Unmask Venables, says his ex-lawyer
As Bulger killer’s new identity is leaked on web, his old solicitor says he should lose anonymity
JON Venables’ former lawyer has backed calls for the killer’s lifelong anonymity to be lifted.
Laurence Lee spoke out as dozens of photographs purporting to show him living under his new secret identity were published on social media yesterday.
The images were posted after 35year-old Venables was jailed for 40 months for child porn offences.
‘He’s had his chance,’ said Mr Lee, who was Venables’s solicitor when he and Robert Thompson 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 eightyear-old – very polite, very respectful like his mum was 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 and hugging the officers. 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 Mandy Waller 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 High Court bid to have the anonymity order overturned after Venables was convicted on Wednesday of hiding 1,170 vile images of child abuse as well as a paedophile manual.
‘He’s had his chance’
His ex-wife Denise Fergus has also called for an investigation into the official handling of the case and last night a petition for a public inquiry had attracted more than 27,000 signatures.
Venables and Thompson had lifetime anonymity orders granted by the High Court in 2001. Dame Elizabeth ButlerSloss said there was ‘the real possibility of serious physical harm and possibly death from vengeful members of the public and from the Bulger family’.
The injunction means no pictures or details can be published that could identify them.
If an order is overturned it is believed it would be the first time it in UK legal history.
The case is due to be heard by the High Court later this year. Lawyers representing the Bulger family will argue the order needs to be reassessed given the nature of the subsequent offending.
For the injunction to be lifted the court would have to be satisfied Venables was no longer at risk of physical harm as a result of his identity being made public. It is estimated that the total cost of his new protected identities has reached £1.5million.
The authorities have had to relocate him under a new name as many as four times.
The Attorney General was investigating complaints last night that a number of social media users had breached the anonymity order.
Despite the risk of a substantial prison sentence, users posted images claiming to show Venables as an adult taken after his release from jail in 2001.
He had served eight years for the kidnap, torture and murder of two-year-old James in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1993.
A spokesman for the Attorney General said: ‘We have received complaints that the anonymity order has been breached and we are investigating.’