Learn from the mistakes of others

Do you remember February 1993 when a young 3 yr. old was taken from Liverpool, United Kingdom, by two 10-year-old boys?
Jamie Bulger walked away from his mother for only a second and Jon Venables took his hand and led him out of the mall with his friend Robert Thompson. They took Jamie on a walk for over 2 and a half miles, along the way stopping every now and again to torture the poor little boy who was crying constantly for his mummy. Finally they stopped at a railway track where they brutally kicked him, threw stones at him, rubbed paint in his eyes and pushed batteries up his anus. It was actually worse than this…….

What these two boys did was so horrendous that Jamie's mother was forbidden to identify his body. They then left his beaten small body on the tracks so a train could run him over to hide the mess they created.

These two boys, even being boys, understood what they did was wrong, hence trying to make it look like an accident.

This week Lady Justice Butler-Sloss has awarded the two boys anonymity for the rest of their lives when they leave custody with new identities. They will also leave early this year only serving just over half of their sentence. They are being relocated to Australia to live out the rest of their lives. They disgustingly and violently took Jamie's life away - in return they each get a new life. >
Please ... if you feel, as we do, that this is a grave miscarriage of justice .. copy entire email .. then add your name at the end, and send it to everyone you can!

If you are the 500th person to sign, please forward this e-mail to: <address@server>
and attention it to

Lady Justice Butler-Sloss. Then start the list over again and send to your friends and family. The Love-Bug virus took less that 72 hours to reach the world. I hope this one does as well. We need to protect our family and friends from creatures like Robert and Jon. One day they maybe living next door to you and your small children, without your knowledge.

> Hi Guys, I don't normally forward emails, but after you read this one, I'm
> sure you will add your name and send it on to everyone on your list.

well now, where do i begin.

the decision has already been made. if there were grounds to review or reconsider it, the family would have done that indeed, that may be why it is a senior judge in a senior court who has made this decision ...)

how do we know this 'petition' is genuine?

petions like this are problematic for many reasons, not the least of which - they don't do anything.

the person being petitioned is a *judge* - and you don't petition judges. or beaurocrats. it might work if it were a politician, and the petition came from their electorate - or their country. but judges are *not allowed* to be influenced by this kind of campaign. particularly since all of the names on this particular copy are from australia.

equally, you have just sent your name and address off into the ether. it will now go wherever it will. you have no control over that. good luck.

the language of the petition is overly emotive. someone needs to go back to counselling.

the boys who killed the toddler were 10 in 1993, they are now 22. ten years or more in detention is a long time. even for murder. it is easy to say 'lock-em up for ever, they're monsters' - it is neither meaningful, nor productive.

whoever this anonymous person is, they have made no mention of what has happened to the boys, now men, since they were arrested and convicted. it is a one-sided statement that assumes that the two men still have the same motivations as they did as 10 year olds.

they also make the mistake of assuming that children think like adults, and that people's thinking never changes. both of these assumptions are wrong. children do not think like adults. they don't follow the same modes of thinking, and they very often don't think about consequences until after they have already happened. knowing what you have done is wrong is different to knowing what you are about to do is wrong. it is quite normal for children to try to hide what they've done once it occurs to them that they might get into trouble if they get caught.

it is also worth considering that these two men can do more to repay society by being productive in the community than sitting in tax-payer funded prisons.

mind you, they're being sent about as far away from their own family as one could imagine. [i'd be more upset about the idea that british felons are still being sent to australia, more than a hundred years after transportation was abolished as a policy and a penal option. but that may just be my sense of humour/irony.]

none of this overlooks the severity fo their criminal conduct. but it has been 12 years. at some point there should be some resolution.

and we still have no idea who wrote this 'petition'. it is not in the correct form to begin with. and it is debatable wither a list of typed names and addresses would be sufficient proof of anything. anyone could have got them out of telephone directories.