I live at 70 Whitehouse Road with my mother.
At 1.15 p.m. on Saturday, 11 May 1968, I left the house to play with my friend Norma Joyce Bell, 68 Whitehouse Road. We were playing in the street when we met John G., 60 Whitehouse Road. He started to cry so Norma and I took him to the shop at the corner of Delaval Road and St Margaret’s Road to get some sweets.
Norma got him some sweets and we took him to the steps at Whitehouse Road and told him to go home.
We then left him and went to the empty houses in Coanwood Road to collect sticks. We got some sticks and took them home to our mothers.
We then went to Vickers Armstrong Car Park beside the Delaval Arms and started to play. While we were playing I heard John shouting ‘May’ and ‘Norma’. This seemed to be coming from the empty sheds next to the Delaval Arms.
We went through the grass and through the fence and found John staggering around behind the sheds. He had bleeding from his head and had been sick all over his coat.
We jumped down and tried to get him up onto the grass but could not, so climbed back up and took hold of his hands and lifted him up onto the grass.
We shouted to a man who was passing along Scotswood Road but he would not help. Then another man was walking along Scotswood Road and we shouted to him. This man took John to the Delaval Arms where an ambulance and the Police were sent for.
I don’t know how John got down behind the sheds, I have never taken him there to play before.
signed: Mary Bell
Taken at 70 Whitehouse Road between 10.40 and 11 a.m., 12 May 1968 by Sgt. 462 Thompson.
That same evening, 12 May 1968 at 9:30 P.M., Mrs. Watson of 48 Woodlands Crescent, Newcastle upon Tyne 5, made a complaint to the police alleging that her daughter Pauline, aged seven, and two friends, Cindy Hepple, six, and Susan Cornish, six, that afternoon between 4:30 and five P.M., in the sandpit of the Woodlands Crescent Nursery, had been assaulted by one of two older girls: Norma Joyce Bell, aged thirteen, or Mary Flora Bell, aged ten. The blotches on both sides of Pauline’s neck—she said later—remained visible for three days.
In a statement taken the next day by Police Sergeant A. Lindgren and Woman Police Constable I. Charlton at the Watsons’ home, Pauline Watson said that at about 4:30 P.M., Sunday 12 May 1968, she had gone to the Nursery at the end of Woodlands Crescent with Cindy Hepple, Wendy Hepple, and Susan Cornish, and that two big girls had come in.
The smallest one of the two girls told me to get out of the sandpit [she said]. I said no. She put her hands around my neck and squeezed hard. The bigger girl was behind the hut, playing. The girl took her hands off my neck and she did the same to Susan. Me, Cindy and Susan all ran home. The girl who squeezed my neck had short dark hair. I don’t know this girl and had not seen her before.
At 4:30 P.M. on 13 May, Woman Police Constable Jean Birkett took a statement from Norma Joyce Bell:
I am 13 years of age and I live at 68 Whitehouse Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with mam, dad, five sisters and five brothers. I go to Whickham View (Lower) School and I am in Class 5.
After tea (about 4.40 p.m.) yesterday, Sunday 12 May 1968, I went with Mary Bell who lives next door, up to Woodstock Road to see some hens that were up there. We stayed up there for a while and then we came back down home. Then we went along to the Nursery to play. We were playing inside the fence that was around the Nursery. There were two other girls there. One was called Pauline Watson but I don’t know what the other one was called. We were talking to these two girls. Mary was talking to Pauline saying, ‘Do you know Mary Bell?’ The girl said, ‘Yes, you are Mary Bell.’ Mary said, ‘No, I’m not.’ Mary then said to Pauline, ‘Can you fight Mary Bell?’ Pauline said, ‘Yes, I can fight you.’ Then Mary went to the other girl and said, ‘What happens if you choke someone, do they die?’ Then Mary put both hands round the girl’s throat and squeezed. The girl started to go purple. I told Mary to stop but she wouldn’t. She did this for a while and then she put her hands round Pauline’s throat and she started going purple as well. Both Pauline and the other girl were crying. Another girl, Susan Cornish, came up and Mary did the same to her. Susan had some rock (sweets) and Mary took this off her. I said to Mary, ‘There’ll be trouble,’ and then Mary asked me if I wanted some rock. I said, ‘Yes’, and had a little piece from her. I then ran off and left Mary. I’m not friends with her now.
