James Bulger

In January 2020, a 53-year-old woman from Ammanford received a prison sentence of eight months, suspended for 15 months. In November 2017, she had published an alleged photograph of Venables on Facebook with the advice "share this as much as possible." Lord Justice Davis said that the offence was "close to the line" for an immediate prison sentence, but suspended the sentence after an early admission of guilt and remorse by the woman.

On 31 January 2019, a man and a woman pleaded guilty to eight contempt of court offences at the High Court after they admitted posting photos on social media that they claimed identified Venables. Both received suspended prison sentences.

On 13 March 2019, actress Tina Malone was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence for posting Venables' identity on Facebook.

On 4 March 2019, Bulger's father Ralph lost a legal challenge to lift the lifelong order protecting Venables' anonymity. Judge Sir Andrew McFarlane turned down the request, saying that the "uniquely notorious" nature of the case meant that "There is a strong possibility, if not a probability, that if his identity were known he would be pursued resulting in grave and possibly fatal consequences."

In late June 2019, it was reported that British officials had considered resettling Venables in either Canada, Australia or New Zealand due to the high costs behind protecting his anonymity. British authorities had reportedly spent £65,000 in legal fees to keep Venables' identity a secret. In response to media coverage, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern remarked that Venables would need an exemption under the Immigration Act and that he should not "bother applying".

In January 2019, the short film Detainment was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 91st Academy Awards. The film is based on transcripts of the police interviews with Thompson and Venables after their arrests. The nomination was criticised by Bulger's mother, who was not consulted before the film's release. Bulger's mother circulated a petition to have the film removed from the nominations. The film's director, Vincent Lambe, said that he would not be withdrawing the film, saying "it would defeat the purpose of making the film".

On 7 February 2018, Venables pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images of children for a second time. He pleaded guilty via video link to three charges of making indecent images of children and one of possessing a paedophile manual. He admitted being in possession of 392 category A, 148 category B, and 630 category C child pornography images, and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. The parole board will decide whether to release him at the end of his sentence.

On 23 November 2017, it was reported that Venables had again been recalled to prison for possession of child abuse imagery. The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the reports. On 5 January 2018, Venables was charged with unspecified offences relating to indecent images of children.

On 14 July 2016, a woman from Margate in Kent was jailed for three years after sending Twitter messages to Bulger's mother in which she posed as one of his killers and his ghost. The sentence was reduced to ​2  ⁄2 years on appeal.

On 25 October 2016, a man was jailed for 26 weeks for stalking Denise Fergus. He had previously received a police warning for stalking her in 2008.

One of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Bulger's left eye. They kicked him, stamped on him and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Bulger's mouth and, according to police, some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, the boys dropped a 10-kilogram (22 lb) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, on Bulger. He sustained 10 skull fractures as a result of the bar striking his head. Alan Williams, the case's pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries—42 in total—that none could be isolated as the fatal blow. Thompson and Venables laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. After they left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Bulger's severed body was discovered two days later on 14 February. A forensic pathologist testified that he had died before he was struck by the train.

Some British tabloid newspapers claimed that the attack on Bulger was inspired by the film Child's Play 3, and campaigned for the rules on "video nasties" to be tightened. During the police investigation, it emerged that Child's Play 3 was one of the films that Jon Venables' father had rented in the months prior to the killing, but it was not established that Venables had ever watched it. One scene in the film shows the malevolent doll Chucky being splashed with blue paint during a paintball game. A Merseyside detective said, "We went through something like 200 titles rented by the Venables family. There were some you or I wouldn't want to see, but nothing—no scene, or plot, or dialogue—where you could put your finger on the freeze button and say that influenced a boy to go out and commit murder." Inspector Ray Simpson of Merseyside Police commented: "If you are going to link this murder to a film, you might as well link it to The Railway Children". The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 clarified the rules on the availability of certain types of video material to children.

On 25 February 2013, the Attorney General's Office announced that it was instituting contempt of court proceedings against several people who had allegedly published photographs online showing Thompson or Venables as adults. A spokesman commented "There are many different images circulating online claiming to be of Venables or Thompson; potentially innocent individuals may be wrongly identified as being one of the two men and placed in danger. The order, and its enforcement, is therefore intended to protect not only Venables and Thompson but also those members of the public who have been incorrectly identified as being one of the two men."

