by Gitta Sereny
Kirby’s second point is that the other boys at the school had claimed to have been invited to join Robert and Jon’s “gang” of two “because we are going to kill someone”. (This statement actually came from only one boy in the school and was not used by the prosecution.)
Kirby’s third and fourth reasons are statements made by Jon under interrogation: Bobby, Jon said, had wanted to throw the baby into the canal but when James wouldn’t “bend over the water”, he had decided to “get him knocked over by a bus”.
When this, too, failed—perhaps because there were too many people around on that late Friday afternoon: three witnesses would testify that they saw Robert and Jon pull James back from the road on three occasions—they took him down to the railway yard near Robert’s home in Walton where, like many other boys, Robert was apparently in the habit of playing. His alleged “den” was unfortunately never found—or, perhaps, particularly looked for. If the children’s psychology had played a stronger part in the investigation, it would have been realized that the contents of a child’s den—a place where children invariably hide secrets—could have been revealing.
Although I do not see eye to eye with Mr. Kirby on premeditation to murder, I, too, thought that it was unlikely that the boys would have dragged the tired, often crying toddler on a more than two-mile trek, ending up in the railway yard, unless they had a purpose.
It has to be remembered that these were not stupid boys: intelligence tests given to them before the trial by psychiatrists Dr. Susan Bailey (to Jon) and Dr. Eileen Vizard (to Robert), concluded that Jon was of average—and Robert of “Good, at least average” intelligence (a fact which was amply confirmed by his interpolations during interrogations). If one or both of these boys wanted to kill a child, there were (and I apologize for the word) easier ways to do it, not least by pushing him in front of an oncoming car.
The more complex the intention, of course, the more need there was of seclusion. (Martin Brown, the first of the Newcastle victims, it will be remembered, was killed in a derelict house; the second, Brian Howe, on an expanse of waste ground used by children as an adventure playground. In these cases, as I have pointed out, there was no frenzy: Mary Bell’s pathology, deriving from her emotional abuse as a small child, was, one might almost say a “tactile” fascination with death, but—different from these two boys—not with pain.)
I suggest that if both boys’, or one boy’s, intention was to kill James, they would not have planned on the ferocious manner of his death; frenzy can occur, but it can’t be planned.
What can be planned is a sexual attack. This, contrary to killing, requires time, isolation and, as one knows from countless testimonies of child-victims, often darkness. (“They did it all in the dark,” one of the Court attendants in Preston said. “I can’t get over that.”)
The exact sequence of events on that dreadful night has never been discovered, or divulged, but although Jon at one point in his testimony claimed the contrary, the police believe James’s clothes were removed before the killing. They undressed James and they manipulated his penis and foreskin. This much the jury was told. But because this was all they knew, and were facing the moment of having to confront the awful violence of the killing, they may well have almost disregarded what could have appeared to them as no more than a distressing interlude. The fact that it was far more than that, was suspected but not fully known. Also, however, it was not acceptable—or bearable. The police, finding the half-nude child and a number of batteries nearby, did, as we know, immediately suspect a sexual motive. James’s anus and back passage were examined, the batteries were tested for body fluids, and the boys were repeatedly interrogated about the batteries, responding on each occasion with enormous distress and, of course, total denial that they had been put to any use whatsoever other than “throwing them at the baby”.
The post-mortem report states specifically that “the anus showed no external injury” and that “detailed examination of the rectum . . . shows no tearing and no evidence of bruising.”
It would, however, appear that in fact a tear was found in the child’s rectum and photographed (“Yes, we have it,” a police spokesman confirmed last week), but that the pathologists suggested it could have been “a result of constipation”. When the forensic examination of the batteries revealed nothing, this explanation, though unsatisfactory to many of the police officers and most of the lawyers on the case, was accepted.
“The batteries had been exposed to humidity (dew and perhaps frost) for two days before James’s body was found,” Superintendent Kirby said. “They showed nothing. In any case,” he added (Kirby himself was not at all happy to leave aside this aspect of the case), “there was no doubt they had killed the baby. There was no point in dragging the horror for the Bulgers out any further.”
This was absolutely true. But there was quite a different piece of possibly related evidence which, unaccountably, was entirely ignored. Superintendent Kirby told me he had not known of its existence and, indeed, only one of the several forensic reports mentions it: “A small quantity of faecal material in the form of a stool was present under a brick on the other side of the rail adjacent to the body: blood drips were present on the outer aspect of the rail just above the faeces.”
