Killer wins lifelong anonymity

CHILD killer Mary Bell and her teenage daughter yesterday won their British High Court bid for lifelong anonymity.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the family division, heard that disclosure of 46-year-old Bell's current identity and whereabouts would lead to harassment.

She said: "Exceptionally, I shall therefore grant injunctions contra mundum to protect the anonymity of X [Bell] and Y [the daughter]."

She said the granting of the injunctions was for reasons that were different from those behind her similar

decision in the case of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the killers of James Bulger.

"As far as I am aware, there are at present no other child killers who have been released from prison or detention.

It was in December 1968 that 11-year-old Bell was convicted of the manslaughter of Martin Brown, four, and Brian Howe, three. She was sentenced to prison and was released on licence in 1980.

Both Bell and her "innocent child" who turns 19 on May 25 are protected under existing injunctions.

Dame Elizabeth said that, despite media interest, Bell had been able to live a largely settled life in the community, although there had been a number of changes of identity and moves. She had now lived in the community for 23 years and she and her partner had created a family life and brought up her daughter, who had developed into a "charming and well-balanced girl".

She accepted evidence that mother and daughter were at "considerable risk of press intrusion and harassment, public stigma and ostracism" if their identities were disclosed.

Bell, she added, was a "vulnerable personality with mental health problems" and the prospect of "such intrusion" had already had an adverse effect upon her mental and physical health.

She went on: "Children who kill have a fascination for the public. It is the negation of all we would like to believe childhood should be.

"We like to live with the illusion of childhood innocence and the reality is both shocking and intriguing.

"Each time a child killer is tried or is the subject of publicity, the press tend to refer to earlier, similar cases."

Dame Elizabeth said that, in her view, probably the most important reason for granting anonymity was Bell's very abusive childhood and her current considerable mental health problems. A forensic psychiatrist had reported that Bell was damaged by "appalling early childhood experiences".

The report read: "She [Bell] has been further damaged by the acting out of childhood fantasies which led to her incarceration, to intense guilt, to stigma and to public opprobrium.

"Later she experienced further abuse, including some damage at the hands of a prison official, physical and emotional damage from her first male partner, and the very stressful experience of a journalist researching and writing her story."

The report concluded that any further press intrusion, particularly involving Bell's daughter, would amount to "further psychological abuse".

Dame Elizabeth said Bell's daughter had led a "disturbed and dislocated life". She had moved many times during her childhood five times under compulsion and had the alarming experience of being removed, at the age of four, from a school where she was unacceptable as a pupil because she was the daughter of her mother.