A Curious Girl: Once a murderer...

Hmm, deep thoughts.

Although, on the bright side, I've finally passed the dollar mark on Epinions so I only have $98.84 left to earn before I can redeem it! Yay! :-) (Sorry, I love irony :-) )

Have you heard about the James Bulger case? There's a site I just found on Justice for James Bulger. Just to sum up, James, a two year old boy, was abducted from a shopping centre by two ten year olds, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who led him away, subjected him to horrific torture and finally battered him to death, and left him on a railway line.

It was indeed utterly disgusting. A terrible crime. The murderers served eight years - seven and a half, I think, to prevent them from having to enter a young offenders institution and detract their progress from disturbed individuals to apparently remorseful boys (obviously we can't know for sure, as they will be given new identities and they can't appear on TV to say how sorry they are). They were meant to serve fifteen, but the sentence was reduced by the Court of Human Rights.

So what do I think? James' mother is of course, in arms. There's a website dedicated to their reconviction. It's understandable. No wonder she's so bitter towards them. But personally - speaking as someone with no emotional attachment to James - I can't help but agree with Polly Toynbee (who wrote stuff I certainly did not believe about the conjoined twins case) who said that we've become more disgusted by this murder of a child by children than by the murder of a child by an adult, and when you think about it, the thought is both ridiculous and understandable. Ridiculous because children are much more easily influenced, and just as prone to do the greatest good and the worst evil as anyone else. Feelings are much more raw with a child - under the right influences they are more likely to commit murder - they don't have as much moral development as an adult, either. These were disturbed children - at ten years old, most children are more interested in playing games and watching cartoons than killing people, especially not in such a vicious and pre-meditated fashion. It is understandable, therefore, that people would rather hate a disturbed child murderer than a adult who would be less affected and subject to peer pressure. Because children are sweet little things - they can do no wrong, they're full of innocence. When someone shatters this belief it's more shocking than the cruelty of one already hardened by the world. Are we merely reacting strongly against the abuse of our own ideas of how the world works?

This being true or not, should we listen to James's mother and lock them up forever? Believe that a murderer is always a murderer and never trust them again?

I would be a hypocrite if I could answer yes. Everyone I heard speak on this case - apart from Abi and Mrs. T - seems to think that forgiveness in this case is a weakness. But they don't seem to understand that forgiveness isn't saying, 'OK, everything you did was all right, come back to society.' It was a terrible crime, and will always be a terrible crime. It was inexcusable, but I don't want them to be excused. If they are forgiven, we say, 'What you did was terrible, is terrible, will always be terrible. But now we'll no longer hold it against you. It's second chance time.' As a forgiven individual, I cannot grudge anyone - I can't say what I'd be doing if I was James's mother. Maybe the same as she is doing. But I don't think it would be right of me, and although I understand why she's doing it, I don't believe it's right of her, either. Bitterness will only keep both the murderers and herself in chains. Bitterness is an obsessive hate that eats your life away - in the end, the murderers will probably be happier than she will. I can't judge the killers, I can't judge Denise Fergus, but I can say that my Saviour died to save them as well.

As Mrs. T pointed out (in the link above), if Jesus Christ could be abandoned, betrayed, whipped, beaten, humiliated, pierced by thorn and nail, hung up to die a painful and suffocating death of agony, and still say, 'Father, forgive them', for us - the public, I'm speaking about now - to hold a grudge against two boys whose crime was not against us seems petty by comparison.

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