Cries Unheard (55 page)
Authors: Gitta Sereny
Finally, the most important question the British media scandal raised is how far do we believe that a person, child or adult, who commits a crime for which he or she is convicted and punished, has paid for the crime when released from detention? Do we believe in rehabilitation?
Do we believe a released prisoner above all a ‘lifer’ whose release is always and everywhere accompanied by special regulations has regained the right to a normal working and family life? Do we in fact believe in redemption?
appendix 1
mary bell: documents
appendix 1 /391
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“We Murder’ notes (see page 79) ” J murder SO That I may come back’
appendix 1 /391
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“WE did murder Martain brown, fuck of you BAstArd’
appendix 1 /393
“YOU ArE micey y BecuaSe we murderd Martain GO Brown you BEttER Look out THErE arE MurdErs aBout By FANNY AND and auld Faggot you srcews’
394/ appendix 1
Page from Mary Bell’s school “Newsbook’ (see page 73)
appendix 1 /395
On Saturday I was in the house, and my mum sent me to ask Norma if she would come up the top with me? we went up and we came down st Magrets road and there were crowds of people beside an old house I asked what was the matter, there has been a boy who just lay down and Died.
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Mysterious letter believed until now to have been from Mary Bell to her mother, spring 1970 (see pages 1714).
appendix 1 /397
MAM
I know that in my heart From you once was not apart My love for you grows More each day.
When you visit me mam Id weep once, your away I look into your, eyes. So Blue and th eyre very sad, you try to be very cheery But I know you think Im Bad so Bad though I really don’t know. If you feel the same, and treat it as a silly game.
A child who has made criminal fame Please mam put my tiny mind at ease tell Judge and Jury on your knees they will LISTEN to your cry of PLEAS THE GUILTY ONE IS you not me.
I sorry IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY Well both cry. and you will go away to other gates were you are free locked up in prison cells, Your famley are wee.
these last words I speak, on behalf of dad P . and me tell them you are guilty Please, so then mam. ‘ll1 be free, Daughter appendix house OF commons report
HOUSE OF COMMONS QUESTIONS (Source: Hansard)
22 fuly 1998: Column: 547
Caroline Flint: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the outcome of the investigation into his officials’ handling of the Mary Bell case. [52075]
Mr. Straw: I have now received the Permanent Secretary’s report into the circumstances in which Home Office officials had for some time known of the possibility of a book from which Mary Bell would profit financially, but had not informed Ministers. This was, at my request, an investigation to identify lessons for the future, not a disciplinary inquiry.
Since her release in 1980, Mary Bell has remained under life licence under the supervision of the probation service. Throughout this period, officials in my Department’s Lifer Review Unit have received regular reports from the probation officers responsible for her supervision. These have frequently included accounts of attempts by literary agents and the media to induce her for substantial sums to tell her story. Indeed, there are records of such approaches to her even before she left prison.
The probation service is responsible for supervising those subject to life licence and for reporting, on a regular basis, on each individual to the Lifer Unit on their progress. The service has a particular responsibility to ensure that the public is protected from people who have previously committed very serious of fences Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Probation has received a copy of the report of the investigation carried
appendix 2 /401
out by the Chief Probation Officer of the Durham Probation Service into their handling of Mary Bell’s case, and offered me his own independent assessment of it. In the light of this, I am satisfied that the probation service kept my officials properly informed of the plans to publish a book. Given the exceptional difficulties of the case, it is also clear that the service has played a major and positive role in helping Mary Bell keep to the conditions of her licence in the 18 years since her release.
Between 1984 and 1987, my officials were informed that Mary Bell had become interested in producing her own account and had spent some time preparing a manuscript. The supervising probation officer notified them of discussions with a literary agent in 1985 about a possible autobiography. Officials advised the probation officer that the Home Office did not favour publication but had no power to prevent it and would not attempt to put pressure on Mary Bell. Ministers were not informed of these developments and, in the event, the project foundered. Officials heard no more about the possibility of a book until August 1995, when they were informed of her renewed interest in producing her own account.
The probation service notified officials in January 1996 that serious negotiations were under way between Mary Bell, Gitta Sereny and a literary agent. In July, they were informed that a contract had been signed and an advance payment made. Officials responded to these developments along the same lines as their predecessors more than a decade previously, namely by questioning the wisdom of the venture but confirming, correctly, that they had no power to prevent it. Great care was taken throughout to try to protect, through maintenance of an injunction long in force, the anonymity of Mary Bell and her family, in the interests of her young daughter.
Following a probation service letter of 6 March this year, advising that the book would appear shortly and was likely to arouse controversy, officials recognised the need to forewarn Ministers.
Because their information was that serialisation of the book would not begin until 2 May they did not, in the event, do so until 23 April, by which time
402/ appendix 2
(unbeknown to them) news of the book was already emerging. The initial briefing to Ministers concentrated on the contents of the book, and did not make it clear that officials and the probation service had known about the contract from the outset. Ministers were given a full brief on the history of the case only on 30 April, the day after newspaper serialisation had started and some days after widespread controversy had arisen over the financial benefit to Mary Bell.
