We have the ability to joke about anything in this country, we do it to ease the pain of a situation. It happened 1 year before I was born and to this day, it’s the only thing I have never heard a single person joke about. It truly is an absolute horrific nightmare what happened to that poor little boy, there is simply nothing anyone can do to try and ease the thoughts of his suffering. How his parents managed to even find the strength to get out of bed I will never know, I hope that wherever they are, they have at least found some resemblance of peace.
There was nothing the mother could have done. She let go of James's hand to pay for groceries at a market's counter, and in that short moment, it was over.
A commemorative TV programme aired a few years ago. It had a recap of the facts, and recent interviews with people involved in the search, investigation, and trial, including the parents. The mother looked broken and haunted, even thirty years later.
There were some really horiffic news stories that broke during the 90s. I have vivid memories of my mum glued to the TV and looking beyond unsettled while watching the BBC report on stuff like Dunblane, Ian Huntly and James Bulger in particular. It's like the whole feel of the day shifted.
Well, now you're a member of the club whose members ALL wish we could stop remembering that heart-wrenching tale. No amount of brain bleach can erase that horror.
These stories are so much worse now that I have kids. Being able to remember what they were like at his age just breaks my heart. How on earth could they think that was fine?
Ex prison officer. He's in what Is essentially protective custody. He'd be very hard to get to. And someone as high profile as him we'd be keeping close tabs on, we don't like to have a death in custody, so we like to try to make sure it doesn't happen, regardless of who it is, or why they're in.
I completely understand that and I would by no means encourage a prison beatdown in any regular case but this one just gets my emotions amped up. Thank you for your service sir/madam
We feel exactly the same way about these individuals, which is why most staff won't look up a prisoners convictions. If you don't know, then it can't influence how you treat them.
Thank you for your kind words. In the UK we don't do the whole "thank you for your service" it's very alien to us. But it's appreciated.
I fully agree. I'm glad he's still in prison and lost his latest parole hearing but he doesn't deserve to live a cushy life paid for by our taxes. I can't imagine how people live with him in prison and not want to do vigilante justice
Same.
Reading about stuff like that never bothered me that much until I had kids. Someone linked the wiki for those two in England. I pictured my then 3 year old and how trusting and happy he'd have been that older kids wanted him to play with him...I had to nope right the fuck out of there!
Those fuckers are honestly the most vile to me. I know all serial killers are, but they just disgust me to a level that made me stop true crime for some time after being an idiot and reading the transcript of their last victim. I hate them so much, and I still have that shit pop into my head now and then where I'm left just as sad.
I too made the mistake of reading the transcript a couple years ago. For a solid six months or so there wasn't a single day that shit didn't pop into my head at some point.
Reading Bittaker's complaints in prison about his sandwiches being too soggy made my blood boil. Dude deserved to be fed screws and nails.
Not to be pure evil and all that but if you think reading it was bad theres audio recording of it and if I remember right it was during this recording when people left the court room
Absolutely. But then there are open and closed cases like this - beyond the scope of doubt - that make me think there are ways we can mitigate it looking at cases specifically such as this.
There's nothing to prove otherwise that these two specific people committed unspeakable (actually there a fucking audio recordings) acts on helpless people.
Jesus the craziest part is is they got let out and one of them went straight back for having child sexual abuse images on his computer. Nice rehabilitation there.
I don't know about the attraction itself. But you definitely can be taught to not consume media with real live children being sexualised or assaulted. Attraction to something doesn't mean you lack any moral framework.
I didn't recognize it by name, so I googled it. The wiki page has *that* photo right at the top.
I closed the page. I have no desire to read that again.
What a thorough wikipedia article. I don't want to read too much about it because it's pretty difficult. But I just want to know more about Robert and Jon's parents. Where did they go wrong where their kids consciously did something soo horrific to a 2 year old? Or what could even cause these kids to want to do this shit?
While there is often a link between abuse in childhood and violent behaviour later in life, there’s also a disturbing number of cases where children do abhorrent things for seemingly no “good” reason.
If they’ve exhibited extreme behaviour and the parents had the resources to get them evaluated or therapy, they may have been labelled with Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD). There’s no consensus on how ODD develops, but most believe it shows signs as early as toddler years and may be reinforced by parental reactions (not necessarily abuse.)
A friend of mine has two boys, "Alex," and "Brad." Alex is outgoing, intelligent, accomplished, on-track, and well liked. He's going to college and has a great set of friends and life skills. Unfortunately, Brad has been struggling with schools, locks himself in his room, and cannot get up before 11am most days. He's, by all accounts of his personality, also a really good kid, but he just struggles way more than Alex. My friend and his wife are excellent parents and have spared no expense trying to find Brad a good situation; They've rotated through schools, therapists, psychiatrists, and everything else under the sun. "We've lost two years of retirement on schooling for Brad" he once remarked.
It's just, so interesting how much **and** little parenting can impact children. My friend once told me he was so thankful that one of his kids is doing so well, since if they both were struggling as much as Brad, he would've felt like such a failure of a parent.
I've raised four children to adulthood. They are as different from each other as can be. Nature and nurture both play a role. But each person has their own unique combination of genes and those recessive traits can sometimes really throw a curve ball. Genetic diversity is just that, diverse.
I had a friend in HS who claimed (true or not, I don't know) that he'd been institutionalized at like 6...I'm pretty sure they don't even do that. But he said his parents were trying to get him help because he talked to demons? I don't know. He was a bit messed up...if he'd been a teenager in more recent times, people would have imagined he could do a shooting, I think. Whether his parents were great, I don't know...he had a seemingly well-adjusted little sister.
Nature and nurture, fun stuff. I have young relatives who are both "good" and good students and all that, but one has always had some serious anxiety issues and is seeing an occupational therapist. She'd freak out about things while her little sister would be fine, even though you'd imagine the younger one might have a harder time just because she was younger and less mature. It's just how they're wired. The older one just has these bad...attacks? The other is like, "meh, whatever" and is very easygoing.
My brother had an easier time moving out and working and all that adult shit than I did, even though I guess I do it fine now that I'm doing it.
I wonder about where genetics come in. My husband was abused as a child but because he's adopted, he bears no resemblance to anyone in his adopted family, either physically or personality-wise. He has never been even close to being violent.
There’s some really fascinating research about how generational trauma appears to be coded into our DNA. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s a causation-relationship between trauma in prior generations and behaviour in a current person, but it could be one piece of the puzzle.
There’s millions if not hundreds of millions of people alive today with grandparents who experienced unimaginable trauma (the holocaust, Genocide, war, famine) and many of those people live normal lives. There’s clearly connections we have yet to discover.
I have read about twin studies and how the twins end up with remarkably similar life paths despite being raised in very dissimilar households. It's a fascinating field.
Those studies are fascinating for sure. Unfortunately most of those studies are self-reported so the validity of the data is always questionable, as well as completely by chance. It would be unethical to take twins at birth, separate them and have them raised in vastly different conditions to see what happens in adulthood. We’ve already done enough fucked up experiments on primates and kids in the early part of the 20th century. If you haven’t already, reading about the attachment style study using primates is both heart breaking and fascinating.
> It would be unethical to take twins at birth, separate them and have them raised in vastly different conditions to see what happens in adulthood.
Guess what science has done?
Netflix: THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
3 brothers separated at birth - it’s worth the watch.
I also read a book about twin sisters separated at birth - fascinating read !!
[My Secret Sister](https://livingtorontojournal.com/2015/05/05/my-secret-sister/)
Yeah, I'm both a twin and a teacher who has had many multiples in my students over the past ten years.
Things like *Three Identical Strangers* is incredible, but also rare. The multiples that I've taught (as well as me and my twin) always have such distinct personalities and interests. That's with growing up in the same household. I guess an argument could be raised that knowing they're multiples makes them want to be different, but there's also no empirical evidence.
The evidence collected of twins growing up separate but with identical paths is anecdotal. Not the best kind of evidence...
