Jon Venables and Robert Thompson
Mr Justice Morland, after the trial, laid the moral responsibility for Venables and Thompson's heinous crime with the parents. Should they not have been sent to prison?
Conveniently now for the lynch mob, the boys have grown up and so are fair target, in their opinion, for our opprobrium or worse.
However the truth is rather different.
Two boys suffered abusive backgrounds and were left to roam unsupervised. 28 adults saw them with a toddler and did nothing. They have been subject to years of our penal rehabilitation programme and at the end of this we are left it seems with broken lives.
Somehow it seems you can punish an abused child yet excuse the abusive parents. Then you can seek vengeance on the abused child when he becomes a man yet excuse the rehabilitaters.
Further, you can excuse even encourage the public level of violent language and vengeful intentions towards Venables and Thompson on the basis of horror at their 10 year old deeds.
Is there anyone brave enough out there to face the fact that evil is in all of us and is all around us? Venables and Thompson made visible what the adults had tried to hide. They acted out explicity the evil that others had done to them. Society is appalled at what they did but not at what was done to them.
Members of the public, who have nothing to do with the trauma of the killing, are baying for their blood because they feel horrified at what they did. Isn't this the same sense of outrage that led the boys to do what they did?
However, instead of satisfying this blood lust and further fragmenting society, we could unite in our horror at all that abuses and degrades and destroys and work together to overcome the power of evil.
That requires the monumental challenge of working to restore and rehabilitate everyone affected in the Bulger catastrophe.
Conveniently now for the lynch mob, the boys have grown up and so are fair target, in their opinion, for our opprobrium or worse.
However the truth is rather different.
Two boys suffered abusive backgrounds and were left to roam unsupervised. 28 adults saw them with a toddler and did nothing. They have been subject to years of our penal rehabilitation programme and at the end of this we are left it seems with broken lives.
Somehow it seems you can punish an abused child yet excuse the abusive parents. Then you can seek vengeance on the abused child when he becomes a man yet excuse the rehabilitaters.
Further, you can excuse even encourage the public level of violent language and vengeful intentions towards Venables and Thompson on the basis of horror at their 10 year old deeds.
Is there anyone brave enough out there to face the fact that evil is in all of us and is all around us? Venables and Thompson made visible what the adults had tried to hide. They acted out explicity the evil that others had done to them. Society is appalled at what they did but not at what was done to them.
Members of the public, who have nothing to do with the trauma of the killing, are baying for their blood because they feel horrified at what they did. Isn't this the same sense of outrage that led the boys to do what they did?
However, instead of satisfying this blood lust and further fragmenting society, we could unite in our horror at all that abuses and degrades and destroys and work together to overcome the power of evil.
That requires the monumental challenge of working to restore and rehabilitate everyone affected in the Bulger catastrophe.
posted by Bishop Jonathan Blake | 11:15 PM
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