On 26 April 2013, two men received suspended jail sentences of nine months after admitting to contempt of court, by publishing photographs which they claimed to be of Venables and Thompson on Facebook and Twitter. The posts were seen by 24,000 people. According to BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman, the purpose of the prosecution was to ensure that the public was aware that Internet users were also subject to the law of contempt.

On 27 November 2013, a man from Liverpool received a fourteen-month suspended prison sentence for posting images on Twitter claiming to show Venables.

In November 2011, it was reported that officials had decided that Venables would stay in prison for the foreseeable future, as he would be likely to reveal his true identity if released. A Ministry of Justice spokesman declined to comment on the reports. On 4 July 2013, it was reported that the Parole Board for England and Wales had approved the release of Venables. On 3 September 2013, it was reported that Venables had been released from prison.

In March 2012, a 26-year-old man from Chorley, Lancashire was arrested after allegedly setting up a Facebook group with the title "What happened to Jamie Bulger was f**king hilarious." The man's computer was seized for further investigations.

Venables was eligible for parole in July 2011. On 27 June 2011, the parole board decided that Venables would remain in custody, and that his parole would not be considered again for at least another year.

On 4 May 2011, it was reported that Venables would once again be given a new identity, following what was described as a "serious security breach" which revealed an identity that he had been using before his imprisonment in 2010. Details of the breach could not be reported for legal reasons. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice commented: "Such a change of identity is extremely rare and granted only when the police assess that there is clear and credible evidence of a sustained threat to the offender's life on release into the community." The incident occurred after a man from Exeter posted photographs on a website devoted to identifying paedophiles, allegedly showing Venables as an adult and giving his name.

In March 2010, a call was made by England's Children's commissioner Maggie Atkinson to raise the age of criminal responsibility from ten to twelve. She said that the killers of James Bulger should have undergone "programmes" to help turn their lives around, rather than being prosecuted. The Ministry of Justice rejected the call, saying that children over the age of ten knew the difference "between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing".

In April 2010, a 19-year-old man from the Isle of Man was given a three-month suspended prison sentence for falsely claiming in a Facebook message that one of his former colleagues was Robert Thompson. In passing sentence, Deputy High Bailiff Alastair Montgomerie said that the teenager had "put that person at significant risk of serious harm" and in a "perilous position" by making the allegation.

On 2 March 2010, the Ministry of Justice revealed that Jon Venables had been returned to prison for an unspecified violation of the terms of his licence of release. The Justice Secretary Jack Straw stated that Venables had been returned to prison because of "extremely serious allegations", and stated that he was "unable to give further details of the reasons for Jon Venables's return to custody, because it was not in the public interest to do so." On 7 March, Venables was returned to prison accused of child pornography offences.

In a statement to the House of Commons on 8 March 2010, Jack Straw reiterated that it was "not in the interest of justice" to reveal the reason why Venables had been returned to custody. Baroness Butler-Sloss, the judge who made the decision to grant Venables anonymity in 2001, warned that he could be killed if his new identity was revealed.

On 21 June 2010, Venables was charged with possession and distribution of indecent images of children. It was alleged that he had downloaded 57 indecent images of children over a 12-month period to February 2010, and allowed other people to access the files through a peer-to-peer network. Venables faced two charges under the Protection of Children Act 1978. On 23 July 2010, Venables appeared at a court hearing at the Old Bailey via a video link, visible only to the judge hearing the case. He pleaded guilty to charges of downloading and distributing child pornography, and was given a sentence of two years' imprisonment.

At the court hearing, it emerged that Venables had posed in online chat rooms as 35-year-old Dawn "Dawnie" Smith, a married woman from Liverpool who boasted about abusing her 8-year-old daughter, in the hope of obtaining further child pornography. Venables had contacted his probation officer in February 2010, fearing that his new identity had been compromised at his place of work. When the officer arrived at his flat, Venables was attempting to remove or destroy the hard drive of his computer with a knife and a tin opener. The officer's suspicions were aroused, and the computer was taken away for examination leading to the discovery of the child pornography, which included children as young as two being raped by adults and penetrative rape of seven- or eight-year-olds.