Bacterial analysis of such material, which swiftly decomposes, is difficult, but the apparent proximity of blood should have alerted the finders: although faecal material cannot be subjected to DNA testing, blood of course can. Whatever the reason, it would appear that this material was not analysed, and, particularly, not subjected to comparison with the content of the child’s intestines in order to ascertain whether it was his. It could have been that little James’s bowels had reacted to fear, or to the insertion of a foreign object (which the police had suspected all along); it could have come from the boys, or, of course, though less likely just in that spot, from someone else altogether. But nobody knew, and nobody tried to find out. Perhaps it was too distasteful. Anyway, in a situation where bricks played a primary part in the child’s murder and where, at the conclusion of the deed, a bizarre attempt was made to hide his face with bricks, it is surprising nobody wanted to admit that the finding of this material “under a brick” next to the body was sufficiently significant to merit examination.
Late in January 1994, Superintendent Kirby told me that, as of a few days earlier, in the helpful atmosphere of the secure unit, Jon was beginning to open up. And a week later, talking to his father, Jon finally spoke about the batteries. “He said,” Neil Venables told me, “that they had pushed batteries into the baby’s mouth.”
This voluntary disclosure of a heretofore not understood (though suspected) violent act was not only a hopeful sign for Jon, but takes us considerably further in the analysis of the actual crime. For what this admission now explained were the terrible injuries to James’s mouth described in the pathologist’s report but not properly understood until now. “Dissection of the face reveals evulsion of the lower lip and facial structure from the left side of the jaw over an area of three inches.”
Most psychiatrists working on child sexual abuse, faced with evidence of a hard object being forcibly introduced into the mouth of a child, would consider as a first hypothesis that the perpetrator was committing an act of sexual abuse. There may be those who will feel—or even prefer to feel—that this terrible attack was not sexually motivated but part of the frenzied violence which killed James. I don’t believe this is so. But I think, too, that the two sequences cannot be separated: one, I believe, arose out of and was dependent on the other.
The pattern of sexual abuse is thoroughly familiar by now to all those who work in this field. Children who abuse other children have almost invariably been abused themselves. (This will not necessarily apply to children who are present, but who do not actively participate.)
The 1957 Act of Parliament says that “Where a person kills, or is a party to the killing of another, he shall not be convicted of murder if he was suffering from
such abnormality of mind (whether arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind or any inherent cause, or induced by disease or injury) as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts and omissions in doing or being a party to the killing.”
If all the sexual components of the attack on James Bulger had been known, would the psychiatrists have been able to express a different opinion than that they had seen no “abnormality of mind” in Jon Venables and Robert Thompson?
If the defence had known all the sexual components of the attack, could they have based a plea in mitigation on diminished responsibility?
And if the prosecution had been equally informed, could they have agreed to such a plea for manslaughter instead of murder, thereby accepting that an inner disturbance which drives a ten-year-old to commit serious sexual and then frenzied physical attacks resulting in death can or must be considered “an abnormality of mind” admissible for treatment under the Mental Health Act?
I am told by eminent jurists that, under British law as it stands, the answer is no. The law relating to diminished responsibility, which alone would allow a verdict for manslaughter, does not admit that children who sexually abuse children can be suffering from an “abnormality of mind”.
(“I think Bobby needs help, and he’s been needing it for a long time,” Anne Thompson had said to me. “I asked them—give him help; they said he can’t have help because he hasn’t been found guilty. I said, if he isn’t guilty, he should have help anyway, and if he is guilty, he needs help, now. But I might have been talking to the wall; nobody listened.”)
I began this account with a plea for a change in the British legal system as regards trials of children who have committed capital crimes. I suggested that the way most Western European countries, and most North American states, handle this difficult problem is more enlightened. By having Family or Juvenile Courts deal with these cases after the social enquiry has been completed and therapeutic treatment substantially advanced, they are taking into account the changing moral climate and precepts of our society. Let me emphasize that I am not suggesting that children who kill, or for that matter deliberately hurt or harm others without causing death, do not need the strongest possible indication from society that they have done the most terrible wrong. For this purpose, and for this purpose alone, there is something to be said for maintaining a relatively formal setting; so that the seriousness of the occasion imprints itself on their minds. Paradoxically, one of the perceived dangers of the European model is that the length of time and lack of formality risks undermining that impression. The French call it banalization.
Perhaps this is a chance to create a new system combining the best elements of both. This present case, because of its extreme nature, has demonstrated most forcibly what is wrong. It is wrong to treat children as adults and to demand that they comprehend the language and thought processes of adults. It is wrong to sit children in a dock for weeks on public exhibition.
However talented police interrogators may be, it is wrong that they should question children for days on end about an act, a deed, a crime, without the training or authority for a parallel goal of understanding. It is wrong to use tricks, emotion or a parent to coerce a child, for however necessary and right it may seem in the essentials of the moment, the child will never forget.