The Lifer Unit of the Prison Service Headquarters is responsible for casework on nearly 4,000 life sentence prisoners and around a further 800 lifers now on supervision under licence in the community. Their primary task is to ensure that the lifer system operates in a way which mini mises risk to the public. They bear a heavy load and I am satisfied that I have been very well served-as, I believe, have my predecessors-by the conscientious advice they provide on the exercise of my statutory powers in individual cases. The possibility of financial benefit to Mary Bell for a book about her crimes did not involve questions of public risk or any breach of the law or the terms of her life licence. Officials accordingly concluded, as early as 1985, that there was nothing they could do to prevent it and did not therefore believe it necessary to submit to Ministers.
22 ]ul 1998: Column: 548
Ministers are entitled to expect that officials will try to spot events involving their cases which are likely to arouse controversy and provoke concern over the adequacy of the law. I believe that officials acted in this case throughout in good faith and in accordance with a correct interpretation of the law. With hindsight, it is clear that there were a number of occasions on which Ministers might reasonably have been informed of developments in the Mary Bell case. The Permanent Secretary has accordingly recommended to me procedural and other improvements which will help guide Home Office staff in assessing future cases where Ministers may need to be kept informed of developments, even where there is no question of the exercise by them of statutory powers. He and
appendix 2 /403
the Director General of the Prison Service are specifically preparing revised internal operating procedures for the handling of lifer cases and arranging for supplementary guidance to be provided to lifer caseworkers and supervising probation officers.
I have asked officials separately to consider whether the law relating to criminal memoirs might sensibly be strengthened.
appendix 3
press complaints commission ruling
PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION RULING ON THE TIMES SERIALIZATION OF
CRIES
UNHEARD
Thursday, 23rd July 1998
The Press Complaints Commission has ruled on four sets of complaints relating to payments to criminals. These cover: the serialisation of “Cries Unheard’ (the story of Mary Bell) by The Times; the serialisation of’ The Informer’ by Sean O’Callaghan, by The Daily Telegraph; and payments to Lucille MacLauchlan by The Mirror and to Deborah Parry by The Express. The Commission has yet to determine complaints made about possible payments made by The Daily Mail in relation to the Louise Woodward trial.
The Commission has ruled that none of the payments made by the newspapers breached the Code which stipulates that payments can be made to convicted criminals provided the material obtained is in the public interest, and payment is necessary to obtain it.
In the case of “Cries UnhearcT, the Commission found the public interest justification of The Times to be ‘compelling’, and that the serialisation put into general circulation ‘material of relevance to a wide range of issues relating to crime and punishment’ (paragraphs
3.03.3).
The PCC never received a complaint about alleged harassment of Mary Bell and her daughter without which it was impossible to take any action but the adjudication makes clear that the Commission had ‘a very great deal of sympathy for Mary Bell’s daughter’ (para 4. 1). It would have welcomed a complaint and would have been quick ‘vigorously to
appendix 3 /407
censure a newspaper if a complaint had been received, backed up by evidence from one of those involved, and a breach of Clause 4 (Harassment) or Clause 6 (Children) proved’ (para 4. 3).
Finally, the adjudication notes that the Government itself is undertaking a review of the issue of proceeds of crime which the Commission welcomes. It says that the issue of proceeds of crime ‘is a moral and subjective judgement which goes beyond the scope of the Commission and an objective Code at the heart of which is the public interest and the public’s right to know. It is a matter of broader public policy for Government and Parliament’ (para 6. 1).
Ends
ADJUDICATION
1. The complaints
1. 0 The complaints. The Commission considered three sets of complaints under Clause 16(ii) of the Code of Practice, which prohibits payments by newspapers or magazines for stories to convicted or confessed criminals, except where publication of such stories is in the public interest.
1. 1 The first set of complaints related to the serialisation of The Times of the book Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny about the child killer Mary Bell. Serialisation took place from 29th April to 1st May 1998.
2. The Code and the Law
2. 0 Before dealing with the substance of each case in detail, the Commission wished to set out the general principles which it applies to complaints brought under Clause 16(ii) particularly against the background of the existing legislative framework and the Government’s current review of the issue of proceeds of crime.
408/ appendix 3
2. 1 Profits from crime. It is a distasteful fact that some criminals can, and do, profit from their crimes and do so in a number of different ways. Some have been known straightforwardly to exploit their misdemeanours by conducting guided tours of the location of their crimes. Others write books: only recently it became clear that the serial killer Dennis Nilsen is writing a book, for which interested publishers are said to be offering up to 100,000 (reported in the Sunday Telegraph, 31st May 1998).
2. 2 The legal framework. The Code of Practice exists outside, and on top of, the legal requirements on editors. However, the Commission is aware that in dealing with the matter of payments to criminals, it is dealing not with an ordinary complaint where there is a victim of a breach of the Code but with a matter of general public policy. In considering the matter, the Commission has therefore thought it right to have regard to the existing legal structures in this area.
2. 3 It has always been, and remains, a matter for Parliament to set down the framework within which people are not allowed to profit from their crimes. There is a good deal of statute in this area most importantly, the Proceeds of Crime Act 1995, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Drug Trafficking Act 1994, each of which prevents convicted criminals in certain circumstances from profiting from crime. There are geographical and chronological limits to that legislation. Statute does not stop criminals convicted in foreign jurisdictions from profiting from crime-except in very limited circumstances such as drug trafficking. And it does not apply after six years have elapsed following a crime.
2. 4 All the cases considered by the Commission therefore fell outside the terms of the law a point on which the Commission placed some weight. In the case of the nurses, the events and sentencing took place abroad. In the case of Mary Bell, the publication of Cries Unheard took place thirty years after the crime had been committed well outside the time set in statute; in that of Scan O’Callaghan,
