An 11-year-old girl has been sentenced to life in detention after being found guilty at Newcastle Assizes of the manslaughter of two small boys.Mary Bell is said to have strangled the boys, aged four and three, "solely for the pleasure and excitement of killing".
The jury heard Mary, also known as May, was suffering from diminished responsibility at the time and therefore found her not guilty of murder.Her accomplice, known only as Norma, aged 13, who had been jointly charged with Mary, was acquitted.Mr Justice Cusack described her as dangerous and said there was a "very grave risk to other children if she is not closely watched".
Martin Brown, aged four, of Scotswood in Newcastle was found dead in a derelict house on 25 May. The body of Brian Howe, three, also of Scotswood, was found on waste ground near his home two months later.The two girls, who were playmates, also lived in the Scotswood area of Newcastle. They denied the charges.
The court had earlier heard Norma give evidence in which she described how Mary had tried to strangle Brian Howe. She said Mary ignored her pleas to stop hurting the boy so she left them and next time she saw Mary she was on her own with Brian's dog.Jurors were told despite the age difference, Mary was the more dominant personality with a very worldly attitude.
Rudolph Lyons QC said: "For example, when she was being questioned by a detective chief inspector about a charge of murder she said to him, 'I'll phone for some solicitors, they will get me out. This is being brainwashed."
He said she also tried to throw suspicion onto an innocent boy in a "very cunning and insidious manner".He continued: "Both girls well knew that what they did was wrong and what the results would be."
Home Office psychiatrist Dr David Westbury told the court Mary had a psychopathic disorder for which she needed treatment.
The judge said: "It is a most unhappy thing that, in all the resources of this country, it appears that there is no hospital available that is suitable for the accommodation of this girl."
There is no doubt that Mary committed horrific and heartbreaking acts. However, she was only 10 years old—what could have driven her to commit such crimes? Understanding the root causes of her behavior is essential. As the global rate of juvenile crime continues to rise, it is far more critical to explore the underlying factors that lead children to violence, such as trauma, neglect, and social environment. By addressing these issues, we can focus on prevention and rehabilitation, which are key to saving our children, rather than simply concentrating on how to judge or punish them. This proactive approach can help us create a safer and more compassionate society for future generations.
"I couldn't know at the time of the trial what Mary’s relatives (her aunts and uncles, her “dad,” She was required to call her stepfather uncle in front of outsiders. Billy Bell, and her fragile grandmother, Mrs McC.), all dazed and bewildered by the tragedy, would eventually bring themselves to tell me about Betty's rejection of Mary. “Take the thing away from me!” Betty Bell had screamed when they had tried to put the newborn baby into her arms. And in the first four years of Mary’s life, her mother had tried repeatedly to rid herself of this unwanted child. Time and again she attempted to hand her over to relatives and, twice, even to strangers. Four times she tried to kill her. On three occasions her eldest sister, Cath, and Cath’s husband, Jack, were so concerned they asked either to adopt Mary or at least to be allowed to care for her until she finished school. What I did not know until, with enormous difficulty, Mary told me last year, was that between the ages of four and eight her mother, then a prostitute, had exposed her to one of the worst cases of child sexual abuse I have ever encountered. Her brother, eighteen months younger than Mary, would have been too young to understand or articulate it, and I am certain that none of her relatives had any awareness of this part of Mary’s early life."
-----《Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill》Gitta Sereny
Early in her childhood, her cries for help remained unheard.
"At the time of my trial in 1968, I couldn't speak to anyone. Now I know that I was traumatized by the events and the formal trial, unable to "see" anyone. "It was a blur,". "It was all like a swirl... I couldn’t understand a lot of the words... Someone told me, ‘That's the jury,’ and I said, ‘What's that?’ and they said, ‘The people who decide what's going to happen to you,’ and I said, ‘How?’ and they said, ‘Shh.’ And then they said the judge was the man in the big chair in a red robe and that he was the most important man, so I always turned to him to answer when anybody asked me anything. And then my solicitor said that was rude and I must look straight in the face of people who asked me questions—that I had to try and ‘make a good impression.’ And my mother, who sat right behind me, kept hissing, ‘Stop fidgeting!’ every time I moved, and she slapped me with her flat hand on the back of my head or right between my shoulders each time I did it again and it hurt, but I couldn’t not do it."
Mary was easily described by the prosecutor as “vicious,” “cruel,” “terrifying”; even the judge was to allow the word “wicked” to slip into one of his perorations. Was it surprising that the media, not so much creating as responding to the tone set by the court and to the public outrage and fear, called Mary “a freak of nature,” “evil born,” an a “bad seed”?
In our education system, we often teach children to understand "rules" by encouraging them to "follow" them, where behaviors that are stopped communicate to kids:
"This is not right."
However, when it comes to emotional and feeling activities, a similar approach is often used. For example, parents might stop children from crying or prevent them from expressing intense anger. In these cases, children quickly learn that their emotions are "wrong," even though the emotions themselves cannot be ignored. As a result, hiding one's feelings becomes the most straightforward way for children to cope with their emotions.
We—whether as parents, neighbors, social workers, teachers, judges, lawyers, police, or government officials—to recognize children's distress, no matter how well hidden, we may one day be able to prevent them from committing offences, rather than prosecuting and punishing them inappropriately after they do.