In November 2010, a review of the National Probation Service handling of the case by Sir David Omand found that probation officers could not have prevented Venables from downloading child pornography. Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, commented that only 24-hour surveillance would have prevented Venables from downloading the material.

The critical theorist Terry Eagleton introduced his 2010 book On Evil with the story of Bulger's murder.

In August 2009, Australia's Seven Network used real footage of the abduction to promote its crime drama City Homicide. The use of the footage was criticised by Bulger's mother, and Seven apologised. On 24 August 2009, co-hosts on Seven's breakfast show Sunrise asked whether the killers were now living in Australia, in an apparent tie-in with that week's episode of City Homicide. They answered the question the next day, relaying the Australian government's denial that the killers had been settled in the country.

A storyline in Hollyoaks, set to begin in December 2009, was cancelled after the makers gave Bulger's mother Denise Fergus a special screening. The storyline was to feature Loretta Jones and her friend Chrissy, who had been given new identities before arriving in the village, after being convicted of murdering a child at the age of 12.

On 14 March 2008, an appeal to set up a Red Balloon Learner Centre in Merseyside in memory of James Bulger was launched by Denise Fergus, his mother, and Esther Rantzen. A memorial garden in Bulger's memory was created in Sacred Heart Primary School in his hometown of Kirkby, the school he would have been expected to attend had he not been murdered.

The judge, Mr Justice Bean, ruled that Venables's new identity could not be revealed, but the media were allowed to report that he had been living in Cheshire at the time of his arrest. The High Court also heard that Venables had been arrested on suspicion of affray in September 2008, following a drunken street fight with another man. Later the same year, he was cautioned for possession of cocaine.

In 2008, Swedish playwright Niklas Rådström used the interview transcripts from interrogations with the murderers and their families to recreate the story. His play, Monsters, opened to mixed reviews at the Arcola Theatre in London in May 2009.

In April 2007, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act confirmed that the Home Office had spent £13,000 on an injunction to prevent a foreign magazine from revealing the new identities of Thompson and Venables.

In June 2007, a computer game based on the television series Law & Order, titled Law & Order: Double or Nothing (made in 2003), was withdrawn from stores in the UK following reports that it contained an image of Bulger. The image in question is the CCTV frame of Bulger being led away by his killers, Thompson and Venables. The scene in the game involves a computer-generated detective pointing out the picture, which is meant to represent a fictional child abduction that the player is then asked to investigate. Bulger's family, along with many others, complained and the game was subsequently withdrawn by its UK distributor, GSP. The game's developer, Legacy Interactive, released a statement in which it apologised for the image's inclusion in the game; according to the statement, the image's use was "inadvertent" and took place "without any knowledge of the crime, which occurred in the UK and was minimally publicized in the United States".

Venables's return to prison revived a false claim that a man from Fleetwood, Lancashire was Jon Venables. The claim was reported and dismissed in September 2005, but reappeared in March 2010 when it was circulated widely via SMS messages and Facebook.

No significant publication or vigilante action against Thompson or Venables has occurred. Despite this, Bulger's mother, Denise, told how in 2004 she received a tip-off from an anonymous source that helped her locate Thompson. Upon seeing him, she was "paralysed with hatred" and was unable to confront him.

Shortly after the trial, and after the judge had recommended a minimum sentence of eight years, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, the Lord Chief Justice, recommended that the two boys should serve a minimum of ten years, which would have made them eligible for release in February 2003 at the age of 20. The editors of the Sun newspaper handed a petition bearing nearly 280,000 signatures to Home Secretary Michael Howard, in a bid to increase the time spent by both boys in custody. This campaign was successful, and in July 1994, Howard announced that the boys would be kept in custody for a minimum of fifteen years, meaning that they would not be considered for release until February 2008, by which time they would be 25 years old.

In June 2001, after a six-month review, the parole board ruled the boys were no longer a threat to public safety and could be released as their minimum tariff had expired in February of that year. The Home Secretary David Blunkett approved the decision, and they were released a few weeks later on lifelong licence after serving eight years. Both men "were given new identities and moved to secret locations under a 'witness protection'-style programme." This was supported by the fabrication of passports, national insurance numbers, qualification certificates and medical records. Blunkett added his own conditions to their licence and insisted on being sent daily updates on the men's actions.

