There are a lot of very angry people out there right now and so they rightly should be. The two ten year olds who tortured and murdered two year old James Bulger were not only named but their photographs were published and we all know what they looked like at the time. Today they lead new lives – one is said to be living in Australia – new identities, new birth certificates even. They were given every form of assistance available to help them re-establish themselves in society after serving a pathetically short sentence for what they did to that poor little boy and his family. What surprises me is that nobody has yet discovered their new identities – or taken a recent photograph of them – and put the details on the internet.
We remember well the ‘Baby P’ case and how easy it was to identify Tracey Connolly, Stephen Barker and his brother Jason Barker-Owen, so how is it that these two have escaped a public outing…?
The courts are being asked to lift the restrictions based on Section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act of 1933:
“39. Power to prohibit publication of certain matter in newspapers. — (1) In relation to any proceedings in any court . . . F5 , the court may direct that— (a)no newspaper report of the proceedings shall reveal the name, address or school, or include any particulars calculated to lead to the identification, of any child or young person concerned in the proceedings, either as being the person [F6 by or against] or in respect of whom the proceedings are taken, or as being a witness therein:(b)no picture shall be published in any newspaper as being or including a picture of any child or young person so concerned in the proceedings as aforesaid;except in so far (if at all) as may be permitted by the direction of the court. (2) Any person who publishes any matter in contravention of any such direction shall on summary conviction be liable in respect of each offence to a fine not exceeding [F7 level 5 on the standard scale].
Why have these two latest young monsters not been outed in the same way as Robert Thompson and Jon Venables – and why? no doubt the media will adhere to the reporting restrictions put in place to supposedly ‘protect’ them and not adversely affect their rehabilitation, I wonder how long it will be before their names and pictures appear on the blogosphere. I guess you could ask if I would publish any pictures of them here on this site – to be honest I doubt that I would simply because, despite their wickedness and evil crime, they are still children and I would not flout the law just to expose the grim faces of two boys who are basically products of their upbringing. As far as I stand legally,well, that Section 39 clearly prohibits the publication of the information in the newspapers, there is no amendment included to cover personal blogs on the internet. Now if I had a picture of their atrocious parents though that might be a different matter…
But yes, I do think they should at least be named. You do the crime…
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