Life Sentence For Child

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31866, 19 December 1968, Page 17

Life Sentence For Child

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, December 18. The sentencing of a schoolgirl, aged 11, to life detention for strangling two small boys has posed a problem to Government ministers.

For Britain apparently has no suitably secure institution where Mary Bell, described as “a mentally sick, precocious and cruel child," can receive psychiatric treatment. Mary, legally still an infant, was sentenced to life detention at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, yesterday after she had been found guilty of manslaughter. The jury expressed the view that the accused child, when she strangled the two boys by squeezing their necks, was suffering from diminished responsibility and it found her not guilty of murder.

Her close friend and not a relative, Norma Bell, aged 13, who was jointly charged with Mary, was acquitted. In the nine-day trial, the two girls—the children of next-door neighbours—were accused of murdering Martin

Brown, aged four, and Brian Howe, aged three. They pleaded not guilty. Mary, described during the trial as “a manipulator of children,” was said to have exercised a powerful influence over the slower-witted Norma. When Norma was discharged she went home for tea with her parents and then to a hospital. Mr Justice Cusack, the trial judge, said Ihe hoped nobody would question her about the affair.

Mary was sent, temporarily, to a remand centre where accused persons await trial. The judge, sentencing her to lifetime in detention, said it was “a most unhappy thing” that no treatment centre could take her as an inmate. He had been told in court that no mental hospital could take her for what psychiatrists said would be years of treatment. A Government consultant said that because childcare units in special topsecurity hospitals had been abolished they could no longer take anyone under the age of 15.

Mr Justice Cusack commented: “This girl is dangerous. Steps must be taken to protect people who might be the subject of her attentions. ’ Some legal authorities speculate that a special unit might have to be created solely for Mary Bell’s benefit. The problem today awaits the urgent attention of the Home Secretary (Mr James Callaghan) and the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Richard Crossman).

The case seems likely to renew the controversy about the impact of “television violence” on young minds. Mary heard prosecuting counsel say: “We have plumbed unprecedented depths of wickedness ... In Mary you have a most abnormal child—aggressive, cruel, incapable of remorse; a girl, moreover, possessed of a dominating personality, with a somewhat unusual intelligence and a degree of cunning that is almost terrifying.”

Mary, whose adult-like assurance shocked detectives and psychiatrists questioning her, made references to scenes of violence on television. During cross-examination she admitted watching the effects of strangulation on thriller programmes such as “The Saint.” Mary was asked if she knew what would happen if the throat of a three-year-old boy was squeezed. “Yes,” she replied, “he would die. I

know because I watched ‘The Saint’.” Earlier, when detectives had detained her, she had said: “I will phone for some solicitors. They will get me out.” And, as a police station telephone rang, she said: “Is this place bugged?” In London, social welfare workers said last night that too little research was done into how violence on television affects young viewers. Commenting on the case, a Labour member of Parliament, Mr Raphael Tuck, said he would press for the stricter censorship of films on television. And a city councillor who is also a volunteer social worker in the Scotswood district of Newcastle where Mary Bell lived, said: “It’s a tough area. Children roam unsupervised late at night and watch unsuitable television programmes. I don’t think there is much good home life or religious influence hereabouts.”