The terms of their release included the following: they were not allowed to contact each other or Bulger's family; they were prohibited from visiting the Merseyside region; curfews may be imposed on them and they must report to probation officers. If they breached the rules or were deemed a risk to the public, they could be returned to prison. An injunction was imposed on the media after the trial, preventing the publication of details about Thompson and Venables. The worldwide injunction was kept in force following their release on parole, so their new identities and locations could not be published. Blunkett stated in 2001: "The injunction was granted because there was a real and strong possibility that their lives would be at risk if their identities became known."

The Manchester Evening News published details that suggested the names of the secure institutions in which the pair were housed, in breach of the injunction against publicity which had been renewed early in 2001. In December that year, the paper was fined £30,000 for contempt of court and ordered to pay costs of £120,000.

Shortly before his 2001 release, when aged 17, Venables was alleged to have had sex with a woman who worked at the Red Bank secure unit where he was held. In April 2011, in the aftermath of his 2010 imprisonment, these allegations were outlined in a Sunday Times Magazine article written by David James Smith, who had been following the Bulger case since the 1993 trial, and again later in a BBC documentary titled Jon Venables: What Went Wrong? The female staff member was accused of sexual misconduct and suspended; she never returned to work at Red Bank. A spokesman for St Helens Borough Council denied that the incident had been covered up, saying: "All allegations were thoroughly investigated by an independent team on the orders of the Home Office and chaired by Arthur de Frischling, a retired prison governor." Venables began living independently in March 2002. Some time thereafter, he began a relationship with a woman who had a five-year-old child. It is not known whether Venables had already begun downloading child pornography at the time of dating the woman, though he denies having ever met the child. In 2005, when Venables was 23, his probation officer met another girlfriend of his, who was aged 17. After a number of "young girlfriends", it was presumed that Venables was having a delayed adolescence. After a period of apparently reduced supervision, Venables began excessively drinking, taking drugs, downloading child pornography, as well as visiting Merseyside (a breach of his licence). In 2008, a new probation officer noted that he spent "a great deal of leisure time" playing video games and on the Internet. In September that year, Venables was arrested on suspicion of affray, following a fight outside a nightclub; he claimed he was acting in self-defence and the charges were later dropped after he agreed to go on an alcohol-awareness course. Three months later he was found to be in possession of cocaine; he was subjected to a curfew. On two separate occasions, Venables revealed his true identity to a friend.

The Observer revealed that both Venables and Thompson had passed A-levels during their sentences. The paper also told how the Bulger family's lawyers had consulted psychiatric experts in order to present the parole panel with a report which suggested that Thompson is an undiagnosed psychopath, citing his lack of remorse during his trial and arrest. The report was ultimately dismissed. However, his lack of remorse at the time, in stark contrast to Venables, led to considerable scrutiny from the parole panel. Upon release, both Thompson and Venables had lost all trace of their Liverpool accents. In a psychiatric report prepared in 2000 before Venables' release, he was described as posing a "trivial" risk to the public and unlikely to reoffend. The chances of his successful rehabilitation were described as "very high".

Each boy sat in view of the court on raised chairs (so they could see out of the dock designed for adults) accompanied by two social workers. Although they were separated from their parents, they were within touching distance when their families attended the trial. News stories reported the demeanour of the defendants. These aspects were later criticised by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 1999 that they had not received a fair trial by being tried in public in an adult court. At the trial, the lead prosecution counsel Richard Henriques QC successfully rebutted the principle of doli incapax, which presumes that young children cannot be held legally responsible for their actions.

In 1999, lawyers for Thompson and Venables appealed to the European Court of Human Rights that the boys' trial had not been impartial, since they were too young to follow proceedings and understand an adult court. The European Court dismissed their claim that the trial was inhuman and degrading treatment, but upheld their claim they were denied a fair hearing by the nature of the court proceedings. The European Court also held that Michael Howard's intervention had led to a "highly charged atmosphere", which resulted in an unfair judgment. On 15 March 1999, the court in Strasbourg ruled by 14 votes to five that there had been a violation of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding the fairness of the trial of Thompson and Venables, stating: "The public trial process in an adult court must be regarded in the case of an 11-year-old child as a severely intimidating procedure."

