The Case Of Mary Bell: A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered

by Gitta Sereny

  This unhappy episode is included in this account, not in an effort to use tawdry events for whetting tawdry appetites, but to point out the damage that can be done through misguided zeal. No one knows exactly what combination of circumstances or events produced this particular crisis. It is perfectly possible that Mary genuinely believed—perhaps because she wanted or needed to believe it—that the housemaster had made advances to her; she is after all now of an age when this kind of fantasy is not at all unusual.

  It is also possible that she manipulated him into a situation which in line with her usual pattern, she could use for her own ends. Or again, he might have made some perfectly innocent gesture which was open to misinterpretation. Whichever the explanation, and in full appreciation of how vulnerable such children are and how necessary it is to protect them, there can be little doubt that the police intervention and the court case were a result of a most ill-advised overreaction. The damage that was done to the man Mary accused and his family, the upset to the school and to Mary herself is hardly compensated for by the facts that—as has been said since—“Mary is much more pleasant company since [that] court case,” and that the housemaster later got his Canadian job.

  The greatest danger for Mary has always been that, with the manipulative traits in her personality unaltered, and by intelligently cooperating much of the time with a program she knows is designed to get children out into normal life as soon as possible, she may succeed in persuading those around her that she has changed, that they have succeeded with her, long before such an assumption is safe for her and others.

  Several of the staff of the Special Unit have been heard to use this phrase, “We are doing miracles with her,” again and again. It has been suggested that she is now ready to participate fully in “school activities,” which means her being allowed to take part in supervised excursions and outings. Even more recently it was suggested that it was time to begin thinking about a release date for her.

  Miracles are of course always possible. And no one would want Mary—or any other sick child—to be locked away from normal life a moment longer than need be. But the problem of psychopathic children requires compassion, not sentimentality. It also requires a realistic assessment of everything the future might hold. In the light of the limitation of present knowledge about psychopathic children this realism must necessarily—if sadly—veer toward extreme caution. For however essential it is to give individual sympathetic consideration to each child, yet such children can no more than any other human being be seen in isolation from the rest of society: that is sentimentality, not compassion. The question in Mary’s case—as in that of many other such children in many other places—cannot be “Should they be locked up or free?” but “What represents the least risk to themselves and to society? What can be done to equip them to live as good, as useful, and as inoffensive lives as possible—whether this be under restraint or freedom?”

  As I come to the end of writing this book I remember a conversation I had with Mary’s grandmother some time ago. She said that she could see no good coming from anything that was written about Mary. “Not even a serious book?” I asked, “one that just might help her now and other children later?” “No,” she said, “it could not help but ruin her future. . . .” When Mary did get out, she added, such writing would surely be available for her to read and “also for her bairns one day.”

  I have thought of this time and again as I wrote.

  But in the light of the whole of this unhappy story, I have wondered too: if years ago family or friends, teachers or priests, social workers or police—all of us—had known more, understood more about such deeply troubled children, need there ever have been a “Case of Mary Bell”?

  This is why this book was written.

  * * *

  1 Happily, June and George Brown have now (1972) had another baby.

  2 But see footnote, page 242.

  3 The Psychopath, by William and Joan McCord, published by the Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, copyright 1964 by Litton Educational Publishing, Inc.

  4 Professor T. C. N. Gibbens, one of Britain’s leading child psychiatrists and Consultant to the Home Office Children’s Department (now Ministry of Health and Social Services), was to say later, in a television debate following the publication of this book, that the treatment for a girl such as Mary must include educators and social workers quite as much as medical personnel.

  5 The Orthogenic School in Chicago and Wiltwyck.

  6 As of 1971.

  7 And continuously since then (1973).

  8 It is interesting to note that—although the Home Office has stated time and time again that “in law” no one has a right to stop a mother from seeing her child—this can in fact be done (see Postscript).

  9 It is worth saying here that since the case of Mary Bell received such wide publicity in 1968, five not unsimilar cases, all involving children under fifteen killing or attempting to kill younger children, have occurred in Britain. In all these cases the names of the children were withheld.

  10 On October 5, 1972, after the book’s publication in England, Professor T. C. N. Gibbens, the child psychiatrist who had examined Mary at the request of the Home Office after she was convicted, was quoted in the (London) Times: “She is really impenetrable; no one knows what goes on in her head.”

  11 Approximately three months after she had been asked to stop her visits Mary’s mother appeared at the school. “She was sobbing,” said a teacher, “and said she just had to see Mary again so she was allowed in. Mary seemed glad enough to see her. They both cried.”

  12 The author, by permission of the Magistrates, remained in Court throughout Mary’s testimony.

  13 It was later claimed, though not at the trial, that one of the teachers felt this book “should be read by all adolescents.”

  POSTSCRIPT

  I revised the British edition of this book for the last time in February 1972 and it was published in England on the following September 28. As must always happen with books concerned with present-day events, the lives of the people I have written about here have been subject to development and change.

