Introduction

Abstract

Just the title of Gitta Sereny’s book Cries Unheard is evocative. It tells the tale of the troubled and horror-filled childhood of a girl in the North of England. An account that warrants the deepest compassion towards a young life abused and distorted. However, is this what we see? For this story is that of double child murderer Mary Bell, who at just ten years old took the lives of two toddlers. Such a terrible crime saw Mary labelled as ‘a freak of nature’, ‘evil born’, a ‘bad seed’ (Sereny 1998: 11). The power of this book is the contrasting views it paints, which challenge our opinions and attitudes towards children who have committed the gravest of acts. Is this child, now an adult, to be seen as victim or as offender? How is her behaviour to be judged? As a consequence of her social situation, as a result of an innate capacity to do wrong, or as a decision rationally taken and executed with knowing intention? This may have been the act of one child, but such cases impact on social consciousness, therefore the answers to these questions have wider ramifications. In fact they strike at the heart of society’s relationship with children and morality.