By Brian Masters
Published: 6:45AM GMT 04 Mar 2010
A 27-year-old man who used to be known as Jon Venables has been taken into custody for an undisclosed reason at an unknown location. That is all there is to say, or it should be. But this simple news item has been wilfully exploded into a stream of righteous wrath owing to what this man did 17 years ago. It is as well we should remind ourselves what that was, and examine why we should delight in recalling the horror all over again. For that is what is happening.
Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both then 10 years old, abducted a little boy, James Bulger, from a shopping mall when his mother's attention was diverted, then took him by the hand on a long walk which ended some two hours later on waste land by a railway track. They then subjected the frightened infant to the most unspeakable indignities and cruelties, almost mindlessly, as if he were a toy that could be dismantled, and left his racked body on the line to be cut in half by a train.
They were arrested, tried and convicted in an adult court, Mr Justice Morland declaring solemnly that they had been found guilty of an act "of unparalleled evil and barbarity", words that were not in their vocabulary and could not be understood by them.
Of course, he was not talking to them at all, but to us, the world. Adult ritual was much more satisfying than the difficult, messy business of understanding aberrant child psychology. Nobody suggested the boys made a decision after breakfast to kill somebody; they did not harbour hatred for the toddler, nor for toddlers in general. The catastrophe fell unheralded, for motives that remained mysterious.
The crime was very nasty indeed, and the boys were justly punished for it. But the crowd wanted something more. They beat their fists upon the van that carried the boys to and from court, baying for vengeance. It seems the fists are still clenched, even today, and the desire for blood unquenched.
We cannot feel anger at this man who was detained yesterday, for we no longer know who he is. He may be married. He may be a father. He may have a job. He may be kind and considerate. He may be rotten and deceitful. He may have shoplifted. He may have sold drugs. It does not matter, for we are not interested in him; we are interested in the little boy who terrified us with his malice all those years ago, and we do not want to let that shudder evaporate and lose its power.
In some very unpleasant way, we cherish it still. We must never be suspected of any maturity that would allow us to spot the possibility of redemption. That, at least, is the feeling some newspapers appear to foster; I can think of a couple which, if their editors knew where this man was, would pursue him to the death if necessary.
I attended the trial of Thompson and Venables throughout, and heard all the evidence. Yet I did not feel the presence of wickedness. I felt the unfathomable mystery of human behaviour, the awe of ignorance, the chilling impossibility of knowing what this was really all about. The trial, which ought to have been a lesson in philosophy, was instead a performance, a parade of adult indignation hurled at two frightened little boys who knew they had done something terrible, and did not know why. They could barely see over the bar of the dock in which they sat; it came up to their chins. And so I also felt some shame at being witness to this show.
We heard the tapes of the police interrogation of Jon Venables in the presence of his parents, which were deeply disturbing.
When the officers took a break from their questions, wisely to enable his mother and father to coax him, they hugged and protected him, assuring him of their love whatever he had done and begging him to tell the truth. With this support he mustered the courage to embark on an account both harrowing and heart-rending, wailing loudly and inconsolably for 33 minutes, which the court listened to in shocked silence. His counsel called him "a sad, diffident, unhappy boy" who had been inhibited from honesty by the rejection he feared he would suffer from his mother.
When the interview continued, the boy's mother was in no condition to be present. Mr Venables returned alone, sitting with his eyes and ears closed to the horror. When Jon, howling, turned to him for reassurance, there was none; he sought comfort instead from a police officer. As the climax of his story approached, he was audibly racked with anguish. "I can't," he sobbed, "I can't tell you anything else, 'cos that's the worst bit." Robert (his accomplice) had been "laughing his head off" as he threw bricks at James.
The police officer then asked Jon what he now thought of all that he and his friend had done to the baby. His reply was given in a broken, piping voice. "Terrible," he said. "I was thinking about it all the time." When confronted with the word "distress", he asked what it meant. Still worse was the pathetic and awful plea: "What about his Mum? Will you tell her I'm sorry."
This is the man who has now made bold front-page news for an undisclosed offence, which we are all invited to imagine must be heinous. At least we hope it is, or we shall be short-changed. I have never met the man, and never shall. I have no idea what he is like, though I did know somebody, now deceased, who spoke to him while he was still in custody as a teenager and was impressed by his progress.
But I do know that he cannot be the warped and skewed child who shared in that dreadful crime all those years ago. It is just not possible. He is somebody else now. We all of us change and develop as we pass into adulthood and beyond, and there is no reason to suppose that a child who murders should be exempt from this inevitability.
So why all the interest? We only know that Venables has breached the conditions imposed upon him at the time of his release from custody. That is the news, and that is therefore what the newspapers should announce; that is what they are for. They are not designed for retribution or diffuse disgust in search of an object.
Besides which, most of the religions that are professed in this country, and to which angry avengers pretend to adhere, give space to that precious possibility of redemption. Surely our society is mature enough to permit religious wisdom to prevail rather than let intelligent thought be swamped by quivering fascination with wickedness.
As for the public "right to know", that was effectively recognised by the trial. People had the right to know what had happened and, if possible, why; to hear the evidence for and against the defenders; to see the verdict returned and punishment enacted. They do not have the right to know everything that happens to the killers for the rest of their lives; public interest is served and exhausted in trial by jury.
Nobody would wish to belittle the ghastly fate that befell James Bulger. Letting his killers attempt to redeem themselves in peace does not do that. But we should be mindful of the fact that indignation is relatively easy to satisfy, and demands no sacrifice, no exposure to horrid experience, no damage to the soul. To continue feeding indignation against a 10-year-old boy who glimpsed Hell, and who knew it, is at best unworthy, and at worst is itself a manifestation of wickedness.
Brian Masters is the author of, among other books, 'Killing for Company: The Case of Dennis Nilsen' and 'The Evil That Men Do'
Pervasive security cameras don't substantially reduce crime. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly: in San Francisco, California, public housing; in a New York apartment complex; in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; in Washington; in study after study in both the U.S. and the U.K. Nor are they instrumental in solving many crimes after the fact.
