Public has no right to know Jon Venables's "new crime"

There are few crimes as sickening as what Jon Venables and Robert Thompson did to James Bulger. Two days before St Valentine’s Day 1993, Thompson and Venables, both just 10-years-old, abducted James Bulger, a month away from his third birthday, from Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, Merseyside. James had been with his mother Denise and he wandered away from her as she shopped in a butcher’s.

Thompson and Venables who were playing truant from school had spent six hours trying to steal a child. When James left his mother’s side at 3.40pm they pounced and left the shopping centre within two minutes. They took him 2½ miles to a railway line near Walton Lane police station and Anfield cemetery. There they sexually abused him, threw paint in his eyes before beating him to death using bricks and an iron bar. They pushed a battery up his back passage.

After they had amused themselves, they placed his body on the track covering it with bricks and bits of wood where it was cut in two by a passing train. James’s body lay undiscovered until 14 February. CCTV allowed the police to identify the two killers and they arrested Thompson and Venables and charged them with murder on 20 February. They were also charged with the attempted abduction of another child on the same day. Remarkably, thirty-eight people had seen the evil duo with James Bulger but none had thought to intervene even though he was crying and some testified that they had seen a large wound on his head and saw him being kicked.

The trial of Thompson and Venables opened on 1 November 1993 at Preston Crown Court. Twenty-three days later, they became the youngest people to be convicted of murder in British criminal history. Venables cried in court but Thompson remained impassive. The judge, Sir Michael Morland, recommended that they serve a minimum of eight years but the Lord Chief Justice Taylor of Gosforth raised their minimum sentence to 10 years. Home Secretary Michael Howard further increased their sentence to 15 years after a petition raised by James’s parents collected 207,000 signatures.

As it turned out, they did serve eight years being released in June 2001 and given new identities. Now Venables is back in prison for "serious offences". The authorities are refusing to say what he did to be returned to prison lest it prejudice a trial. James Bulger's mother, now Denise Fergus, has asked to be told what Venables has done. So far, she has not been told.

I have always been of the opinion that some crimes are just too hideous for the perpetrators ever to be released, irrespective of their age at the time. This is one such crime. Thompson and Venables should have been locked away until they were very old men.

However, the course of justice takes precedence over what Venables is alleged to have done. The public has no right to know what he is accused of before he comes to trial. The same goes for the Bulger family. Will knowing bring James back? Will it comfort them? No, of course not.

Some years ago, a new bride was murdered by two sisters. They were rightly convicted but later released after it was shown that press coverage had prejudiced their right to a fair trial. A innocent woman is in her grave while two callous murderers walk the streets.

Whatever Jon Venables is accused of doing, it is right for justice to take its course and there is no reason to satisfy the prurience of the public.