Mountjoy governor says child killer ‘not evil’

MOUNTJOY governor John Lonergan has said he does not believe Jon Venables is evil and was critical of the British system that tried him as an adult for a crime he committed as a child.

Now 27, Venables was just 10 when he and Robert Thompson carried out the brutal killing of James Bulger in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1993.

He was re-arrested last week and is being investigated by police over reported allegations he was looking at child pornography.

Venables and Thompson were released with new identities in 2001, having served eight years for the murder. They are on life licence, meaning they can be brought back to prison at any time if they re-offend or if they are thought to pose a threat to the public.

Speaking to Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ radio, governor of Mountjoy prison John Lonergan said he did not believe that Venables was intrinsically evil and criticised the British legal system which allowed Venables and Thompson to be tried as adults for a crime committed as children.

“Obviously, it’s a very complex case. First of all, they were children. I don’t think the English society responded very humanely to them. They treated them like adults. They were children and while the crime was horrific, they were still only 10-year-olds. That’s the first thing.

“You can’t just erase away what happened from 10 to 27. There is 17 years in between. What happened in that period of time. They were in detention. What happened them during detention?” Mr Lonergan also questioned the psychological impact of having to change his identity at such a young age may have had on Venables. “The second very significant part is the false identity. That’s a very fundamental psychological and emotional thing for anybody to cope with: ‘I’m not who I am. I am somebody else.’ Who knows what has gone on in that child’s life, both from a nurturing perspective and from a nature perspective,” he said.

The Mountjoy governor said he believed that while people such as Venables were capable of evil acts, nobody was intrinsically evil. “I am well aware of many, many people in Ireland whose behaviour was evil and have been guilty of very evil acts but it is a behaviour. I honestly believe, and this has been my experience, that there is no such thing as a totally evil person,” he said.