Jon Venables ‘Strikes’ And What We Will Never Know
JON Venables: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at one of James Bulger’s killers in the news: Deborah Orr call for more information and understanding as media titillates its readers with horror…
The Weekly Vice website hears that Venables has been charged with possessing 57 pornographic images of children and yells:
Jon Venables Strikes Again…
Well, no. He has not murdered a child again. He is in the market for depravity, allegedly, but he has not struck again.
Venables is not accused of making the indecent images. We can argue if downloading – or looking, as it was once called in pre-computer times – is as bad as creating such images. Is the latter a thought crime? Venables must not explain why he had such heinous images, allegedly, just answer the charge that he had them.
This website then goes on to publish details of the crime in gruesome detail, inviting readers to download the sick story?
In the Guardian, Deborah Orr, writes:
Jon Venables: what we’ll never learn
This is a sickening allegation in any circumstances. In the context of the terrible and notorious crime that Venables committed during his childhood, it is almost indescribably alarming and disturbing.
To anyone sane, it is grim. But yesterday, Hadley Freeman invited Guardian readers to understand why Venables is disturbed and may have taken to looking at images of young children.
Orr writes on:
Any member of a jury over the next few months, confronted with a man in the dock of around this age, and on trial under similar charges, might wonder if she is being asked to consider a verdict on one of James Bulger’s murderers…
Quite. Orr then goes on to talk about how criminal children are treated in law:
Britain’s own tendency to rush to judgment on the slenderest of knowledge is the very thing that makes it necessary to keep secret the details of the programme of rehabilitation that the convicted boys underwent, along with the details of the lives they live now.
There’s fat chance, in such an environment, of ever understanding much at all, least of all the interplay of cause and effect in this latest, compellingly abject development in the life of the prisoner formerly known as Child B.
Why fat chance? Haven’t all manner of experts been observing Venables and Thompson for years? Their crime was rare. But, yes, it could only be helpful if the media were allowed to publish any reports on the killers’ lives, to disseminate information that might help prevent such a thing occurring again…
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Posted: 24th, June 2010 | In: Reviews Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
