I can remember years ago, my Nan referring to Mary Bell and how discgusted she was by her actions and that she had anonymity. At the time I didn't take much notice and I didn't ask who she was.
I can clearly remember James Bulgar going missing because I had a niece about the same age and my dad 'blaming' the mother for James wandering off and my mother arguing with him saying "You don't understand what it's like when you've two (myself and my sister) small children, trying to queue, order your stuff, keep your eyes on the kids, pay and pack at the same time, you take you're eye of them for a second and they're off.....".
I had not given much though to the 'uproar' surrounding the issue that it was 2 children who murdered another child, only that it was abhorrant and I couldn't fatom out how they didn't think it wasn't 'wrong'. I recently watched some programmes about both Mary bell and Jon Venebles and Robert Thompson and then the reoffending by Jon Venables in which they mentioned that even though in the Mary Bell case people were disgusted by it, it didn't make 'massive' front page news in the tabloids and there wasn't really an outcry of public anger as there was in the James Bulgar case.
I just wonder what has changed in the years between the crimes?