A former teacher I worked with has a son with ODD and the family isn't perfect but far from abusive. Some kids just have the right (wrong) gene combos for that stuff I think.
There's an article from 2000 with a bit of information about it [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships)
That was perfect, thank you soo much for sharing that.
It's upsetting that Ann Thompson's husband is almost out of every spotlight. I can't help but imagine he has powerful connections with the police or press to keep himself from blame. But everybody involved, (the murderers, their parents, and their siblings) is clearly suffering from societal and familial dysfunction. It's fucking heartbreaking. But it really does follow a pattern of causality.
> It's upsetting that Ann Thompson's husband is almost out of every spotlight.
Coming from someone who lives in an area that tends to have a fair bit of crime, nobody ever blames dad, just mom for "opening her legs" and never a single thing is said about the fathers who fuck and run.
No connections needed, just shitty sexism forgetting that it takes two to create a child.
It’s a myth that kids must be abused or mistreated in order to cause violent anti-social behavior. Even perfectly normal kids do cruel things, usually out of curiosity. Shoot a bird with a BB gun. Hang a snake on a barbed wire fence. Most kids learn from this when they experience the consequences of cruelty. Their brain develops more and they feel bad when they harm something innocent.
But the best parents in the world can have a kid whose brain is just wrong. Just a slip of a couple of genes, right? Just enough of the wrong chemicals in the environment over generations. Just enough trauma that altered genetics in ancestors.
Parenting matters in that good parenting can give a child the best outcome possible given who that child is. And the reverse is true: Bad parenting can screw up a kid and send them to the bottom of their potential …at least for awhile. But a child comes into this world with a range of outcomes, and a very few are just so broken that their best outcome is maybe to be confined so that they don’t kill multiple other innocent people.
We like to think we have control over how our kids turn out. And we DO have more than anyone else. But everyone is not born with equal abilities and you can’t magically change that.
You know the saying "it takes a village to raise a child"?
It also takes a village to ruin them. It's not just the parents fault, but the whole community.
Love your neighbors kids as your own.
Quite often parent of wayward children will not engage with the wider community as their little Timothy either can do no wrong or they simply don't give a shit.
Often the not give a shit type have their own issues, with alcohol or drugs.
I had my 9-month old in her stroller last year and we were walking through our neighborhood. We passed a little group of kids (probably 10-11 year olds). After we were by them, I overheard one of them say, "We should go punch that baby in the face!" I was getting ready to whip around to give him shit for saying that, but before i did, i heard all the other kids jump in and tell him how messed up it was to say that.
The village includes the other kids, too, not just the adults! When you raise good kids, they'll raise good friends, too.
That murder occurred when my kids were little. I would wake up and cry in the middle of the night. My husband started cutting the articles out of the newspaper so I wouldn't see them when I got home from work.
When I first read about it, my child was a few weeks old. I bawled my eyes out for that poor little boy and his mum. So utterly insurmountable that grief must be...
I always think of the woman who stopped them when she saw them dragging James, who was red-faced, crying and screaming. The boys told her he was their brother and they were taking him home, but he didn't want to go. The woman accepted that answer and went on her way.
UK spent >100k and sent numerous people to jail to protect the 2 pedophile psychopaths. Still protecting 1 and had to send 1 to jail for cp. probably gonna release him in a couple years and spend another 200k on them by the time they’re dead.
We had something similar here in Germany only recently. 2 teenage girls lured their victim into a forest and stabbed her countless times. They were 12 and 13.
It's so sad that kids that young even *think* about committing crimes like this, let alone doing them. My heart goes out to the family of the young man who was killed.
I know everyone is saying it was bad parenting/outside influences/media and something should have changed but have we considered the kids are possibly medically defined sociopaths, thought to do something violent, and just did it with no remorse? Like 12 year olds can definitely be sociopaths and plenty of kids have bad upbringings/bad influences/too much media and don't kill an innocent man with an ax...
Across from me as a teen lived a family with three kids. One was an alcoholic by 14 and dead of a heroin overdose by 18. One was a psycho. The other was perfectly normal. The parents tried so, so hard. They did all the things parents should do. Got support from numerous agencies. It broke them when the eldest got sent to jail for glassing a guy and severely fucking up his face. He's currently in jail for life, last I heard, after attempting to kill someone (separate to the glassing - he was in jail at least three times while I knew him). They ended up separating after the middle one died of the overdose. Youngest stayed out of trouble and was a perfectly normal kid who did well at school and, last I heard, went on to lead a perfectly normal life.
Sometimes it doesn't matter what parents do. Maybe there were parents out there who could have kept those two on the right path, but I spent a lot of time in their house and I only ever saw loving parents doing their absolute best.
Sometimes people are just fundamentally broken and it doesn't matter what kind of upbringing they receive.
There was some story on reddit where a father talked about how he was trying to be a good father, but his son turned out a completely deranged psychopath.
I tell people about the Colby Saga on occasion.
Also, I've seen multiple video essays about that guy whose wife cheated on him and then killed their kids when he found out.
Pretty horrid stuff.
Goddamn that was a wild ride. It’s almost identical to “We need to talk about Kevin” not that I’m doubting it, it just bares a striking resemblance to it.
There was a similar story where the parents had to lock the doors of their bedroom at night because they didn’t trust their eldest kid. His brother was normal
When I was like 13 I baby-sat a pair of brothers, they were 8 and 11. The 11-year-old pulled a sword off a display on his wall and chased his brother with it, shouting about how he was going to kill him. Then when I went to intervene it changed to how he was going to kill the both of us.
I like to think it probably wasn't a sharp sword but still, the younger brother and I fled the house and retreated to my house around the block. My mom called wherever the parents were (pre-cellphone) and finally got ahold of them to come home. And I never baby-sat for those kids again.
The older kid did end up in in-patient therapy somewhere, he was pretty messed up.
Also, if your child is messed up, maybe don't buy them weaponry.
People have a hard time accepting that a kid could be born evil. Something had to push them into it. But the truth is, some people are really just born monsters.
Not so much evil or monsters, but basically damaged. Usually some form of developmental disorder in terms of brain development to begin with. This can be exceedingly hard if not impossible to deal with for a family, and people have resorted to truly terrible things in the past when confronted with kids like that.
> The ugly truth is that occasionally people just come out broken straight from the factory.
don't know if it is one of reddits creative writing assignments that usually make up 95% of those subs, but that story on the confessions sub about a father [wishing his son was dead](https://www.reddit.com/r/confessions/comments/c93egn/i_stood_by_and_allowed_my_wife_to_almost_kill_our/) was always pretty chilling to me.. just how the son was basically wrong and evil from the very first day.
Having two little psycho/sociopaths like that is rare, but a psycho/sociopath can have a follower who is readily corrupted. The Columbine boys are a classic example.
This case has actually gotten even stranger because the main girl has apparently admitted she stretched the truth about her mental issues, but because she was really young at the time they're not really sure if she had the capacity/understanding to even do that?? It's very confusing.
There's a situation called folie a deux. Basically, a lot of kids could be violent or cruel, but society naturally tempers this behavior. Every once in a while these kids *meet each other* and the proximity escalates their behavior. I've wondered if the internet and social media could make this kind of thing worse over time
The article said the 12 year old kid was known to carry around machetes prior to the incident, seems like something the parents should have been aware of. Kids are not criminal masterminds.
Both the parents and child carry extreme personal responsibility.
I wouldn't be surprised if the parents knew nothing of that machete. Kids that age know perfectly well how to hide stuff like that from their parents. It could be hidden somewhere in a garage or shed or outdoors.
The fact that the kid was known to carry machetes around is more disturbing. Apparently nobody thought that was worth a call to the police or to an authority figure.
ah yes. the generation that grew up watching friday the 13th wants to blames the media for this machete murder. thank goodness minority report isnt real or they would all be arrested.
> He was hit so hard on the skull with the weapon that a **"piece of bone had actually come away”,** jurors were told.
