Jon Venables back in prison

[Carbomb]

Bit of an odd question, but are there ever child murders that the tabloids don't go nuts about? I assume there aren't, since it's the one topic that they know they can whip every self-righteous moron into a frenzy with. But surely tons more kids go missing than just the ones that get the big push in the press. What's the deciding factor in which ones become a story?

 

As Quentin said, something to do with Missing White Woman Syndrome. Look at Maddie McCann - cute little white girl. I actually can't remember any massive tabloid frenzies over any kids who were ugly or were from an ethnic minority.

[DJ Kris]

Bit of an odd question, but are there ever child murders that the tabloids don't go nuts about? I assume there aren't, since it's the one topic that they know they can whip every self-righteous moron into a frenzy with. But surely tons more kids go missing than just the ones that get the big push in the press. What's the deciding factor in which ones become a story?

 

As Quentin said, something to do with Missing White Woman Syndrome. Look at Maddie McCann - cute little white girl. I actually can't remember any massive tabloid frenzies over any kids who were ugly or were from an ethnic minority.

Damilola Taylor was quite a big deal if I recall and although he was a young man and not a child the name Stephen Lawrence springs to mind. It is true that a pretty face is more likely to sell papers though, such as Holly and Jessica in their Man Utd tops, but I'm not sure whether that reflects more on the media or the British public. I'm inclined to say the latter.

 

That said, could we really have every missing or murdered child on the front page?

[Famous Mortimer]

Unfortunately that means you have to buy the magazine to read about the man who wrote The Sun's editorial demanding that "the public...be told the whole truth" and slamming the cost of Venables's rehabilitation. Turns out he strangled and drowned his wife in 1977 and, after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, spent a period rehabilitation in a mental hospital.

And then walked right back into his job at The Sun, lest we forget.

 

All the things listed that Venables has apparently done are all hearsay - before you decided he should be strung up, wait and get your information from a slightly better source.

[King Pitcos]

Bit of an odd question, but are there ever child murders that the tabloids don't go nuts about? I assume there aren't, since it's the one topic that they know they can whip every self-righteous moron into a frenzy with. But surely tons more kids go missing than just the ones that get the big push in the press. What's the deciding factor in which ones become a story?

 

As Quentin said, something to do with Missing White Woman Syndrome. Look at Maddie McCann - cute little white girl. I actually can't remember any massive tabloid frenzies over any kids who were ugly or were from an ethnic minority.

 

Shannon Matthews was a right minger, and she was all over the media for a while there.

[David]

All the things listed that Venables has apparently done are all hearsay - before you decided he should be strung up, wait and get your information from a slightly better source.

The people who reckon that Venables should be strung up, despite serving his time in prison, are going to do so regardless of what the media, or anyone else, tells them.

[shep]

On a scale of 1 to 5, Venables

[Smeg_&_The_Heads]

The Huntley case was sensationalised because he was a school caretaker despite having a history of alledged rape and sexual assault of underaged girls.

To be fair that was major news weeks before we knew who did it or even before we knew they were dead

[Steveo2007]

Bit of an odd question, but are there ever child murders that the tabloids don't go nuts about? I assume there aren't, since it's the one topic that they know they can whip every self-righteous moron into a frenzy with. But surely tons more kids go missing than just the ones that get the big push in the press. What's the deciding factor in which ones become a story?

 

As Quentin said, something to do with Missing White Woman Syndrome. Look at Maddie McCann - cute little white girl. I actually can't remember any massive tabloid frenzies over any kids who were ugly or were from an ethnic minority.

 

Shannon Matthews was a right minger, and she was all over the media for a while there.

To be fair though, I think that was more to make the point of "see, we don't just report about the cute, middle class kids going missing. Just look at this chavvy minger". It wasn't about the murder with Stephen Lawrence, more about the accusations if institutional racism within the police that followed. The media is run and fed equally by twats. They know that when they report on a story about a missing or murdered kid, the self righteous twats will ensure that they buy every single edition of that paper in order to discover the next big "revelation" in the story or so they can talk to their friends about how sick said murder or kidnap is and then tell their friends how they would kill the person that did it should they get their hands on them.

 

During the time of the whole Maddie McCann saga you can bet that hundreds of kids went missing and didn't get reported on and why? Well, one story at a time fellas.

[Glen Quagmire]

I like how people are going on about how disgraceful it is that Venables and Thompson would have gone free if they'd done the murder in Norway, but nobody's mentioned the fact that it they'd been just six months younger the exact same thing would have happened to them here.

 

On a similar note, when people go on about how we are getting softer on child criminals, how many people realise that until 1999, the prosecution had to specifically prove that anyone aged 10-14 understood what they were doing, but since then it's automatically assumed that they are responsible.