  Billy Bell is completely separated with Betty. He has since made a new home with a young woman and a child in Newcastle; his two younger children from the marriage to Betty live with them and are doing well. He occasionally sees his now fourteen-year-old son who, since the events of 1968, has been in the care of a particularly good small Children’s Home in the country and has developed a great enthusiasm for ornithology: it is thought that he may well make a career in that field. Betty, by her own decision, has seen none of the children except Mary, whom she continues to visit regularly. She told someone (and recently also the press) that she had given it a lot of thought and come to the conclusion it would be better for the others if she didn’t see them and “disturb their [new] happiness”: a decision that required courage and I think merits respect.

  Betty’s mother—Mary’s grandmother—although ever more fragile, continues to come to Betty’s aid whenever called and the same applies, as it always did, to the rest of Betty’s family. All of them were deeply disturbed when the book appeared but, in several cases, are known to have remarked to friends that they were “just glad it has all come out.”

  The hope of Norma Bell’s family that they—and Norma—with the trial over and Norma acquitted, could forget about these awful events, was not fulfilled. The world is not that forgetful and perhaps, if the truth be told, nor can they be themselves.

  After several changes of school and residence, and after repeatedly running away, sometimes remaining missing for days on end, Norma went to work at fifteen, but has been unable to hold on to a job for any length of time. Now eighteen (and therefore no longer under the legal protection system o fthe Children’s Act) she has, it is said, become obsessed with the past and her association with Mary: to such a degree that she has been heard to say time and again “Mary is dead, isn’t she? They are just hiding it from me, ar
en’t they?” And on the other hand she has—even lately—lost job after job because of her apparently compulsive need to describe in detail, to whomever will listen, all the events of 1968.

  We can only guess at Norma’s problems. Is she merely reflecting (or rejecting) the determination of those around her to protect her from a reality she was part of and which therefore, whether one likes it or not, is now part of her? Or could it be merely that, having once been in the limelight, she now, still rather immature, wishes to be again a center of attention? Or is it something else altogether that so desperately troubles her?

  I have always felt that one of the most disturbing and significant things I learned during the research for this book—significant not only in the case of these particular young girls but in a much wider context—was when I was told that the staff of the Special Unit at Red Bank had been instructed that Mary’s background (i.e., her past) was “unimportant for the staff to know about” (see here).

  Is this really possible? Can anyone severely disturbed ever be effectively helped without understanding of the background—the root causes of the disturbance? If—in this mysterious domain of human behavior—we deny the relevance of past experiences, what are we left with? What is there to build on but a shell? All of us are surely aware by now of the inadequacy of psychiatric knowledge; of the imprecision of diagnosis in a field where diagnostic terms—such as for example “psychopath”—cover a multitude of symptoms and end up by defining very little. But, leaving aside theories and polemics and considering human behavior and its consequences only in terms of common sense and compassion: how can any individual—whether child or adult—who has been subjected to traumatic events which have affected his development and behavior, be expected to come to terms with them, with his fears, with his actions and with himself unless he be permitted and helped to face up to these memories?

  The most basic fallacy in official thinking about Mary Bell remains this claim that she is a “unique case.” In the light of overwhelming proof that what she represents is, on the contrary, a severe manifestation of widely and indeed universally existing problems, this attitude begins to look like an almost deliberate act of self-persuasion. Is this, one begins to wonder, something we all are tempted to do: to hide from that which is too difficult to face? To obliterate that which is too stark? To confine the existence of weaknesses to those few who can be comfortably and comfortingly “slotted” into easily definable categories?

  This case—it seems to me—confronts us with some very fundamental questions concerning the responsibility of society for the individual and its willingness and capacity to discharge it. How important is this one girl? How important is any one individual, above all those who—weaker than others—paradoxically require so much of the community’s collective energy and resources? How far can the theoretical (and ideal of) responsibility of the state “from the cradle to the grave” be translated into a reality that will not become an albatross and throttle the very system that—so enlightened—has created it?

  More than ever, since the reactions to this book after its publication in England, I am convinced that the story told here is relevant to a multitude of unresolved problems which faces every one of us.

  Mary Bell, as of this writing (March 1973)—now fifteen years old, is still in the Special Unit of Red Bank School, still on her own with twenty-two boys; there have been no other girls there in the last nine months.

  The book, widely discussed in press, radio and television, focused new attention on her situation and, the school having asked for her to be moved, several alternatives for her care are now apparently under consideration.

  A reportage by the highly responsible BBC TV program Mid-Week and a report by the equally serious London Sunday Times “Insight” team, following the publication of the book, brought to light various aspects of Mary’s recent life which caused a furor in the national press and led to questions in Parliament.

  The fact, as indicated in the book and picked up by the media (and many reviewers), that the school had no resident psychiatric staff, was first repeatedly denied and finally admitted by the Department of Health. The consultant psychiatrist who visits the Special Unit once a week to advise the staff, when interviewed, confirmed these facts and added that he had “no doubt that . . . any . . . school would need very considerable psychiatric help to know how to handle [a child like] Mary Bell.”

