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Tina Malone Summonsed Over Bulger Killer Venables Id Case
Actress Tina Malone is facing contempt of court proceedings over a social media post allegedly showing images of James Bulger killer Jon Venables. Ms Malone revealed she had received a High Court summons in a series of Facebook posts on Thursday.
There is a global ban on publishing anything revealing the identities of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. The Attorney General's Office (AGO) confirmed it had summonsed the actress to appear at the High Court.
Venables and Thompson were convicted of murdering two-year-old James in 1993. They have been living under new identities since they were released in 2001.
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Should Venables’ (who has since been convicted and imprisoned for possessing indecent images of children) identity continue to be protected?
There is a global ban on publishing anything revealing the identities of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. The Attorney General's Office (AGO) confirmed it had summonsed the actress to appear at the High Court.
Venables and Thompson were convicted of murdering two-year-old James in 1993. They have been living under new identities since they were released in 2001.
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Should Venables’ (who has since been convicted and imprisoned for possessing indecent images of children) identity continue to be protected?
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“Despite the shameful decision to try them in an adult court,..”
It wasn’t a shameful decision. It was no decision at all because the law (Magistrates Court Act 1980, S24) says that defendants aged under 18 who are charged with murder or manslaughter (as well as most firearms offences) MUST be tried in the Crown Court (of which there is no “Youth” version). If you want to attach “shameful” to what followed you should attach it to the legislation because there was no choice. On a more practical note you surely do not seriously suggest that the Youth Court (the only other alternative to the Crown Court for young people) should deal with a murder trial. Or do you? If you do, have you any idea how Youth Courts are organised?
It wasn’t a shameful decision. It was no decision at all because the law (Magistrates Court Act 1980, S24) says that defendants aged under 18 who are charged with murder or manslaughter (as well as most firearms offences) MUST be tried in the Crown Court (of which there is no “Youth” version). If you want to attach “shameful” to what followed you should attach it to the legislation because there was no choice. On a more practical note you surely do not seriously suggest that the Youth Court (the only other alternative to the Crown Court for young people) should deal with a murder trial. Or do you? If you do, have you any idea how Youth Courts are organised?
New Judge: The defence of doli incapax was not abolished until 1998, so was still available during this trial. I accept that my wording was imprecise and that I should have said "try them as adults" rather than "in an adult court". My position remains the same, however. They were ten years old but tried for an offence they could not have fully understood.
Mary Bell was tried at eleven but the jury refused to convict her of murder. She was found guilty of manslaughter and locked away for many years with her future identity protected. So far as we are aware, she has not reoffended but was successfully rehabilitated. She had killed more than once, unlike Thompson and Venables.
The Children and Young Persons Act, 1969, allowed the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 14 but was never implemented. The UK is out of step with the rest of Western Europe, where the age varies from 13 to 18 (so much for our laws being dictated from Brussels). Far from ignoring antisocial or offending behaviour, other countries have developed ways of dealing with it that try to avoid locking children into a cycle of reoffending.
If a significant intention of the law is to keep the public safe, Mary Bell seems a better model than than Jon Venables. The Children's Commissioner has asked for a change in the law to reduce the number of primary school-aged children arrested. As has been said by better advocates than me, a child of six knows the difference between right and wrong but has no real grasp of the implications and ramifications of making the wrong choice.
Mary Bell was tried at eleven but the jury refused to convict her of murder. She was found guilty of manslaughter and locked away for many years with her future identity protected. So far as we are aware, she has not reoffended but was successfully rehabilitated. She had killed more than once, unlike Thompson and Venables.
The Children and Young Persons Act, 1969, allowed the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 14 but was never implemented. The UK is out of step with the rest of Western Europe, where the age varies from 13 to 18 (so much for our laws being dictated from Brussels). Far from ignoring antisocial or offending behaviour, other countries have developed ways of dealing with it that try to avoid locking children into a cycle of reoffending.
If a significant intention of the law is to keep the public safe, Mary Bell seems a better model than than Jon Venables. The Children's Commissioner has asked for a change in the law to reduce the number of primary school-aged children arrested. As has been said by better advocates than me, a child of six knows the difference between right and wrong but has no real grasp of the implications and ramifications of making the wrong choice.
//I accept that my wording was imprecise and that I should have said "try them as adults" rather than "in an adult court".//
Understood, JF. Thanks for the clarification.
But they were not tried as adults (and certainly not sentenced as such). The argument of “doli incapax” was not to establish whether they would be tried as children or adults but to determine whether they should be tried at all. The principle presumes that children cannot be held responsible for their actions but, when it was available for older children, was only absolute for those under ten. Had the argument been successful they would have been treated as if they were under ten – i.e. not responsible for their actions – and so no prosecution would have taken place.
In my view it is right that the argument is no longer available for older children. There are plenty of disposals available to courts when they encounter children who are genuinely not responsible for their actions. However, turning to the specifics, I find it incredible that anybody could suggest that two somewhat streetwise boys of ten could abduct a two year old toddler and inflict upon him the sort of injuries and degradation without realising what they were doing was wrong and that there would be serious consequences.
The age of criminal responsibility is a strange argument which sits incongruously with the argument over the voting age. If the 1969 amendment were to be enacted it would see a situation where children of up to 14 could commit the sort of atrocity that Thompson and Venables did and escape sanction. It would be assumed that they did not know that to batter a toddler with bricks and an iron bar and insert batteries up his anus was wrong. However, two years later (if the voting age is lowered as suggested in some quarters) those same children would be capable of meaningfully casting a vote.
Understood, JF. Thanks for the clarification.