Your first point is the reason why I believe that the minimum age of criminal responsibility should be abolished.

 

The second point is one I support though it should also be brought in with a parallel rule that any under 16 who commits an offence that an adult could be sent to jail for should also see the parents/guardians also prosecuted. Remember a few years ago the mother who was jailed for a week because her daughter was a truant? Truancy figures in England and Wales suddenly fell at least in the short term after that with some teachers saying that they saw some faces in the classroom for the first time in months if not years because their parents made damn sure they went into school as they didn't want to be locked up themselves. If parents knew that they were likely to face consequences as a result of their offspring's actions while they're still responsible for them, you would see youth crime statistics suddenly drop. That's something everyone except the Liberal Fascists can agree with.

[Glen Quagmire]

During the time of the whole Maddie McCann saga you can bet that hundreds of kids went missing and didn't get reported on and why? Well, one story at a time fellas.

Just on this point, someone mentioned earlier about Denise Fergus' actions leaving Jamie outside the butchers. What she did then would now be regarded as irresponsible, but deliberate neglect? No, and certainly at the time it would not have been unusual for kids even as young as James Bulger to wait outside shops on their own. Denise didn't do anything else that many other mothers at the time would have done and would have felt herself she'd only have been no more than a couple of minutes. She's now holds that brief moment of taking her eye off her son for the rest of her living days.

 

The Maddie McCann saga is different, in this case Kate & Gerry McCann were deliberately irresponsible in my view and have only got the sympathy from the media because they are a white middle class family whereas if they were living on a council estate media pressure would have been put on social services would be in quickly once they came back to England to take their other children off them. As sad as the episode is, Maddie's disappearance deserves no more or less attention than those of children around her age elsewhere. The "White Missing Woman Syndrome" mentioned is a big factor. Even though it was only a usual brief cutaway, a gag on Family Guy did address this "syndrome" quite well.

[The King Of Swing]

The Maddie McCann saga is different, in this case Kate & Gerry McCann were deliberately irresponsible in my view and have only got the sympathy from the media because they are a white middle class family whereas if they were living on a council estate media pressure would have been put on social services would be in quickly once they came back to England to take their other children off them. As sad as the episode is, Maddie's disappearance deserves no more or less attention than those of children around her age elsewhere. The "White Missing Woman Syndrome" mentioned is a big factor. Even though it was only a usual brief cutaway, a gag on Family Guy did address this "syndrome" quite well.

 

You know Glen when your not being a cock you can make a good point

 

The McCann's got an abnormal amount of support from the media by any standards imo and the dirt rags really really got behind them when they were implicated by the Portugese Police though I should point out that I am in no way saying that they were involved in Maddie's disapearence.

 

It was the complete opposite when Murat was originaly a suspect and the media could not wait to dig up the dirt on the guy who I believe later sued one of the dirt rags.

[Glen Quagmire]

Bulger killer Jon Venables faces child porn charges

 

One of the two killers of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 has been charged with possession and distribution of indecent images of children.

 

Jon Venables, now 27, was recalled to prison in February after allegedly breaching the terms of his licence.

 

He was released from jail in 2001 and given a new identity and anonymity for life under a special court order.

 

Venables is charged with two offences under the 1978 Protection of Children Act.

 

It is alleged that he downloaded 57 indecent images of children in the year to this February.

 

He is secondly accused of distributing seven images by allowing other people to access the files on his computer through a peer-to-peer network.

 

In March, the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced that Venables had been returned to prison.

 

His case is at a very early stage. It will return to court in July for a hearing where he will be able to indicate whether he will be pleading guilty or not guilty to the alleged offences.

 

Under the terms of the anonymity order, the media is not allowed to report anything about Venables' new identity.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10369277.stm

[neil]

*starts Facebook group*

[tiger_rick]

I'm absolutely stunned that you lock a child up and then he grows up to be a weirdo. I personally would have thought that taking away the rest of his childhood, taking away the period of his life when he learns how to socialise and interact with the opposite sex and other adults and then releasing him into a world that must absolutely terrify him would be the way to create a well balanced human being. Who would have thunked it?

 

The fact that he clearly was unblanced to start with won't help either.

[JNLister]

Obviously it will be different with Venables, but possession of 57 and distribution of 6 images wouldn't normally get you a prison sentence. Gary Glitter was in the thousands of images range and got four months. A guy at my university was running websites publishing thousands and got a suspended sentence.

 

Not to downplay child porn at all, and not to suggest it wasn't a nonce looking for some kiddie pics, but technically somebody who followed one duff link to a page full of thumbnails of underage kids, and downloaded one torrent of iffy images (and hadn't set their PC to not share torrent downloads) would be guilty of those specific charges.