In September 1999, Bulger's parents appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, but failed to persuade the court that a victim of a crime has the right to be involved in determining the sentence of the perpetrator. The European Court case led to the new Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, reviewing the minimum sentence. In October 2000, he recommended the tariff be reduced from ten to eight years, adding that young offender institutions were a "corrosive atmosphere" for the juveniles.

Lord Donaldson criticised Howard's intervention, describing the increased tariff as "institutionalised vengeance ... [by] a politician playing to the gallery." The increased minimum term was overturned in 1997 by the House of Lords that ruled it "unlawful" for the Home Secretary to decide on minimum sentences for young offenders. The High Court and European Court of Human Rights have since ruled that, though the parliament may set minimum and maximum terms for individual categories of crime, it is the responsibility of the trial judge, with the benefit of all the evidence and argument from both prosecution and defence counsel, to determine the minimum term in individual criminal cases.

In the months after the trial, and following the birth of their second son, the marriage of Bulger's parents, Ralph and Denise, broke down; they divorced in 1995. Denise married Stuart Fergus and they have two sons together. Ralph also remarried and has three daughters by his second wife.

They were found guilty on 24 November 1993, making them the youngest convicted murderers in modern British history. They were sentenced to detention during Her Majesty's pleasure until a Parole Board decision in June 2001 recommended their release on a lifelong licence aged 18. In 2010, Venables was sent to prison for breaching the terms of his licence, and was released on parole again in 2013. In November 2017, Venables was again sent to prison for possessing child abuse images on his computer.

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle taken on Friday, 12 February 1993, showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target. The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly. Throughout the day, Thompson and Venables were seen stealing various items including sweets, a troll doll, some batteries and a can of blue paint, some of which were later found at the murder scene. One of the boys later revealed that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead him to the busy road alongside the shopping centre, and push him into the path of oncoming traffic.

The boys were each charged with the murder of James Bulger on 20 February 1993, and appeared at South Sefton Youth Court on 22 February 1993, where they were remanded in custody to await trial. In the aftermath of their arrest, and throughout the media accounts of their trial, the boys were referred to as 'Child A' (Thompson) and 'Child B' (Venables). Awaiting trial, they were held in the secure units where they would eventually be sentenced to be detained indefinitely.

Up to five hundred protesters gathered at South Sefton Magistrates' Court during the boys' initial court appearances. The parents of the accused were moved to different parts of the country and assumed new identities following death threats from vigilantes. The full trial opened at Preston Crown Court on 1 November 1993, conducted as an adult trial with the accused in the dock away from their parents, and the judge and court officials in legal regalia. The boys denied the charges of murder, abduction and attempted abduction. The attempted abduction charge related to an incident at the New Strand Shopping Centre earlier on 12 February 1993, the day of Bulger's death. Thompson and Venables had attempted to lead away another two-year-old boy, but had been prevented by the boy's mother.

The boys, by then aged 11, were found guilty of Bulger's murder at the Preston court on 24 November 1993, becoming the youngest convicted murderers of the 20th century. The judge, Mr Justice Morland, told Thompson and Venables that they had committed a crime of "unparalleled evil and barbarity... In my judgment, your conduct was both cunning and very wicked." Morland sentenced them to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, with a recommendation that they should be kept in custody for "very, very many years to come", recommending a minimum term of eight years. At the close of the trial, the judge lifted reporting restrictions and allowed the names of the killers to be released, saying "I did this because the public interest overrode the interest of the defendants... There was a need for an informed public debate on crimes committed by young children." Sir David Omand later criticised this decision and outlined the difficulties created by it in his 2010 review of the probation service's handling of the case.

James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993) was a 2-year-old boy from Kirkby, Merseyside, England, who was abducted, tortured and killed by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. Bulger was led away from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle as his mother had taken her eyes off him momentarily. His mutilated body was found on a railway line 2.5 miles (4 km) away in Walton, Liverpool, two days after his abduction. Thompson and Venables were charged on 20 February 1993 with Bulger's abduction and murder.