But they were not tried as adults (and certainly not sentenced as such). The argument of “doli incapax” was not to establish whether they would be tried as children or adults but to determine whether they should be tried at all. The principle presumes that children cannot be held responsible for their actions but, when it was available for older children, was only absolute for those under ten. Had the argument been successful they would have been treated as if they were under ten – i.e. not responsible for their actions – and so no prosecution would have taken place.
In my view it is right that the argument is no longer available for older children. There are plenty of disposals available to courts when they encounter children who are genuinely not responsible for their actions. However, turning to the specifics, I find it incredible that anybody could suggest that two somewhat streetwise boys of ten could abduct a two year old toddler and inflict upon him the sort of injuries and degradation without realising what they were doing was wrong and that there would be serious consequences.
The age of criminal responsibility is a strange argument which sits incongruously with the argument over the voting age. If the 1969 amendment were to be enacted it would see a situation where children of up to 14 could commit the sort of atrocity that Thompson and Venables did and escape sanction. It would be assumed that they did not know that to batter a toddler with bricks and an iron bar and insert batteries up his anus was wrong. However, two years later (if the voting age is lowered as suggested in some quarters) those same children would be capable of meaningfully casting a vote.
And thank you for your generosity but I hold my hands up. It was a correction, not a clarification.
Doli incapax was not an outright defence but an acceptance that children do not have the same ability to understand the full implications of their actions. Aged between ten and fourteen, as Thompson and Venables were, the law as I understood it required the prosecution to demonstrate that the accused had an adult level of comprehension before trying them as adults. It has the same effect as assessing the ability of someone with a learning disability to understand consequences. I have no wish to digress here, but we seem quite capable of becoming vocal over the execution in the US of killers with a mental age in single figures, the killing of Palestinian children for throwing stones at tanks and the mistreatment of minors worldwide in textile factories or for wanting access to education.
The crime was shocking, but justice has to be blind. To change the law on criminal responsibility in the face of public outcry over one specific incident is a knee-jerk reaction and, as we know, laws made in haste are usually bad laws. You say that there are other disposals available to the courts when children are genuinely not responsible for their actions, but in this case the question was never asked. Instead the press were able to spread lies and misinformation.
Your description of details of the incident is telling. You highlight aspects that the public would not expect from children so young. There is a mismatch between how we want to think of children and about what those children do. It would never have occurred to me to do what Thompson and Venables did. They did things other children would not do. Society gains more by working with such outliers to find out how and why their thinking becomes so disordered than it does by locking them in close proximity to other offenders. Punish, yes, but rehabilitation is for the greater good, and could give insight to reduce future risk
I have no argument with your point about changing voting age. Despite all the discrepancies in our 'legal age to ...' legislation, I am not asking for children to be given ballot papers. It is no secret that I believe recent history has highlighted the shortcomings of allowing many adults the opportunity, but that is a different debate.
The question was about whether Thompson and Venables should have continuing anonymity, and I believe they should. I have grave reservations about automatic trial as adults for children of ten when they are too young to get a 'paper round for another three years. In a world where paediatricians have been threatened by civic-minded citizens who did not realise that paedophilia is not the same thing, where people with learning disabilities have spent decades locked up for crimes they were never physically capable of committing, who then die tragically quickly as they are unable to readapt to life outside the secure estate, and where public speculation is fuelled by the media in the cases of so many wrongfully accused, to the extent that their lives are irrevocably damaged, I stand by my belief. I don't demand anybody agrees with me, but I want an alternative view to be available.
Thank you again for your courtesy. I confess that I expected a harsher response, although not necessarily from you.
Doli incapax was not an outright defence but an acceptance that children do not have the same ability to understand the full implications of their actions. Aged between ten and fourteen, as Thompson and Venables were, the law as I understood it required the prosecution to demonstrate that the accused had an adult level of comprehension before trying them as adults. It has the same effect as assessing the ability of someone with a learning disability to understand consequences. I have no wish to digress here, but we seem quite capable of becoming vocal over the execution in the US of killers with a mental age in single figures, the killing of Palestinian children for throwing stones at tanks and the mistreatment of minors worldwide in textile factories or for wanting access to education.
The crime was shocking, but justice has to be blind. To change the law on criminal responsibility in the face of public outcry over one specific incident is a knee-jerk reaction and, as we know, laws made in haste are usually bad laws. You say that there are other disposals available to the courts when children are genuinely not responsible for their actions, but in this case the question was never asked. Instead the press were able to spread lies and misinformation.
Your description of details of the incident is telling. You highlight aspects that the public would not expect from children so young. There is a mismatch between how we want to think of children and about what those children do. It would never have occurred to me to do what Thompson and Venables did. They did things other children would not do. Society gains more by working with such outliers to find out how and why their thinking becomes so disordered than it does by locking them in close proximity to other offenders. Punish, yes, but rehabilitation is for the greater good, and could give insight to reduce future risk
I have no argument with your point about changing voting age. Despite all the discrepancies in our 'legal age to ...' legislation, I am not asking for children to be given ballot papers. It is no secret that I believe recent history has highlighted the shortcomings of allowing many adults the opportunity, but that is a different debate.
The question was about whether Thompson and Venables should have continuing anonymity, and I believe they should. I have grave reservations about automatic trial as adults for children of ten when they are too young to get a 'paper round for another three years. In a world where paediatricians have been threatened by civic-minded citizens who did not realise that paedophilia is not the same thing, where people with learning disabilities have spent decades locked up for crimes they were never physically capable of committing, who then die tragically quickly as they are unable to readapt to life outside the secure estate, and where public speculation is fuelled by the media in the cases of so many wrongfully accused, to the extent that their lives are irrevocably damaged, I stand by my belief. I don't demand anybody agrees with me, but I want an alternative view to be available.
Thank you again for your courtesy. I confess that I expected a harsher response, although not necessarily from you.
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