£5million bill to ‘rehabilitate’ him

TAxPAyERS have been left to foot a £5million bill for efforts to rehabilitate Venables.

It cost £1.5million to keep him in a young offenders institution after he was convicted of murder in 1993.

A further £1.5million has been spent on creating at least two new identities for him, the second after his cover was blown.

At least £100,000 a year went on monitoring Venables after his initial release in June 2001. Public money was also spent on help in keeping his past a secret. He has been rehomed more than once amid concerns his identity had become known.

He also failed to stay out of trouble, being arrested for affray and possession of cocaine in 2008. In 2010, he appeared by video link at the Old Bailey and admitted possessing child porn images, some of which showed girls as young as eight being raped and toddlers being abused. The court heard he had posed online as a 35-year-old married woman called Dawn to trade images with another paedophile.

The case cost around £250,000 and his three years in a Category A prison following the conviction cost at least £500,000 – official records revealed that it cost £279,000 for just the first 18 months.

Venables was freed on parole in 2013 after being given a second new identity. There was controversy because he was not made to wear a satellite tag to monitor his movements.

Venables In 2015, he was able to join a popular dating website and James Bulger’s mother Denise Fergus said she feared women may have contacted her son’s killer without having any idea of his true identity.

Now back in prison, he is thought to be in isolation from other inmates for his own safety. On his previous recall, he was held in a selfcontained annexe and monitored round the clock by at least two prison officers.

Critics said the new allegations prove that the lengthy and expensive efforts to rehabilitate Venables have failed miserably.

Retired Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, who led the investigation into James’s murder, said: ‘I have always said that the authorities failed to acknowledge the severity and the sexual element [of the case].

‘I was not surprised when I heard that he had been arrested yet again, there are issues there that should have been dealt with without being in the position we are in now.’