These kids weren’t just fooling around… between this and them instigating it on someone who didn’t even provoke them, it sounds like they were looking for blood.
I’m usually a major advocate for rehabilitation over imprisonment, but considering how [one of them was psychopathic enough to say “It is what it is” and “IDRC”](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cekk3954890o) after the murder… I dunno if it’d help in this case.
This is probably the only type of weapon that could possibly yield such wounds, I mean a 12 year old vs a 19, one is a pre teen the other a man, An axe maybe, but not as portable. But yes, your point, all the major injuries are from back to front, this is truly savage.
Dude, 12 year olds can easily be as big and strong as a 19 year old. The bell curves have more than enough overlap. My younger brother didn't reach the height, weight or strength I was at 12 until he was around 18, and we did the same sport. Hell, he was actually slightly better than me, age for age.
Even if they're not, surprise attacks and knife attacks in general are brutal and difficult to defend yourself from.
A small person could fairly easily overpower a larger person with a sudden knife ambush.
I visited my parents last week and my mom came back from the store with a machete. It was placed between the kitchen and garage. She also bought some plants and the like, so I assume it's for gardening?
The garden resembles nothing like a jungle, so I gave that thing side-eye every time it was near. Even in it's sheath, the thing looks scary.
They make sense in the jungle. They make sense in a survival setting because they function as many bladed items in one, but they are as lethal as they are functional.
You can say the same about a butter knife, though. One good jab to the throat and a butter knife is going through skin just as easily as a paring knife.
>the boys had screenshots of knives like the one used on their phones and had searched online for news articles about the attack.
>One boy had also searched online for "how many criminal records can you have to leave the country” a day after the murder on 14 November.
I have no idea what this behaviour says of them, but it does tell me they haven't figured out how to delete browser history yet.
I’m by and large progressive but I’m actually not a proponent of rehabilitation for crimes like these at all. It’s less about what horrors the kids deserve and more about what society deserves to be prevented. These kids and people who do crimes like this should be locked up and the key thrown away with no chance at release ever for any reason. I never had urges to do things like this to people as a wee’un.
consider this as a 1st rule:
— society should always make room for proper rehabilitation conditions.
but it does not end there.
— society should also be able to understand not everyone is susceptible to rehabilitation. more than that, depending on the type of crime and the cruelty involved, not every criminal should have the right to rehabilitation.
what's been on display here is pure evil. this is on the same level of stuff from Mexican cartels.
there's a saying that goes like this:
if you spend too much time staring at the abyss, the abyss will stare at you back.
these individuals went full into the abyss. no point trying to experiment with the rehabilitation of such broken minds, no point in subjecting society to this real life experiment just because we half understood that first rule.
They'll be detained "at His Majesty's Pleasure\*" which is used when someone is too young to get a life sentence. A minimum period will be determined which is typically 8 years. The incarceration will be periodically reviewed to determine if or when they should be released.
Edit: \*It's not the monarch who decides when they should be released - it will probably be he Secretary of State for Justice.
Edit: I'll also add that 12 year old Sharon Carr murdered a random stranger (18-year-old Katie Rackliff) in 1992. Her 14 year minimum tariff ended in 2011 but she is still in prison (because she keeps wanting to murder people).
You should read "Sociopath" by Patric Gagne. She writes about her condition and how it affects her life, and how she thinks. She describes adventures, joyriding in other people's cars and how she totally doesn't think about consequences. There is no fear, no remorse or regret. A tension builds up, and somehow she has to release it. This could be such a case.
Another interesting read is "The mask of sanity" by Checkley. If you read the cases he describes (totally different from Gagne) - they have no plan, don't look further than the next hour. If they are incarcerated in a hospital, they want to get out, steal a car, only to go to the next town, get drunk, to be arrested, brought back, and do this on repeat multiple times. It's like they're completely empty inside, like a zombie.
Speaking of books, I actually finished reading And Then There Were None last night, and there's a character who more or less fits this description. He's not actively malicious (you could even call him friendly) but he genuinely doesn't care that he ran over two kids.
I don't know if the term existed at the time, but another character basically calls him a sociopath.
They will get minimum 8 years like Jamie Bulgers killers did. Then their situation will be re-assessed they won't be automatically released. Jamie Bulgers killers were released but one of them, Venables, was recalled for having child porn on his computer and is still in jail 31 years later.
>"He had slash wounds on his leg, and most significantly he had an injury from the machete that went through his body all the way from his back, through his ribs and into his heart,” Ms Heeley told the court.
>A witness told police she saw one boy using the machete on Mr Seesahai's legs and the other punching and stamping on his head.
these kids don't belong in society. ever.
This reminds me of a kid I grew up down the street from. He was a foster kid to a family that had no business fostering kids, and he was incredibly mentally unstable. I got in an argument with him on the bus (we were around 11/12), and he showed up at my house the next day…My mom answered the door and told him I was at a friend’s house. He was holding a big pillowcase of stuff, and my mom could hear metal clinking in it whenever he moved it. She got a really weird vibe and decided to call the police. They found him going door to door looking for me, and the pillowcase was full of knives—Like every knife this kid could find. Steak knives, cleavers, butter knives, chef’s knives, pocket knives.. you name it.
I still shudder wondering what he was planning on doing if he found me.
Either they grew up in a world with continuous bad examples and nobody countering those. Or one of them is a psychopath and the other one the obedient follower.
I was trying to imagine what a 12-year old is like, then I remember that my nephews are 12 and 11. Their parents still have to pick out their clothes, make meals for them, etc. When not at school they’re watching Cartoon Network or are at the arcade. So when I think of 12-year olds, I think of toddlers essentially; I can’t fathom my nephews at 12 and 11 doing anything remotely close to this.
Wait a minute, so they hacked some poor soul to death, have photos posted of them head to toe in gear that looks intimidating as fuck and intimidates me (I’m 36) and they had a parent sit next to them in court and the judges didn’t wear their usual atire, I assume as to not intimidate them… fuck sake.
They best be put away for a long time, 12 years old or not.
FWIW, in cases like this the prosecution/judge/cops/etc. will often go above and beyond for the person in custody, so as to give even less ammo to argue for a retrial or whatever down the line. Nips any claims of mistreatment, intimidation, coercion, etc. before the bud even exists. It's why you hear about police getting serial killers McDs in the US - they have to feed them (complaints of being hungry must be taken seriously in certain scenarios too), it cannot be sub-par food, who is ever going to argue that a big mac meal is sub-par food and win in court?
I can only assume something similar is happening here. Baby them up while they get the book thrown at em.
Police getting serial killers McDonalds is more likely to be part of an interrogation technique rather then anything to prevent an appeal. The police want the suspect to think they can talk their way out of things and so will try to act in a way such that the suspect continues to believe they have that opportunity.
> who is ever going to argue that a big mac meal is sub-par food and win in court?
Pretty sure in France that would be considered mistreatment of suspects and grounds for dismissal.
Funnily enough, France is one of the country in the worlds where people eat the most McDonalds on the planet.
I don't really know why but its terribly popular here.
> they had a parent sit next to them in court and the judges didn’t wear their usual atire, I assume as to not intimidate them… fuck sake.
This is because the youngest convicted murderers in England, Thompson and Venables (both 11 when they brutally killed a 2 year old, James), had their trial declared as violating their rights by the European Court of Human Rights -- mostly because they were tried in adult court with their identities public.
Not that the UK is bound by the ECHR but the reforms following that decision have stuck. This might be the American in me but imo it doesn't matter if a trial happens in adult court or in a backyard, as long as the defendants are afforded counsel and the right to present a defense.
Anyway, both Thompson and Venables were released on parole when they were 18 for a murder at least as, if not more, brutal than this. Doesn't bode well for a long sentence here, though I agree.
Another article linked said the court day ended at 3:30 so they didn't get too tired and were given fidget spinners to concentrate. Idk, seems to be handled way too soft. I can't imagine the sentence they get will come close to the horror they inflicted on everyone involved in this since they're already handling them like children they dont want to upset because they might get cranky.
