Nasty little juveniles. Hooligans. Freaks. Bastards. Worthless. Evil. Those are just a few of the words used by our politicians and media to describe some of the country's children. It could be now, but this was in 1993, the year that two-year-old James Bulger was murdered on Merseyside by two 10-year-old boys.
I grew up with what headlines described as "hooligans on holiday". In 1985, my parents set up Bryn Melyn, a home in north Wales to look after some of the most disturbed teenagers in the country. They included children who'd slice themselves open to push paper clips underneath their own skin; a girl who inserted shards of a smashed lightbulb inside her vagina; a boy whose guardians – his grandparents – would hold his hands in the fire to punish him; and a pubescent girl whose parents would drag her out of bed when they got back from the pub so their friends could have sex with her.
The "holiday" bit referred to the intensive one-to-one trips abroad my dad designed to kick-start their rehabilitation. These trips were incredibly successful. Before we sent the first boy away, he had regularly assaulted the staff and other teenagers. After returning from a three-month trip to France, he went to work with Alzheimer's patients. A short spell in prison – this boy's only other option – has a failure rate for young men of about 90%.
As part of my research for a book I am writing about Bryn Melyn, I've studied the newspaper coverage of 1993 to trace the path between the horrific Bulger murder and the way we view young people today.
When the death of James hit the papers, the Daily Star offered a £20,000 reward "to trap beasts who killed little James". The Guardian reported a "lynch mob" outside the home of a wrongly arrested 12-year-old suspect. In the Sun, Richard Littlejohn screeched: "This is no time for calm. It is a time for rage, for blood-boiling anger, for furious venting of spleen." Headlines such as "Evil that makes a child kill", "Locked up in luxury", "Riot mob fears at Jamie court" dominated the newspapers.
It was also the perfect opportunity for the Tories to reassert themselves as the party of law and order. Three days after James's body was found, the then prime minister, John Major, gave an interview to the Mail on Sunday, highlighting his tough stance on crime. He said: "Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less." Five days later, his home secretary, Kenneth Clarke, announced plans to incarcerate children as young as 12. When it came to the two boys charged with the Bulger murder, the policeman in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, asked us "to remember that they are 10 years of age". But the law didn't. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were tried as adults.
"How do you feel now, you little bastards?" asked the Daily Star's front page on the day of the sentence. "Evil, brutal and cunning," said the Mail. The Mirror went for "Freaks of nature".
Despite the sensationalist, fear-mongering coverage of the Bulger case, my father was still taken by surprise when he first went on television to talk about his work. "When the producers of Eamonn Holmes's chat show invited me along to 'put across my side of the story', I naively believed them," he says. "I walked into the studios just before the programme went live. As it did, a huge 'Hooligans on Holiday' banner unrolled behind me. Then three women in the audience stood up with pictures of their dead children, who'd been killed by joyriders. Our kids had never killed anyone, and many hadn't even offended, but the producers were quite happy to confuse joyriders, murderers, young offenders and children in care.
"Throughout the negative press attention, social services knew the trips worked, and continued to place children with us. But the kids themselves were very upset and angry. They felt they were being verbally abused by the whole country."
In response to a Sun campaign, Michael Howard, who had become home secretary, (illegally) extended the sentences imposed on Venables and Thompson from 10 years to 15 years. And in response to the media furore surrounding Bryn Melyn, Howard also banned therapeutic trips abroad for children in care.
Recent media attention has turned to Edlington, South Yorkshire, where two brothers, aged 10 and 11, brutally burnt, stabbed and sexually assaulted two boys, aged nine and 11. This incident has the same ingredients as the Bulger case: the horrific attack, the disastrous parenting, the boys' escalating violence, and the failure of the relevant authorities to do anything about it.
It is a simple cause and effect; incidents like these don't just happen. But instead of tackling this problem rationally, we defer to hysteria and hollow accusations that solve nothing and protect no one.
These days, we have Facebook pages and YouTube video montages dedicated to James Bulger, created by people who, apparently, never even met him. Nobody will say that these are mawkish, sentimental and ultimately extremely damaging in their creation of monstrous, unsubstantiated fears about young people. Nobody will say to Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, that it has got nothing to do with her swhen she demands that the Edlington boys be named. Nobody seems bothered that the media has casually dubbed the Edlington boys the "devil brothers" or "hell boys".
But amid this fresh wave of moral panic, there is a glint of optimism. A new documentary by Spirit Level Films, The Fear Factory, was launched in London on Monday, and attempts to untangle the perceptions we have about our "dangerous" young people. Increasingly frustrated with the perpetuation of stereotypes and the way young people are treated in care, the criminal justice system, and even schools, three organisations – Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction – commissioned the film, which includes interviews with politicians, heads of charities and teenagers. "We want the film to be a wake-up call to politicians, colleagues who work in this field, and to the media," says Barbara Natasegara, chief executive of Safer Wales.
A failure to intervene with a holistic approach early in the lives of young people at risk of offending has had stark consequences. We spend 11 times more on locking children up than on preventing youth crime. About 75% of young people leaving custody will reoffend, and 27% of adult prisoners have been in care. Reoffending by these former children in care costs about £3bn a year.
As a result of The Fear Factory, more than 40 charities have now formed a coalition to lobby the government to put a stop to our relentless demonisation of young people.
Seventeen years on, it still sickens me to remember the parents of the children in Bryn Melyn who gave newspaper interviews complaining that the way my father was treating their children was a waste of time, that what he was doing was wrong.Helen McNutt
The Guardian
Wednesday 3 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/03/james-bulger-legacy-disturbed-children
Helen McNutt says it all in this piece. We must not allow the re-emerging furore to cloud the picture. Most children are not dangerous and do not need to be locked up; the very small number who do commit atrocious acts are seriously damaged,disturbed or ill individuals who need professional help, not to be held to account as adults at an age when they are not deemed adult for any other reason.
ReplyDeleteJust as women are often imprisoned for minor offences such as the non-payment of fines; children and young people are often held in prisons and other secure accomodation for short terms and minor offences, as a magistrate once told me "because the courts don't have other options". As Juliet Lyon says in the film "Prison is used as a sort of warehouse for those who have fallen through other nets...."
Barbara Natasegara, CEO Safer Wales