The mother of James Bulger has pleaded with the Prime Minister to stop killer Jon Venables from being released ahead of a parole hearing.
Denise Fergus, 53, has written to Liz Truss saying that Venables, 40, ‘still poses a serious danger to other families like ours’.
Venables and Robert Thompson were both 10 when they kidnapped, tortured and murdered two-year-old James in Liverpool almost 30 years ago.
They were released on licence after serving eight years in secure children’s units and were given life time anonymity.
Venables has since been returned to prison twice for child abuse images and is still behind bars.
He has launched a bid for parole and could be freed this year.
Ms Fergus told The Mirror: ‘We need the Prime Minister or her new Justice Secretary to step in immediately to make sure my son’s killer stays firmly behind bars where he belongs. We are calling on them to, please, intervene now.
Denise Fergus, 53, has written to Liz Truss saying that Jon Venables, 40, ‘still poses a serious danger to other families like ours’
James Bulger, two, was found dead after he went missing in the Bootle area of Liverpool in 1993
‘I’ve got a list of questions I want to put to her and answers that I need. I don’t want to be fobbed off.
‘I am saying exactly how I feel. I’m saying how I feel so let down, again.’
It comes after she said she was ‘over the moon’ that the House of Commons agreed to debate her son’s murder and why his killer has been free to commit more offences.
Following a face-to-face meeting with then Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, Ms Fergus received an email saying the debate had been agreed and she would be notified when a date was officially set.
However, Mr Raab was sacked when Ms Truss became PM last month and she shelved the planned Bill of Rights reform.
Mr Raab’s new laws would have allowed ministers to block the release of the most dangerous criminals for public safety reasons.
It was also reported that new Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis has offered to meet Ms Fergus next week.
Venables (left) and Robert Thompson (right) were both 10 when they kidnapped, tortured and murdered two-year-old James in Liverpool 25 years ago
A MoJ spokesperson said: ‘The Justice Secretary has huge respect for Ms Fergus and her single-minded determination that no other families should go through her horrifying experience.
‘He will be offering to meet her in person as soon as possible. He shares her desire to reform the parole process so that the public is always protected from the most dangerous offenders.’
In Venables’ last failed bid for freedom in 2020, the Board said he still showed an attraction to sexual violence as the reason for keeping him locked up.
Venables and Thompson were given new identities to protect them from the risk of vigilante attacks and were made the subjects of so-called ‘Mary Bell orders’, lifetime anonymity court injunctions.
At the time of Venables’ first release from prison, a psychiatrist ruled that he did not pose a danger to the public and was extremely unlikely to commit any further offences.
Years later it emerged Venables had been detained in Vardy House after the murder trial – a small eight-bed section of Red Bank secure unit in St Helens on Merseyside. It’s said he made such good progress he was kept there for eight years, despite it actually being a short-stay remand unit.
A surveillance camera shows the abduction of two-year-old James Bulger from the Bootle Strand shopping mall February 12 1993
Venables’ release under his new identity went ahead and he is known to have been living independently by March 2002 – some time thereafter beginning a relationship with a woman who had a five-year-old child, although he denies having ever met them.
He was then reported to have had a number of ‘younger girlfriends’ which suggested he was enjoying a delayed adolescence.
He developed drinking and drug problems, and he compromised his identity at least twice by telling friends he was a convicted murderer.
In September 2008, he was arrested on suspicion of affray after a drunken brawl and was given a formal warning by the probation service for breaching the good behaviour terms of his licence.
Later the same year, Venables was cautioned for possession of cocaine after he was found with a small amount of the class A drug.
Ms Fergus said she has ’29 years of unanswered questions’ as she welcomed the decision to discuss the inquiry into James’ (pictured) horrific torture and murder in 1993
When a probation officer later visited his home in Cheshire to discuss his fears that he could be in danger, he was attempting to destroy the hard drive of his computer.
The hard drive was later examined by police, who discovered that it contained dozens of indecent images of children.
Venables admitted he had posed online as a 35-year-old woman who had abused her eight-year-old daughter, and was returned to prison.
During his latest imprisonment he was given yet another new identity because of the risk posed by a previous security breach. Venables was paroled again in 2013 and took on his fourth new identity.
He was sentenced to 40 months in prison after pleading guilty to having more than 1,000 indecent images of children, in February 2018.
Robert Thompson has not re-offended since being released on licence when he was 18 years old.
In 2006, reports claimed Thompson was in a stable gay relationship at age 23 and had settled well into his local community in the North West.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Daily Mail