Truth must emerge not through the pressure of, or the longing for, love, but out of an inner need. The admission of guilt, and the relief of remorse, are only given to human beings through self-knowledge. And children, just as human, only smaller, have exactly the same needs.1
It is the end of July 1994 as I finish the new introduction to this book, and a new conclusion to this appendix. Eight months have gone by since the conviction of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both 11 years old, for the murder of two-year-old James Bulger and the sentence of detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
The sentencing in cases such as this is no simple matter under British law: the original recommendation is made by the trial judge and then confirmed or altered by the Lord Chief Justice. Then, however—and again Britain stands alone in the practice—the Home Secretary of the day, i.e. the executive branch of government, has the deciding voice.
In this instance, Mr. Justice Morland let it be known in December 1993 that he considered eight years to be the proper minimum sentence for both boys in respect “retribution and deterrence”; two days later, the Lord Chief Justice increased this to ten years. James Bulger’s parents, Denise and Ralph, immediately launched a campaign, eventually supported by over 250,000 signatures, calling for the two young murderers of their child to be jailed for life. And earlier this year, the two boys’ lawyers initiated an appeal to the European Court in Luxembourg, on the basis that the boys’ rights are being infringed by the British legal system which allows a politician to set prison terms. The European Court has accepted the case and will presumably hear it in the course of the coming winter.
Last week, as I write this—on 22 July 1994—Mr. Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, announced that the boys are to serve a minimum of 15 years’ imprisonment. He said that he had taken the judges’ views into consideration but had increased the sentence because of “the special circumstances and the need to maintain confidence in the justice system”. Equally, however, he said, the strength of public feeling had affected his decision.
It is, of course, impossible for anyone who murders, including Mary Bell and these boys, to “pay” in terms of years of imprisonment, for killing another human being. In that sense, eight or ten years are as irrelevant as 15—or life.
The fact remains, however, that these were damaged children and, as such, as we see with Mary Bell, can be helped to grow up into something approaching normal adults. Under the British system, the sentence imposed for deterrence and retribution is the minimum: in practice this means that they now cannot be considered for probation and release until they are 26 years old. By then they will have served their first four years in secure units, where the emphasis is on education and—if they are willing and lucky—therapy. At 15 they will presumably be moved to a secure youth facility, already essentially a prison, and at 18 to a maximum security prison. While secure units, whether they succeed or not, are theoretically treatment-oriented and certainly benign places, even the best prisons are penal institutions, largely punishment-oriented and filled with angry men or women prisoners. It requires enormous strength for a young person to withstand that anger and maintain any change and improvement he has achieved. The sentence for retribution and deterrence is, I repeat, the minimum: even at the end of it, the prisoner will only be released if he is considered safe to be returned to society.
This would have applied just as much if the judges’ recommendation had been accepted. The Home Secretary’s increase to 15 years, therefore, really is nothing but a political decision, a sap to the voters who consider these two 11-year-old boys to be “evil”.
* * *
1 First published in the Independent on Sunday Review on 6 and 13 February 1994 © Newspaper Publishing plc, 1994
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the help of a great many people. I owe thanks above all to my family and close friends who have lived it with me for so long; to John Anstey, Editor of the Daily Telegraph Magazine, for the original concept; Miriam Rosenthal Hodgson, my editor at Eyre Methuen, for her unflagging support in face of many problems; my old Newcastle friends Olive and Hans S. for the solace of their home on so many occasions; Helene Thimig Reinhardt for her help at a crucial moment; and Dr. Christopher Ounsted for his valued advice.
The enlightened support of the Newcastle civic authorities, many of whom, at their request, I did not name, made it possible for me to document this account. The Chief Constable of Northumberland, Mr. C. H. Cooksley, Q.P.M.; and, above all, Superintendent James Dobson, B.E.M., made it possible for me to document the account of the police investigation. Mr. Brian Roycroft, appointed as Newcas
tle’s Children’s Officer shortly before the trial took place, was one of the people I was not allowed to name at the time. Today, however, when he has just retired after twenty-one years as one of the most enlightened Social Service Directors Britain has ever had, I can say that without his passion for social justice and, I think because of it, his help to me over the years, there are many things I would have found difficult to do.
This now applies, too, to all those, in Liverpool and Preston, none of whom I can name at this point, who supported my efforts to find out the truth about the two boys who killed Jamie Bulger. A very special thanks here to Liz Jobey, Editor of the Independent on Sunday Review, whose involvement with this story went way beyond the bounds of “duty”; I’m thankful I can write for her.
All those whose honesty, compassion, and concern have prompted them to stand by me during my work on both these harrowing tales: the families concerned, their neighbours and friends, doctors and lawyers, police officers, social workers and teachers—all of them should know that I admire their courage and that I am grateful to them for their trust and—many of them—for becoming my friends.
Gitta Sereny
London, August 1994
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