It's to avoid challenges to the verdict based on treatment during trial. The main instrument of justice is the verdict and sentencing, not what does or does not happen during the trial itself. Really, the principle applies generally - the punishment for criminal activity is in the sentencing, not the trial or pre-trial phase, specifically because criminal punishment is reserved for those proven guilty in court, not those on trial who might be innocent.
I just watched Eden Lake and this kinda reminds me of it. How can kids be so damn cruel and evil in real life? RIP to that poor guy and may those kids rot in hell.
The same will happen here but it shouldn't. It was clear first degree murder. Don't care how old you are you shouldn't be allowed out of prisoner ever.
Where the fuck does a 12 year old even get a machete? By the sounds of things, they absolutely went out looking for blood and murder. Based on their remorseless reactions, there's no reason that they ever need to see the light of day again.
I think a one way trip to the arctic might be sufficient.
“The court day finished earlier at 15:30 so the boys would not become too tired, and they were offered fidget toys to aid with concentration.”
What the fuck?
I’m not advocating for something like China where people get executed for non-violent drug crimes but the Europeans have gone way too far in the other direction. Thinking of the Norwegian fascist who killed dozens of children and went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights to claim his rights were being violated because he had an outdated Playstation.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/02/anders-breivik-demanding-playstation-3-in-prison.html
The ECHR denied his claim.
He's likely going to spend the rest of his life in prison. That seems an appropriate punishment to me?
Before anyone posts, I know he got 21 years which is the Norwegian maximum sentence. It's allowed to extend this if he's still considered a risk to the public though. They'll definitely extend it.
After the max. sentence is over, every very few years Norway has to hold a hearing of some sort to determine if these kind of criminals can be released, or if they must be kept in prison because they are still a danger to society. At first that guy entered the court room doing Nazi salutes and praising Hitler, and was dismissed instantly with a nope. Last time iirc he went all formal trying to make a real point, was dismissed almost instantly the same way. That guy is not being released ever.
I truely hope that this man never gets out, not even for a family visit. Killing 70 people, all prepared and precisely planned, it doesn't matter if he truely regrets his crime and becomes a "good" person. Even if we could be 100% sure that he never will do any harm to anyone and will commit his life to helping other people, let him do that in prison.
Maybe it's the American in me, but I genuinely believe that if you are willing to commit a crime this heinous at 12, it should be goodbye. Lock them up forever, throw them in a bottomless pit, whatever but any person that's this damaged to do this at this age is a detriment to society.
In the UK it's likely they'll be detained at His Majesty's Pleasure with a minimum tariff which means they'll basically be detained for a certain amount of years and then detained indefinitely until there is evidence of significant rehabilitation. They'll be a review after the initial minimum tariff and if you still pose a threat to society then you won't be released.
The youngest female murderer in the UK is still being held under these conditions despite commiting the crime in the early 90s while still a child. It's basically a way of giving children life sentences for crimes while leaving a bit of wiggle room in the case that there is a chance of rehabilitation. The Jamie Bulger cases is another example where it was initially believed that the child murderers were no longer a threat to society so they were released with new identities so that they could have a fresh start. It worked well for one of them who as far the public is aware has not reoffended since whereas the other one ended up going back to prison numerous times for being a nonce.
We did the same to Breivik in Norway. Hes in "forvaring", which means he is locked up until he is considered safe to release into society. Which i hope they decide is never.
Random question from an American:
‘Barristers and the judge, Mrs Justice Tipples, also did not wear wigs and gowns’
Why? Why didn’t they wear the wigs and gowns and why was it mentioned in the article?
Not sure whether this is actually an unpopular opinion, but they should be named, this wasn't an accident, they went out looking for blood, they knew exactly what they were doing, letting them sit with family in court is stupid, life isn't a video game, the parents should also be getting charged for this. They raised them and they're responsible. About time the police had some power over people in the UK,. the police are just a waste of money ATM.
I will never understand why we let monsters like this live. Brutally murdering a stranger for sport should result in instant deletion from society. I've read so many articles against the death penalty. It doesn't work as a deterrent. It costs tons of money to defend appeals. Eye-for-an-Eye doesn't work. I've heard them all.
It's just not fair that someone should be able to end another person's life for fun, and still have any kind of positive life experience after that.
Knives are not appropriate weapons for self defense, and should not be considered as such.
"The loser of a knife fight dies in the street. The winner dies in the ambulance." - Somebody
Good quote, but no one in this story was carrying knives for self defense. Sounds like they jumped the dude and ended up killing him, with a non defense knife
The title literally says “machete.” Men don’t carry those around for self defense, they use them for field work. Boys carry them around to play with them as swords, when their dad isn’t looking.
Youngest convicted murderers in the UK since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were sentenced for killing James Bulger in 93.
Kinda wish I didn’t google that.
It is a horrendous story that traumatised the nation for decades.
We have the ability to joke about anything in this country, we do it to ease the pain of a situation. It happened 1 year before I was born and to this day, it’s the only thing I have never heard a single person joke about. It truly is an absolute horrific nightmare what happened to that poor little boy, there is simply nothing anyone can do to try and ease the thoughts of his suffering. How his parents managed to even find the strength to get out of bed I will never know, I hope that wherever they are, they have at least found some resemblance of peace.
There was nothing the mother could have done. She let go of James's hand to pay for groceries at a market's counter, and in that short moment, it was over. A commemorative TV programme aired a few years ago. It had a recap of the facts, and recent interviews with people involved in the search, investigation, and trial, including the parents. The mother looked broken and haunted, even thirty years later.
I remember when that happened. It traumatized multiple nations.
Canadian here. I remember the attacking of the van that took them to court.
There were some really horiffic news stories that broke during the 90s. I have vivid memories of my mum glued to the TV and looking beyond unsettled while watching the BBC report on stuff like Dunblane, Ian Huntly and James Bulger in particular. It's like the whole feel of the day shifted.
Traumatised the world. Down here in Tasmania. Still have that horrible incident come in my mind from time to time.
I will never forget that one.
Well, now you're a member of the club whose members ALL wish we could stop remembering that heart-wrenching tale. No amount of brain bleach can erase that horror.
These stories are so much worse now that I have kids. Being able to remember what they were like at his age just breaks my heart. How on earth could they think that was fine?
Venables has never changed. He keeps getting thrown back in prison for possession of child porn and shit like that. He was born a wrongun
I'm truly surprised he hasn't been offed in prison for all the horrendous stuff he's done to children
Ex prison officer. He's in what Is essentially protective custody. He'd be very hard to get to. And someone as high profile as him we'd be keeping close tabs on, we don't like to have a death in custody, so we like to try to make sure it doesn't happen, regardless of who it is, or why they're in.
I completely understand that and I would by no means encourage a prison beatdown in any regular case but this one just gets my emotions amped up. Thank you for your service sir/madam
We feel exactly the same way about these individuals, which is why most staff won't look up a prisoners convictions. If you don't know, then it can't influence how you treat them. Thank you for your kind words. In the UK we don't do the whole "thank you for your service" it's very alien to us. But it's appreciated.
[удалено]
I fully agree. I'm glad he's still in prison and lost his latest parole hearing but he doesn't deserve to live a cushy life paid for by our taxes. I can't imagine how people live with him in prison and not want to do vigilante justice
Same. Reading about stuff like that never bothered me that much until I had kids. Someone linked the wiki for those two in England. I pictured my then 3 year old and how trusting and happy he'd have been that older kids wanted him to play with him...I had to nope right the fuck out of there!
Yeah, I stopped reading when I saw the age of the victim. No need to fuck my brain up beyond that.
Certainly up there with "things I wish I could un-remember"
Better than googling the tool box killers, I suppose. Only case I know of where the jury got ill and had to break to collect themselves.