Signed: N. Bell
Witness: C. Bell (mother)
Between 6:55 and 7:10 P.M. Monday, 13 May 1968, Woman Police Constable I. Charlton took a statement from Mary Flora Bell at Tower View Section Police Station.
I am 10 years of age and I live with my mammy, two sisters and one brother at 70 Whitehouse Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I go to Delaval Road Junior School.
After tea (about 4.45 p.m.) yesterday, Sunday 12 May 1968, I went out with my friend Norma Bell who lives at 68 Whitehouse Road. We went to the Nursery next to Woodlands Crescent. We got in through a hole in the fence. There were two other girls there. One is called Pauline Watson and the other is Cindy Hepple. Norma and I were talking to these two girls. Norma said to Pauline, ‘Do you know Mary Bell?’ Pauline said, ‘Yes’. Norma then said to Pauline, ‘Can you fight Mary Bell?’ Pauline said, ‘No.’ Norma said, ‘Do you wish that Mary Bell was dead?’ Pauline said, ‘No’. I told Norma to shut up and I went behind a shed to play. When I was behind the shed I heard Pauline scream. I came from behind the shed and I saw Pauline running away towards the fence. She was holding her throat and screaming. I asked Norma what had happened and she said that Pauline had fallen and hurt her throat on the edge of the sand pit. I didn’t see Cindy then. I then walked down home with Norma and went in the house.
Signed: M. Bell
Witness: E. Bell (mother)
Mary’s headmistress at the Delaval Road Junior School told me that Mrs. Bell (Mary’s mother) came to see her on Monday, 13 May 1968, told her about the alleged sandpit incident, and asked her to “get to the bottom of this accusation against her daughter.” “She seemed honestly concerned that I should find out the truth,” said the headmistress, “so I called Pauline in and asked her to tell me honestly who had squeezed her neck. She said, ‘Please Miss, I don’t know the girl,’ and she wouldn’t say anything else. Of course, by this time everybody was talking about it. When I took her to the door I saw Mary Bell waiting just a little way down the corr
idor. I didn’t know what to believe.”
On 15 May 1968, Police Sergeant Lindgren enclosed the statements in his report to his superintendent, and said that in view of the home circumstances of the two older girls the Childrens Department had been notified. His report continued, “When the three children were seen by me about 9.30 p.m., Sunday 12 May 1968, they bore no marks or injuries to substantiate the complaints. The parents have been advised to take out a private summons for common assault if they so wish. They are satisfied with the action taken by the police and do not intend to take action themselves.
“The girls BELL have been warned as to their future conduct.”
CHAPTER ONE
SCOTSWOOD
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE shares the curious characteristic of many of Britain’s industrial cities of looking empty even when the streets are full, poor even in relatively affluent times, gray even in brightest sunshine. But, lying 275 miles north of London, with a population of about 250,000, it has a large number of good schools and hospitals, a university of repute, a famous medical school, a progressive Council with one of the best social service departments in the country, and all the trappings of a lively metropolis: a large shopping district with branches of several London stores; two daily and one Sunday paper; two theaters, cinemas, restaurants, three large hotels, two of them hypermodern, a new airport open to intercontinental jets, and a maze of one-way streets creating insuperable traffic problems. Newcastle also has some of the most beautiful surrounding country in Britain, and its own dialect, “Geordie”: “Gizabroonjack,” for example, means “Give me a pint of brown ale,” “hyem” stands for “home,” “wor lass” is “my wife” or “the little woman.” “Thordeeincanny” means “They are doing very well.” “Canny” can also be translated as “pretty,” or again as “many” (in which case the phrase might be “aycannyfew.”) When a child thinks that it is going to be punished it speaks of being “wronged,” and in a phrase like “She asked me something,” the word “us” replaces “me,” all somewhat bewildering to the outsider.