James Bulger killer Jon Venables confessed real identity to strangers as mental state crumbled

Jon Venables, one of the killers of the Liverpool toddler James Bulger, had descended into a “persistent state of self-disclosure” in which he felt compelled to tell others his real identity in the months before his return to prison, the Observer has been told.

The 27-year-old’s mental state had become so fragile that he would regularly reveal his identity to strangers – something that had put him at risk of attack.

Sources said Venables had become a heavy drinker and there have also been claims that he used drugs. As Venables entered into an increasingly disturbed psychological state, he had become embroiled in a series of confrontations and fights, the sources said.

The Ministry of Justice has been criticised for refusing to disclose why Venables was recalled. In statement issued yesterday, the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, said: “It was not in the public interest to do so. Our motivation throughout has been solely to ensure that some extremely serious allegations are properly investigated and that justice is done.”

An injunction was issued against the Sun newspaper on Friday night to prevent it from printing a story detailing Venables’s alleged offences.

His deteriorating mental condition has seen him transferred into the hospital wing of the prison where he is being held in an isolation room. He is understood to have told fellow prisoners and staff who he is, making it more likely that his new identity will leak out.

“It’s an extremely difficult position for the authorities to be in,” said Harry Fletcher, assistant secretary general of the probation union, Napo. “If they go ahead with court proceedings, this could undermine his anonymity but the fact he is self-disclosing his identity means giving him another new identity becomes almost inevitable. This situation is fraught with difficulties.”

Venables’s former solicitor, Laurence Lee, has warned that sending his client back to prison would mean the authorities would “have a tinderbox on their hands”. “He has been living in the community with a new identity for nine years and by recalling him they have risked everything that has been achieved,” Lee said. “Now every prisoner and prison officer will be trying to work out which of the recalls in the last week is Venables. It’s an absolute nightmare.”

The allegations have revived interest in a case that shocked the nation ever since it emerged that Venables and his then friend, Robert Thompson, had abducted toddler James Bulger from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, on 12 February 1993, and beaten him to death on a railway line. Venables and Thompson, who were both 10 at the time, became the youngest people to be jailed for murder in English criminal history. At their trial, it emerged that they had struck the toddler with a battery and bricks and then left him for dead.

After intensive rehabilitation, the pair were given new identities and released from custody under licence in 2001, a move that prompted a national debate as to whether children who have committed serious crimes should be treated in the same way as adults.

James Bulger’s parents, Ralph and Denise, protested at the pair’s release on a life licence, which came after the European Court of Human Rights overturned a decision by the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, to extend their sentences. The stringent conditions of their licences meant the pair were not allowed to return to Liverpool or contact each other again. There is no evidence Venables was recalled for breaching either of these specific conditions.

Only a handful of people are believed to know Venables’s identity but this is likely to have been compromised by his recent reintroduction into the judicial system. Relatively few people who have served a life sentence are recalled – last year there were only 89 – making it likely that Venables’s identity would have become common currency within the prison system even before he had started revealing it to others himself.

Experts said they were not surprised Venables had suffered acute psychological pressures in the months before his recall to prison. Fletcher said Mary Bell, the 11-year-old jailed in 1968 for the manslaughter of two young boys, eventually disclosed her identity to others, including a journalist with whom she worked on a book about her case, years after she had been released.

Ian Cumming, a consultant forensic psychiatrist who has worked with serious offenders in the prison system, said “the national demonisation of an individual was a heavy burden” that could explain why someone would find it difficult to keep their past hidden forever.

“Double lives are a burden for people,” Cumming said. “Just juggling two relationships is stressful and the secrecy takes its toll. People are not necessarily well equipped to do this sort of thing; it’s not their natural state.”

The Bulgers have said Venables is now back “where he belongs”. Of the two killers, it has been suggested that Venables was the more impressionable and the one who had first felt remorse for his actions. He was seen to ask his solicitor to apologise on his behalf to the Bulgers shortly after being sentenced.

But it emerged that Venables had a history of violence even before the Bulger murder, having tried to throttle a fellow classmate. Questions about his role in the murder were also raised by CCTV footage that show him singling out the toddler in the shopping centre.

He was considered, however, a model of rehabilitation when he came to be released. Lee said: “If someone said to me one of the two boys has breached his licence, I would have put my house on it being Thompson.”

HLM’s note –

Venables is currently being housed in Woodhill Prison near Milton Keynes.  I hope he has an unfortunate encounter with Charlie Bronson, might save the tax payer a million squid!