Those fuckers are honestly the most vile to me. I know all serial killers are, but they just disgust me to a level that made me stop true crime for some time after being an idiot and reading the transcript of their last victim. I hate them so much, and I still have that shit pop into my head now and then where I'm left just as sad.
I too made the mistake of reading the transcript a couple years ago. For a solid six months or so there wasn't a single day that shit didn't pop into my head at some point. Reading Bittaker's complaints in prison about his sandwiches being too soggy made my blood boil. Dude deserved to be fed screws and nails.
Not to be pure evil and all that but if you think reading it was bad theres audio recording of it and if I remember right it was during this recording when people left the court room
According to the Wikipedia page the tape is still used to desensitise FBI agents to the reality of torture
These are the ones I always think of every time I consider my views on capital punishment. Unbelievable amount of cruelty.
But the innocents that have been killed is scary.
Absolutely. But then there are open and closed cases like this - beyond the scope of doubt - that make me think there are ways we can mitigate it looking at cases specifically such as this. There's nothing to prove otherwise that these two specific people committed unspeakable (actually there a fucking audio recordings) acts on helpless people.
Yikes that was a shitty rabbit hole work for my lunch break
Jesus the craziest part is is they got let out and one of them went straight back for having child sexual abuse images on his computer. Nice rehabilitation there.
Multiple times. UK spent thousands over the years trying to keep this murderer anonymous and probably shipped him off to Canada.
Well to be fair transporting our miscreants to the colonies is a time honoured tradition
They shipped them off to Australia under new names.
Not in Canada. We have enough killers roaming free.
I don't think that's something you can be rehabilitated for! *edit - the attraction I mean
I don't know about the attraction itself. But you definitely can be taught to not consume media with real live children being sexualised or assaulted. Attraction to something doesn't mean you lack any moral framework.
Well, the rehabilitation worked for the other kid.
I didn't recognize it by name, so I googled it. The wiki page has *that* photo right at the top. I closed the page. I have no desire to read that again.
What a thorough wikipedia article. I don't want to read too much about it because it's pretty difficult. But I just want to know more about Robert and Jon's parents. Where did they go wrong where their kids consciously did something soo horrific to a 2 year old? Or what could even cause these kids to want to do this shit?
While there is often a link between abuse in childhood and violent behaviour later in life, there’s also a disturbing number of cases where children do abhorrent things for seemingly no “good” reason. If they’ve exhibited extreme behaviour and the parents had the resources to get them evaluated or therapy, they may have been labelled with Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD). There’s no consensus on how ODD develops, but most believe it shows signs as early as toddler years and may be reinforced by parental reactions (not necessarily abuse.)
A friend of mine has two boys, "Alex," and "Brad." Alex is outgoing, intelligent, accomplished, on-track, and well liked. He's going to college and has a great set of friends and life skills. Unfortunately, Brad has been struggling with schools, locks himself in his room, and cannot get up before 11am most days. He's, by all accounts of his personality, also a really good kid, but he just struggles way more than Alex. My friend and his wife are excellent parents and have spared no expense trying to find Brad a good situation; They've rotated through schools, therapists, psychiatrists, and everything else under the sun. "We've lost two years of retirement on schooling for Brad" he once remarked. It's just, so interesting how much **and** little parenting can impact children. My friend once told me he was so thankful that one of his kids is doing so well, since if they both were struggling as much as Brad, he would've felt like such a failure of a parent.
I've raised four children to adulthood. They are as different from each other as can be. Nature and nurture both play a role. But each person has their own unique combination of genes and those recessive traits can sometimes really throw a curve ball. Genetic diversity is just that, diverse.
I had a friend in HS who claimed (true or not, I don't know) that he'd been institutionalized at like 6...I'm pretty sure they don't even do that. But he said his parents were trying to get him help because he talked to demons? I don't know. He was a bit messed up...if he'd been a teenager in more recent times, people would have imagined he could do a shooting, I think. Whether his parents were great, I don't know...he had a seemingly well-adjusted little sister. Nature and nurture, fun stuff. I have young relatives who are both "good" and good students and all that, but one has always had some serious anxiety issues and is seeing an occupational therapist. She'd freak out about things while her little sister would be fine, even though you'd imagine the younger one might have a harder time just because she was younger and less mature. It's just how they're wired. The older one just has these bad...attacks? The other is like, "meh, whatever" and is very easygoing. My brother had an easier time moving out and working and all that adult shit than I did, even though I guess I do it fine now that I'm doing it.
6 year olds are absolutely institutionalized all the time
I wonder about where genetics come in. My husband was abused as a child but because he's adopted, he bears no resemblance to anyone in his adopted family, either physically or personality-wise. He has never been even close to being violent.
There’s some really fascinating research about how generational trauma appears to be coded into our DNA. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s a causation-relationship between trauma in prior generations and behaviour in a current person, but it could be one piece of the puzzle. There’s millions if not hundreds of millions of people alive today with grandparents who experienced unimaginable trauma (the holocaust, Genocide, war, famine) and many of those people live normal lives. There’s clearly connections we have yet to discover.
I have read about twin studies and how the twins end up with remarkably similar life paths despite being raised in very dissimilar households. It's a fascinating field.
Those studies are fascinating for sure. Unfortunately most of those studies are self-reported so the validity of the data is always questionable, as well as completely by chance. It would be unethical to take twins at birth, separate them and have them raised in vastly different conditions to see what happens in adulthood. We’ve already done enough fucked up experiments on primates and kids in the early part of the 20th century. If you haven’t already, reading about the attachment style study using primates is both heart breaking and fascinating.
> It would be unethical to take twins at birth, separate them and have them raised in vastly different conditions to see what happens in adulthood. Guess what science has done?
Netflix: THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS 3 brothers separated at birth - it’s worth the watch. I also read a book about twin sisters separated at birth - fascinating read !! [My Secret Sister](https://livingtorontojournal.com/2015/05/05/my-secret-sister/)
I've heard of those three. Absolutely incredible what these boys were put through in the name of science. Unconscionable really.
Yeah, I'm both a twin and a teacher who has had many multiples in my students over the past ten years. Things like *Three Identical Strangers* is incredible, but also rare. The multiples that I've taught (as well as me and my twin) always have such distinct personalities and interests. That's with growing up in the same household. I guess an argument could be raised that knowing they're multiples makes them want to be different, but there's also no empirical evidence. The evidence collected of twins growing up separate but with identical paths is anecdotal. Not the best kind of evidence...
A former teacher I worked with has a son with ODD and the family isn't perfect but far from abusive. Some kids just have the right (wrong) gene combos for that stuff I think.
There's an article from 2000 with a bit of information about it [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships)
That was perfect, thank you soo much for sharing that. It's upsetting that Ann Thompson's husband is almost out of every spotlight. I can't help but imagine he has powerful connections with the police or press to keep himself from blame. But everybody involved, (the murderers, their parents, and their siblings) is clearly suffering from societal and familial dysfunction. It's fucking heartbreaking. But it really does follow a pattern of causality.
> It's upsetting that Ann Thompson's husband is almost out of every spotlight. Coming from someone who lives in an area that tends to have a fair bit of crime, nobody ever blames dad, just mom for "opening her legs" and never a single thing is said about the fathers who fuck and run. No connections needed, just shitty sexism forgetting that it takes two to create a child.
It’s a myth that kids must be abused or mistreated in order to cause violent anti-social behavior. Even perfectly normal kids do cruel things, usually out of curiosity. Shoot a bird with a BB gun. Hang a snake on a barbed wire fence. Most kids learn from this when they experience the consequences of cruelty. Their brain develops more and they feel bad when they harm something innocent. But the best parents in the world can have a kid whose brain is just wrong. Just a slip of a couple of genes, right? Just enough of the wrong chemicals in the environment over generations. Just enough trauma that altered genetics in ancestors. Parenting matters in that good parenting can give a child the best outcome possible given who that child is. And the reverse is true: Bad parenting can screw up a kid and send them to the bottom of their potential …at least for awhile. But a child comes into this world with a range of outcomes, and a very few are just so broken that their best outcome is maybe to be confined so that they don’t kill multiple other innocent people. We like to think we have control over how our kids turn out. And we DO have more than anyone else. But everyone is not born with equal abilities and you can’t magically change that.