  Betty Bell was also interviewed on Mid-Week: she presumably agreed in an understandable effort to counteract the effect the publication of extracts from the book (in a Newcastle Sunday paper for the three previous weeks) had by then already had in her home territory. Although the TV team felt considerable sympathy for her—she always appears very vulnerable and people generally respond by coming to feel protective of her—they were staggered when, unasked, she produced a group of recent photographs of Mary, several of which were described later on the program as “candid and provocative poses [of Mary] wearing scanty underclothes.” The program also mentioned the “sexual” incidents Mary had reputedly been involved in; her accusation of a housemaster of indecent assault; and the fact that a copy of the crude pornographic book Oral Love had been brought repeatedly into the school somehow and that Mary had been able to get hold of it. All this and the program’s statement—given to them by the Department of Health—that a member of the staff had been present when Mary was photographed by her mother in her undies, raised a storm in the press which continued for almost ten days. Although the banner headlines all over the country, proclaiming “Scandal of Child Killer: Mary Bell in sex incidents at jail home,” “Child Killer in Porn Scandal,” etc., seemed somewhat disproportionate, it was perhaps not altogether surprising. An investigation ordered by the Home Office claimed to ascertain that the three snapshots referred to by the media were merely part of “a group of about fifty harmless family snapshots” and had in fact been taken “in the presence of the child’s grandmother and a teacher.”

  I must admit that my own first reaction had been to say in interviews that I thought it unlikely that Mary’s sensitive grandmother could possibly have had anything to do with this and equally improbable that any teacher could have been present at such silly goings-on. But when a statement by the Minister for Social Affairs, read two weeks later to the House of Commons, confirmed that this had been the situation, one could only agree with the press that, however harmless perhaps the intention, however fervent the disclaimer of the school and the Ministry, the facts remained that Mary’s mother—whatever her motives—had taken such photographs within the precincts of this Special Unit for severely disturbed children, mostly boys, and in a room with a glass observation window in the door; the grandmother, however haplessly, had in fact watched it being done; and a teacher, present while the photographs were taken, had not tried in any way to interfere. The whole regrettable incident yet another example of—to put it mildly—the lack of judgment displayed continuously concerning this highly vulnerable and now adolescent girl.

  The Sunday Times, the week following the TV broadcast, published extracts from a Report on Mary Bell, written by a Newcastle psychiatrist who had examined her at the request of the Home Office in July 1971. He says in his paper that he “had a long talk with Mary while she showed [me] around the school.” The Sunday Times said that, in the 2,700 word document, the psychiatrist had found Mary “remarkably improved” with “a loss of nearly all of her aggressive tendencies,” a “modification of her inclination to manipulate people” and “an improvement in her relations with others and of her capacity to think about the future.” He also felt that she had gained insight into her mother’s emotional and social instability, and added that her mother could “hinder her progress [he said, significantly enough] even in her present situation.”

  Nonetheless, he concluded by suggesting that “one should begin to consider 1975 as a possible release date [one could not help but notice that he made this suggestion without mentioning that Mary’s sharply improv
ed behavior in the artificial and highly controlled environment of the school was no guarantee whatever as to her possible conduct outside it] . . . She will be old enough [he said at the end] to stand on her own feet, with some support, and, if she progresses as she has, be capable of a life of her own.”

  Both the suggested 1975 release and the fact that Mary’s mother, despite all warning signs, has continued to be allowed to visit her, drew renewed critical—indeed dismayed—comments from the press.

  But there was, alas, worse to come: on 15 October 1972 Mary’s mother gave yet another interview, which appeared on the front page of the Newcastle Sunday Sun. “It is,” the paper announced, “the interview other major newspapers have tried to get and failed. For better or worse, Mary Bell is the most controversial child in Britain. And in the debates and arguments a lot of criticism—direct and indirect—has been levelled at her mother. Last week Mrs. Bell asked . . . to put her point of view . . .”

  In this interview Betty Bell said that she was determined that if and when her daughter was released, they would change their names and move to another part of the country and make a fresh start together. What was even more disturbing though than Mrs. Bell’s plans for a future with Mary was a letter she said she had received from Mary that very morning.

  “No matter what happens mam,” Mary wrote “we’ll go it together. These past five years have been hard for us and everyone. I can only hope and pray things turn out for the best, mam. I love you and shall always love you. As long as you are there I’ll be ok because I want you and need you . . .” Another cry for help, another plea for love, one is tempted to say quickly.

  But, seen in the context of the letter-poem Mary had written to her mother in the spring of 1970 (see here) and the psychiatrist’s optimistic remarks in the summer of 1971 about the new “insight” he thought she had gained, what she was writing now to her mother was a distressing indication of retrogression, a contraindication of the ability the psychiatrist believed to have detected in her to stand on her own two feet: a return to an involuted kind of dependence on and need for her mother which, we know so well now from the whole history, Betty Bell out of her own need has always known how to engender, can never satisfy, and which, time and again, has had fatal consequences.