Whatever went wrong, six years after this documentary was first screened, people were asking the same question again in even greater earnest. If the name Jon Venables is not familiar to you, you are not domiciled in the UK, or not of a certain age, or have been living under a rock. In February 1993, he and his chum Robert Thompson kidnapped and murdered a two year old boy in truly shocking circumstances. More shocking even than the murder was the fact that the murderers were both only ten years old.
Sentenced to be detained for a mere eight years, they were both released without spending a day on prison. Because they had been named publicly - something that was unavoidable regardless of any judicial ruling - they were granted lifelong anonymity and given new identities complete with passports and fake family histories. Nothing more has been heard of Thompson, who was considered more of a risk, but Venables had clashes with the law and was finally caught with a cache of child porn on his computer. While for any adult male that would bring a lifelong stigma, for him it brought an immediate recall to prison.
At the time of writing he has recently been given another gaol sentence, and hopefully will never be released because this time he was doing more than merely looking at pictures of utter depravity but was clearly planning an encore, at least to rape a child and possibly to murder one.
This documentary covers a lot of ground, best to ignore the idiot psychobabbler David James Smith, but the mother of James Bulger and in particular the lead detective on the case have plenty to say. It also covers a similar crime involving two victims, who fortunately both survived, and looks at the way the Americans deal with kids who kill, which is far different from ours, although admittedly Eric Smith was thirteen when he murdered a four year old boy.
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