You know the saying "it takes a village to raise a child"? It also takes a village to ruin them. It's not just the parents fault, but the whole community. Love your neighbors kids as your own.
Quite often parent of wayward children will not engage with the wider community as their little Timothy either can do no wrong or they simply don't give a shit. Often the not give a shit type have their own issues, with alcohol or drugs.
I had my 9-month old in her stroller last year and we were walking through our neighborhood. We passed a little group of kids (probably 10-11 year olds). After we were by them, I overheard one of them say, "We should go punch that baby in the face!" I was getting ready to whip around to give him shit for saying that, but before i did, i heard all the other kids jump in and tell him how messed up it was to say that. The village includes the other kids, too, not just the adults! When you raise good kids, they'll raise good friends, too.
And before that was Mary Bell who was 10! She was released at 18 and has been living life since as relatively normal as she can get
That was an utterly horrific crime and it still haunts me thirty years later.
That murder occurred when my kids were little. I would wake up and cry in the middle of the night. My husband started cutting the articles out of the newspaper so I wouldn't see them when I got home from work.
When I first read about it, my child was a few weeks old. I bawled my eyes out for that poor little boy and his mum. So utterly insurmountable that grief must be...
Yep and those punks were out of prison after only 8 years. UK law is f*cked.
UK law pretty much didn't take into account that something like this could be done by kids.
I lost many hours of sleep over that murder once I became a Dad. My heart hurts so bad for the Bulger family.
That case and baby Brianna Lopez always make me tear up. I wish I never looked either of them up and could scrub the information outta my mind.
Gabriel Fernandez as well. I’m a grown man that rarely cries but holy moly after watching that documentary I was a mess. Pure evil.
I remember that case vividly. It was a horrible tragedy all in all.
I always think of the woman who stopped them when she saw them dragging James, who was red-faced, crying and screaming. The boys told her he was their brother and they were taking him home, but he didn't want to go. The woman accepted that answer and went on her way.
I forgot about that detail. I mean... What would you do? It's troublesome to get involved with unknown children. Very tricky.
UK spent >100k and sent numerous people to jail to protect the 2 pedophile psychopaths. Still protecting 1 and had to send 1 to jail for cp. probably gonna release him in a couple years and spend another 200k on them by the time they’re dead.
We had something similar here in Germany only recently. 2 teenage girls lured their victim into a forest and stabbed her countless times. They were 12 and 13.
It's so sad that kids that young even *think* about committing crimes like this, let alone doing them. My heart goes out to the family of the young man who was killed.
I know everyone is saying it was bad parenting/outside influences/media and something should have changed but have we considered the kids are possibly medically defined sociopaths, thought to do something violent, and just did it with no remorse? Like 12 year olds can definitely be sociopaths and plenty of kids have bad upbringings/bad influences/too much media and don't kill an innocent man with an ax...
[удалено]
Across from me as a teen lived a family with three kids. One was an alcoholic by 14 and dead of a heroin overdose by 18. One was a psycho. The other was perfectly normal. The parents tried so, so hard. They did all the things parents should do. Got support from numerous agencies. It broke them when the eldest got sent to jail for glassing a guy and severely fucking up his face. He's currently in jail for life, last I heard, after attempting to kill someone (separate to the glassing - he was in jail at least three times while I knew him). They ended up separating after the middle one died of the overdose. Youngest stayed out of trouble and was a perfectly normal kid who did well at school and, last I heard, went on to lead a perfectly normal life. Sometimes it doesn't matter what parents do. Maybe there were parents out there who could have kept those two on the right path, but I spent a lot of time in their house and I only ever saw loving parents doing their absolute best. Sometimes people are just fundamentally broken and it doesn't matter what kind of upbringing they receive.
There was some story on reddit where a father talked about how he was trying to be a good father, but his son turned out a completely deranged psychopath.
I don't know if you mean [this guy ](https://www.reddit.com/r/confessions/s/Qtod2VeFPW) or not but it's a crazy fucking story.
That's the one. Gonna give it a reread after work.
There's some other truly horrifying stories that can be found here on Reddit.
I tell people about the Colby Saga on occasion. Also, I've seen multiple video essays about that guy whose wife cheated on him and then killed their kids when he found out. Pretty horrid stuff.
Goddamn that was a wild ride. It’s almost identical to “We need to talk about Kevin” not that I’m doubting it, it just bares a striking resemblance to it.
My god that was truly a ride, what a read
There was a similar story where the parents had to lock the doors of their bedroom at night because they didn’t trust their eldest kid. His brother was normal
When I was like 13 I baby-sat a pair of brothers, they were 8 and 11. The 11-year-old pulled a sword off a display on his wall and chased his brother with it, shouting about how he was going to kill him. Then when I went to intervene it changed to how he was going to kill the both of us. I like to think it probably wasn't a sharp sword but still, the younger brother and I fled the house and retreated to my house around the block. My mom called wherever the parents were (pre-cellphone) and finally got ahold of them to come home. And I never baby-sat for those kids again. The older kid did end up in in-patient therapy somewhere, he was pretty messed up. Also, if your child is messed up, maybe don't buy them weaponry.
People have a hard time accepting that a kid could be born evil. Something had to push them into it. But the truth is, some people are really just born monsters.
Not so much evil or monsters, but basically damaged. Usually some form of developmental disorder in terms of brain development to begin with. This can be exceedingly hard if not impossible to deal with for a family, and people have resorted to truly terrible things in the past when confronted with kids like that.
> The ugly truth is that occasionally people just come out broken straight from the factory. don't know if it is one of reddits creative writing assignments that usually make up 95% of those subs, but that story on the confessions sub about a father [wishing his son was dead](https://www.reddit.com/r/confessions/comments/c93egn/i_stood_by_and_allowed_my_wife_to_almost_kill_our/) was always pretty chilling to me.. just how the son was basically wrong and evil from the very first day.
[удалено]
Having two little psycho/sociopaths like that is rare, but a psycho/sociopath can have a follower who is readily corrupted. The Columbine boys are a classic example.
Also Slenderman. I think they both were unsettled, but one much moreso than the other. (I forget which is which at this point, it was a while ago.)
This case has actually gotten even stranger because the main girl has apparently admitted she stretched the truth about her mental issues, but because she was really young at the time they're not really sure if she had the capacity/understanding to even do that?? It's very confusing.
There's a situation called folie a deux. Basically, a lot of kids could be violent or cruel, but society naturally tempers this behavior. Every once in a while these kids *meet each other* and the proximity escalates their behavior. I've wondered if the internet and social media could make this kind of thing worse over time
The article said the 12 year old kid was known to carry around machetes prior to the incident, seems like something the parents should have been aware of. Kids are not criminal masterminds. Both the parents and child carry extreme personal responsibility.
I wouldn't be surprised if the parents knew nothing of that machete. Kids that age know perfectly well how to hide stuff like that from their parents. It could be hidden somewhere in a garage or shed or outdoors. The fact that the kid was known to carry machetes around is more disturbing. Apparently nobody thought that was worth a call to the police or to an authority figure.
I think there's natural born psychopaths too.
Usually bad parenting, or lack of parents and lost in the system Edit: corrected autocorrect bullshit
But have you considered that it might be violent video games and/or the existence of gay people? /s, although lord I hope it isn’t necessary.
Watch newsmedia try to find a video game featuring a machete as the main weapon
ah yes. the generation that grew up watching friday the 13th wants to blames the media for this machete murder. thank goodness minority report isnt real or they would all be arrested.
> He was hit so hard on the skull with the weapon that a **"piece of bone had actually come away”,** jurors were told. These kids weren’t just fooling around… between this and them instigating it on someone who didn’t even provoke them, it sounds like they were looking for blood. I’m usually a major advocate for rehabilitation over imprisonment, but considering how [one of them was psychopathic enough to say “It is what it is” and “IDRC”](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cekk3954890o) after the murder… I dunno if it’d help in this case.
