I’m not surprised that Jon Venables’s brain has got a bit mis-wired. Imprisoned at 10 years of age, to spend puberty and adolescence separated from the opposite sex, and with the knowledge and memory of his murder of a very small child forever in his consciousness.
Maybe he should have stayed behind bars for the rest of his life. But if someone with this history is released, he’s going to need a hell of a lot of aftercare. I wonder whether he had it?
UPDATE: Formertory linked, in the comments, to this article by Brian Masters. It’s very much worth reading.
by Formertory
27 Jul 2010 at 10:07
This article, published earlier this year, makes some powerful points about the way Venables and Thompson were treated in an adult court.
Without condoning in any way what they did, if those two boys weren’t half-insane or sociopathic before they entered the dock, I’m damn sure they were afterwards. If the article is accurate, it would have been difficult to calculate a crueler means of dealing with them, or one which would more guarantee the need for long-term supervision.
If justice is partly about salvaging something positive from the appalling, it failed here.
by Formertory
27 Jul 2010 at 12:05
The article URL, which didn’t come though, is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7365479/Jon-Venables-is-no-longer-the-guilty-boy-who-killed-James-Bulger.html