Venables’ solicitor backs calls to unmask killer
THE lawyer of child killer Jon Venables has backed calls for the killer’s lifelong anonymity to be lifted.
Laurence Lee spoke out as photographs purporting to show Venables – one of two schoolboys who tortured and killed toddler James Bulger in 1993 – living under his secret identity were published on social media yesterday.
The images were posted after 35-yearold Venables was jailed for 40 months for child porn offences.
‘He’s had his chance,’ said Mr Lee, who was Venables’ solicitor when he and Robert Thompson, then both ten, were arrested for the murder of James Bulger in 1993.
Mr Lee told Good Morning Britain: ‘I have every sympathy with the Bulger family and if I were in their shoes I would be clamouring as loudly as they are for his anonymity to be lifted. He’s committed two very, very serious sets of offences and anonymity has been wasted on him, a lot of people would say ... As a boring lawyer that has to be balanced – because there’s a difference between being a decent human being sometimes and having to look at it through a lawyer’s eyes. If there was no anonymity we would be returning to the mob rule scenes that we faced outside court back in 1993.
‘That is why in all probability his anonymity will not be lifted but I have every sympathy for anybody who says that it should be. When I first set eyes on him in the cell he looked like an eight-year-old… and I thought he couldn’t possibly be involved in something as evil and heinous as this.
‘It was only in subsequent interviews it was clear he’d been lying and when he was found out he broke into hysterical tears and was hugging his mum. It was then I realised he was capable of this awful, heinous crime.’
Also speaking on the ITV programme, the Bulgers’ former police family liaison officer agreed Venables’s anonymity should possibly be lifted. But she added: ‘It’s very doubtful it will be lifted. They’re going to take the view they have to safeguard Venables, which is sad.’
James’s father Ralph, 51, launched a court bid to have the anonymity order overturned after Venables was convicted on Wednesday of hiding 1,170 images of child abuse as well as a paedophile manual.
Mr Bulger’s former wife Denise Fergus has also called for an investigation into the handling of the case and last night a petition for an inquiry had attracted some 27,000 signatures.
Venables and Thompson had lifetime anonymity orders granted by the London High Court in 2001. The injunction means no pictures or details can be published that could identify them.
England’s Attorney General was investigating complaints last night that social media users had breached the anonymity order. Despite the risk of a prison sentence, users posted images claiming to show Venables as an adult taken after his release from jail in 2001.
‘He’s had his chance’