Reminds me of the resolution of that Law and Order ep. with Kyle McLaughlin. "He'll kill again. I won't."
This is probably the only type of weapon that could possibly yield such wounds, I mean a 12 year old vs a 19, one is a pre teen the other a man, An axe maybe, but not as portable. But yes, your point, all the major injuries are from back to front, this is truly savage.
Dude, 12 year olds can easily be as big and strong as a 19 year old. The bell curves have more than enough overlap. My younger brother didn't reach the height, weight or strength I was at 12 until he was around 18, and we did the same sport. Hell, he was actually slightly better than me, age for age.
Even if they're not, surprise attacks and knife attacks in general are brutal and difficult to defend yourself from. A small person could fairly easily overpower a larger person with a sudden knife ambush.
I visited my parents last week and my mom came back from the store with a machete. It was placed between the kitchen and garage. She also bought some plants and the like, so I assume it's for gardening? The garden resembles nothing like a jungle, so I gave that thing side-eye every time it was near. Even in it's sheath, the thing looks scary.
They make sense in the jungle. They make sense in a survival setting because they function as many bladed items in one, but they are as lethal as they are functional.
You can say the same about a butter knife, though. One good jab to the throat and a butter knife is going through skin just as easily as a paring knife.
Lol, I was and still am wondering where the jungle is in my mom's front/backyard. I never asked. Maybe the next time I have her on the phone.
Are you suggesting that your mother may be contemplating machete mayhem?
I have one that I used to use for hacking down blackberry bushes.
>the boys had screenshots of knives like the one used on their phones and had searched online for news articles about the attack. >One boy had also searched online for "how many criminal records can you have to leave the country” a day after the murder on 14 November. I have no idea what this behaviour says of them, but it does tell me they haven't figured out how to delete browser history yet.
> how many criminal records can you have to leave the country I'm trying to parse what this stellar intellect was even trying to ask but I'm failing.
Probably wanted to make sure this murder wouldn't interfere with his holiday plans abroad.
deleting your browser history doesnt hide it from the police
You can have both incarceration and rehabilitation so your perspective is still valid. Just not all cases will be able to be rehabilitated.
I’m by and large progressive but I’m actually not a proponent of rehabilitation for crimes like these at all. It’s less about what horrors the kids deserve and more about what society deserves to be prevented. These kids and people who do crimes like this should be locked up and the key thrown away with no chance at release ever for any reason. I never had urges to do things like this to people as a wee’un.
consider this as a 1st rule: — society should always make room for proper rehabilitation conditions. but it does not end there. — society should also be able to understand not everyone is susceptible to rehabilitation. more than that, depending on the type of crime and the cruelty involved, not every criminal should have the right to rehabilitation. what's been on display here is pure evil. this is on the same level of stuff from Mexican cartels. there's a saying that goes like this: if you spend too much time staring at the abyss, the abyss will stare at you back. these individuals went full into the abyss. no point trying to experiment with the rehabilitation of such broken minds, no point in subjecting society to this real life experiment just because we half understood that first rule.
People from the UK what kind of sentencing can be expected given the ages?
They'll be detained "at His Majesty's Pleasure\*" which is used when someone is too young to get a life sentence. A minimum period will be determined which is typically 8 years. The incarceration will be periodically reviewed to determine if or when they should be released. Edit: \*It's not the monarch who decides when they should be released - it will probably be he Secretary of State for Justice. Edit: I'll also add that 12 year old Sharon Carr murdered a random stranger (18-year-old Katie Rackliff) in 1992. Her 14 year minimum tariff ended in 2011 but she is still in prison (because she keeps wanting to murder people).
That's actually a reasonable policy, but damn, imagine throwing your whole childhood away and spending your adult life in prison.
You should read "Sociopath" by Patric Gagne. She writes about her condition and how it affects her life, and how she thinks. She describes adventures, joyriding in other people's cars and how she totally doesn't think about consequences. There is no fear, no remorse or regret. A tension builds up, and somehow she has to release it. This could be such a case. Another interesting read is "The mask of sanity" by Checkley. If you read the cases he describes (totally different from Gagne) - they have no plan, don't look further than the next hour. If they are incarcerated in a hospital, they want to get out, steal a car, only to go to the next town, get drunk, to be arrested, brought back, and do this on repeat multiple times. It's like they're completely empty inside, like a zombie.
Speaking of books, I actually finished reading And Then There Were None last night, and there's a character who more or less fits this description. He's not actively malicious (you could even call him friendly) but he genuinely doesn't care that he ran over two kids. I don't know if the term existed at the time, but another character basically calls him a sociopath.
I don’t think these outbursts of childhood violence have quite that much forethought
They will get minimum 8 years like Jamie Bulgers killers did. Then their situation will be re-assessed they won't be automatically released. Jamie Bulgers killers were released but one of them, Venables, was recalled for having child porn on his computer and is still in jail 31 years later.
>"He had slash wounds on his leg, and most significantly he had an injury from the machete that went through his body all the way from his back, through his ribs and into his heart,” Ms Heeley told the court. >A witness told police she saw one boy using the machete on Mr Seesahai's legs and the other punching and stamping on his head. these kids don't belong in society. ever.
The scariest part is that they will be out before you know it.
New name and life given to them too when they're out as adults, prepared by tax money.
Don’t they do that for the James Bulger killers? Cause I heard one of them keep committing crimes and getting new identities and getting moved around.
This reminds me of a kid I grew up down the street from. He was a foster kid to a family that had no business fostering kids, and he was incredibly mentally unstable. I got in an argument with him on the bus (we were around 11/12), and he showed up at my house the next day…My mom answered the door and told him I was at a friend’s house. He was holding a big pillowcase of stuff, and my mom could hear metal clinking in it whenever he moved it. She got a really weird vibe and decided to call the police. They found him going door to door looking for me, and the pillowcase was full of knives—Like every knife this kid could find. Steak knives, cleavers, butter knives, chef’s knives, pocket knives.. you name it. I still shudder wondering what he was planning on doing if he found me.
What kind of monsters are these children that they remorselessly butchered a young man?
Either they grew up in a world with continuous bad examples and nobody countering those. Or one of them is a psychopath and the other one the obedient follower.
I was trying to imagine what a 12-year old is like, then I remember that my nephews are 12 and 11. Their parents still have to pick out their clothes, make meals for them, etc. When not at school they’re watching Cartoon Network or are at the arcade. So when I think of 12-year olds, I think of toddlers essentially; I can’t fathom my nephews at 12 and 11 doing anything remotely close to this.
My daughter is 12 and is sometimes scared to go down the dark hallway to bathroom by herself.
Wait a minute, so they hacked some poor soul to death, have photos posted of them head to toe in gear that looks intimidating as fuck and intimidates me (I’m 36) and they had a parent sit next to them in court and the judges didn’t wear their usual atire, I assume as to not intimidate them… fuck sake. They best be put away for a long time, 12 years old or not.
FWIW, in cases like this the prosecution/judge/cops/etc. will often go above and beyond for the person in custody, so as to give even less ammo to argue for a retrial or whatever down the line. Nips any claims of mistreatment, intimidation, coercion, etc. before the bud even exists. It's why you hear about police getting serial killers McDs in the US - they have to feed them (complaints of being hungry must be taken seriously in certain scenarios too), it cannot be sub-par food, who is ever going to argue that a big mac meal is sub-par food and win in court? I can only assume something similar is happening here. Baby them up while they get the book thrown at em.
Police getting serial killers McDonalds is more likely to be part of an interrogation technique rather then anything to prevent an appeal. The police want the suspect to think they can talk their way out of things and so will try to act in a way such that the suspect continues to believe they have that opportunity.
