Cartoons depicted timid adults kowtowing to giant, tantrumy babies. In the early 90s, though, the only show in town was Kiddy Horror. And though a dozen other cases of homicide by children were recorded over the next quarter-century, the pattern suggests that it is a crime that happens comparatively rarely - and not that we have bred a new generation of child-monsters. The last notorious child-killer before Thompson and Venables was Mary Bell, in 1968. Recorded killings by children in Britain go back as far as 1748. And UK statistics don't suggest that violent crimes by juveniles, especially schedule one offences such as rape or murder, were any worse in the 1990s than they had been previously. Boy burglar, six, batters baby to death.īut most of these cases dropped from view or never came to court. Boys aged 10 and 11 drop five-year-old 14 storeys to death after he refuses them sweets. Boy of 13 accused of murdering 85-year-old woman. Ten-year-old boy abducts 10-month-old baby. I still have cuttings collected from that time. Single mothers, absent fathers, school indiscipline, the decline of churchgoing, the 60s, the pill - all were blamed for the emergence of a new generation of child-hoodlums. As Larkin might have put it, parental anxiety began in 1993, between the Children's Act and Eminem's first CD. The message of Bulger was that we were living in a violent new world, where you couldn't trust your children with anyone, not even other children.
![life after life book rating life after life book rating](https://rukminim1.flixcart.com/image/312/312/kk76wsw0/book/x/a/z/the-little-book-of-life-after-death-original-imafzhff8znxzhgg.jpeg)
Sales of toddler reins rose sharply, and in a survey of parents by the children's organisation, Kidscape, 97% of respondents put abduction as their biggest worry, ahead of traffic accidents, glue-sniffing and Aids. Most of us were haunted by that image from the shopping centre, with its allegory of innocence betrayed. But this didn't stop the tabloids printing horror stories about them and their families, including wild tales of tortured animals. Even in Britain, reporting restrictions prevented the naming of the two boys until the end of their trial. In some countries, the media are prevented from reporting cases involving child offenders. The image of abduction, the horrific death, the grieving parents, the raging crowd outside Sefton magistrates' court, the tender age of the accused - these guaranteed massive news coverage.
![life after life book rating life after life book rating](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388454731i/15706091._SS227_.jpg)
Until Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were taken in for questioning on the Thursday morning, no one imagined that the killers would be as young as 10. The surveillance images convinced the police that they were looking for two teenagers.
![life after life book rating life after life book rating](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91vC1XTgpXL.jpg)
That was Sunday, February 14, Valentine's Day. The two-year-old child had been attacked with bricks and an iron bar, then laid across the tracks to make it look like an accident. Two days later a body was found on a railway line.
![life after life book rating life after life book rating](https://thepbsblog.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/img-6527.jpg)
A shopping-centre surveillance camera had caught two shadowy figures leading away a smaller figure, his hand placed trustingly in theirs. What put it on the front page was an image. And had the child, following the usual pattern, been killed by someone he knew - a father, stepfather, uncle, neighbour or family friend - the story would have rated only a passing mention. But for the first few hours after James Bulger went missing, it was assumed that the abductor was an adult. It came to symbolise a moral panic about children - the threat of other people's, the defencelessness of our own. The BBC called it a "landmark case", and so it was.