Below we post a selection of letters on the Jamie Bulger case.
Dear Barbara Slaughter,
Your article today was another example of the principled and courageous position that the British SEP has exhibited since this extremely difficult and sad case first came to public attention. Your description of the progress these two boys have made academically and developmentally was heartening. It is impossible, of course, to place one’s self into the shoes of Jamie Bulger’s mother, but I suspect that if she had received the same professional and humane care (from the outset) that Jon Thompson and Robert Venables received she would be feeling much different about her tragic loss. Those “victims of crime groups” like the “Justice for Jamie Campaigners” are a global phenomena, and they do a great deal of harm to the people they profess to care about. They parade themselves in front of the media proclaiming their great moral principles. But as the WSWS demonstrates again and again, “In a society based upon exploitation the highest moral is that of social revolution.”
Yours sincerely
AC
28 June 2001
All I can say to those people who feel both Thompson and Venables deserve to live a life outside of prison is that they would feel very different if it were their own child who was so horrendously tortured and murdered.
Thompson and Venables may have been 10 years old when they murdered James Bulger, but they knew exactly what they were doing. A 10-year-old knows right from wrong and they definitely know when they are hurting someone. They took away a little two-year-old’s life. They deserve to be in prison for life.
Regards,
PB
Australia
28 June 2001
Dear Editor,
I would like to know if some of your readers feel the same empathy towards the young boys who killed J. Bulger. I have been living in England for quite some time and cannot believe the hysteria some people show here including the mother of the victim. There have been some similar cases in Scandinavia and the boys are still living within their community, which learned to forgive. The father of Jamie called for calm. I can only think that his ex-partner would only be happy if both boys were executed US-style. They were kids!
I cannot bear looking at their police mug shots and the look of despair in their children’s eyes. These kids had a miserable life leading to the murder and were encouraged to bully smaller children. The real culprit here is the rotten education they received from their family and the failure of us all by pretending that there are more than two classes in this capitalist world, therefore denying the poorer ones a fair go at life.
Sincerely yours,
SD
28 June 2001
I have just read the two letters on your web page, and I agree with the letter from BM in Australia. Children between the ages of 8 and 14 are cruel and evil to each other. I have a 12-year-old brother and I can see how cruel children can be. They think nothing of acting in this way to others. I do believe that the two boys never realised the seriousness of their crime. I think they would never do such a horrific crime again.
I cannot believe that after all this time Denise is still campaigning against the decision to release them. What sort of life is she giving her children now?? By being in the media every day, are those children going to grow up wondering does she love James more than them??
Those boys will be serving a life sentence for what they did—they have to live with what they did, constantly looking over their shoulders. Even though they have new identities, they will never lead a normal life again. James was robbed of his childhood and his life. So were those boys. The most precious moments in anyone’s life is childhood and they too never had a proper one.
NH
United Kingdom
25 June 2001
Justice has been done, they have done their time and they’re out now. They were only 10 years old when they did it. At that age I did some awful things, albeit none as bad, and I can understand how two little boys could tease/tempt each other into doing something that they wouldn’t have done otherwise. I don’t believe they understood what they were doing either. Sure they knew they were inflicting pain with the possibility of death, but if they really knew what that meant—would they have done it knowing of the consequences to themselves alone, let alone to the Bulger Family for whom my heart goes out to?
Those two boys/men will never get away with what they have done, as they will always have their conscience to answer to.
I say leave these kids alone, they’ve been and will go through enough.
RD
23 June 2001