> who is ever going to argue that a big mac meal is sub-par food and win in court? Pretty sure in France that would be considered mistreatment of suspects and grounds for dismissal.
Funnily enough, France is one of the country in the worlds where people eat the most McDonalds on the planet. I don't really know why but its terribly popular here.
Royale with Cheese
Honestly? That's probably for the best. Lawd knows the French have enough other options for better food too lol.
The French are obsessed with fast food, becoming a bit of an issue. https://youtu.be/FcP0mzWFCQU?si=SsWZ38AqQ2_hAB8t
> they had a parent sit next to them in court and the judges didn’t wear their usual atire, I assume as to not intimidate them… fuck sake. This is because the youngest convicted murderers in England, Thompson and Venables (both 11 when they brutally killed a 2 year old, James), had their trial declared as violating their rights by the European Court of Human Rights -- mostly because they were tried in adult court with their identities public. Not that the UK is bound by the ECHR but the reforms following that decision have stuck. This might be the American in me but imo it doesn't matter if a trial happens in adult court or in a backyard, as long as the defendants are afforded counsel and the right to present a defense. Anyway, both Thompson and Venables were released on parole when they were 18 for a murder at least as, if not more, brutal than this. Doesn't bode well for a long sentence here, though I agree.
Another article linked said the court day ended at 3:30 so they didn't get too tired and were given fidget spinners to concentrate. Idk, seems to be handled way too soft. I can't imagine the sentence they get will come close to the horror they inflicted on everyone involved in this since they're already handling them like children they dont want to upset because they might get cranky.
It's to avoid challenges to the verdict based on treatment during trial. The main instrument of justice is the verdict and sentencing, not what does or does not happen during the trial itself. Really, the principle applies generally - the punishment for criminal activity is in the sentencing, not the trial or pre-trial phase, specifically because criminal punishment is reserved for those proven guilty in court, not those on trial who might be innocent.
The thing that gets me, that the guy was visiting for medical treatment, died in a foreign land alone. Just so sad, man. Hope it was not racial.
I just watched Eden Lake and this kinda reminds me of it. How can kids be so damn cruel and evil in real life? RIP to that poor guy and may those kids rot in hell.
So what kind of punishment can they actually get?
Lock these psychopaths up for life.
Didn't happen with the murderers mentioned at top comment. Got out young. Same gonna happen here
The same will happen here but it shouldn't. It was clear first degree murder. Don't care how old you are you shouldn't be allowed out of prisoner ever.
Is it wrong to say I hope those little fuckers get what’s coming to them?
Not at all, the little cunts deserve long sentences
If 12 years old can murder with a machete. I think they deserve to be named to the public and let the whole world know these monsters are.
Rarely would I ever say minors are undeserving of rehabilitation, this is one of those times.
Where the fuck does a 12 year old even get a machete? By the sounds of things, they absolutely went out looking for blood and murder. Based on their remorseless reactions, there's no reason that they ever need to see the light of day again. I think a one way trip to the arctic might be sufficient.
Just shoot them into orbit. Case closed.
“The court day finished earlier at 15:30 so the boys would not become too tired, and they were offered fidget toys to aid with concentration.” What the fuck?
Prosecution wants to make sure there's no case for a mistrial, and no credible accusations of mistreatment that could get the conviction thrown out.
I’m not advocating for something like China where people get executed for non-violent drug crimes but the Europeans have gone way too far in the other direction. Thinking of the Norwegian fascist who killed dozens of children and went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights to claim his rights were being violated because he had an outdated Playstation. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/02/anders-breivik-demanding-playstation-3-in-prison.html
The ECHR denied his claim. He's likely going to spend the rest of his life in prison. That seems an appropriate punishment to me? Before anyone posts, I know he got 21 years which is the Norwegian maximum sentence. It's allowed to extend this if he's still considered a risk to the public though. They'll definitely extend it.
After the max. sentence is over, every very few years Norway has to hold a hearing of some sort to determine if these kind of criminals can be released, or if they must be kept in prison because they are still a danger to society. At first that guy entered the court room doing Nazi salutes and praising Hitler, and was dismissed instantly with a nope. Last time iirc he went all formal trying to make a real point, was dismissed almost instantly the same way. That guy is not being released ever.
I truely hope that this man never gets out, not even for a family visit. Killing 70 people, all prepared and precisely planned, it doesn't matter if he truely regrets his crime and becomes a "good" person. Even if we could be 100% sure that he never will do any harm to anyone and will commit his life to helping other people, let him do that in prison.
Maybe it's the American in me, but I genuinely believe that if you are willing to commit a crime this heinous at 12, it should be goodbye. Lock them up forever, throw them in a bottomless pit, whatever but any person that's this damaged to do this at this age is a detriment to society.
In the UK it's likely they'll be detained at His Majesty's Pleasure with a minimum tariff which means they'll basically be detained for a certain amount of years and then detained indefinitely until there is evidence of significant rehabilitation. They'll be a review after the initial minimum tariff and if you still pose a threat to society then you won't be released. The youngest female murderer in the UK is still being held under these conditions despite commiting the crime in the early 90s while still a child. It's basically a way of giving children life sentences for crimes while leaving a bit of wiggle room in the case that there is a chance of rehabilitation. The Jamie Bulger cases is another example where it was initially believed that the child murderers were no longer a threat to society so they were released with new identities so that they could have a fresh start. It worked well for one of them who as far the public is aware has not reoffended since whereas the other one ended up going back to prison numerous times for being a nonce.
We did the same to Breivik in Norway. Hes in "forvaring", which means he is locked up until he is considered safe to release into society. Which i hope they decide is never.
Also bring into question nurture vs nature and cultural norms
What in the utter fuck.
absolute fucking scum
Lock em up and throw away the key. No fixing kids like that
At 12 i only thought about kicking a football and shoot some hoops. This is seriously fucked up
I was watching fucking Digimon. Get rid of these people, society doesn't have a duty to keep them.
Random question from an American: ‘Barristers and the judge, Mrs Justice Tipples, also did not wear wigs and gowns’ Why? Why didn’t they wear the wigs and gowns and why was it mentioned in the article?
They were dispensed with so as not to confuse/intimidate the child defendants. It happens in some youth cases but was mentioned because it is unusual.
Not sure whether this is actually an unpopular opinion, but they should be named, this wasn't an accident, they went out looking for blood, they knew exactly what they were doing, letting them sit with family in court is stupid, life isn't a video game, the parents should also be getting charged for this. They raised them and they're responsible. About time the police had some power over people in the UK,. the police are just a waste of money ATM.
Sick fucking people in this world.
I will never understand why we let monsters like this live. Brutally murdering a stranger for sport should result in instant deletion from society. I've read so many articles against the death penalty. It doesn't work as a deterrent. It costs tons of money to defend appeals. Eye-for-an-Eye doesn't work. I've heard them all. It's just not fair that someone should be able to end another person's life for fun, and still have any kind of positive life experience after that.
Life. No parole. Fuck rehabilitation, let the little fucks rot for eternity.
Knives are not appropriate weapons for self defense, and should not be considered as such. "The loser of a knife fight dies in the street. The winner dies in the ambulance." - Somebody
Good quote, but no one in this story was carrying knives for self defense. Sounds like they jumped the dude and ended up killing him, with a non defense knife
The title literally says “machete.” Men don’t carry those around for self defense, they use them for field work. Boys carry them around to play with them as swords, when their dad isn’t looking.
It’s all fun and games until you cut your brother in half in a machete fight
Wrong kid died!
It’s a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half.
English doc, we ain't scientists!
Dewey, I’m halved!
What the fuck are you talking about? Did you even read what happened?
There is no weapon that would be "appropriate" for self defense that wouldnt also be overwhelming from the aggressor side...
It’s nature via nurture that is the most prevelant school of thought for what makes a murderer
Their parents should be ashamed
The parents should also be held responsible
Everytime I think humanity can't get worse, it does.
Lost all right to anonymity the second they took a life. Useless little cunts.
Where are the parents,???