Product Description

Pieces together the damaged life of Mary Bell, who aged 11 was tried and convicted of manslaughter after the death of two young boys. Only as an adult has she been able to realize the moral enormity of her crimes. The story of her life forces the reader to consider society's responsibility for children's crime. Originally published in 1998.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33469 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Customer Reviews

This book will alter your judgement...
I, like countless others found the Bell case and the more recent Bulger case totally heinous. I formed the opinion that these 'evil' children deserved to be detained indefinitely, and that Mary never should have been allowed to have a child of her own.

I read this book purely out of curiosity, and I finished the book with a totally different judgement.

The author Gitta Sereny followed the initial case, attended the trial and wrote the book 'The case of Mary bell'. She wrote in a recent publication of her hopes of one day writing Mary's own account of the terrible tot murders in Newcastle in 1968.

Mary finally decided to talk to Gitta Sereny in 1995 and for a year, they collaborated to produce 'Cries Unheard'. At no point in the book does Mary attempt to excuse the terrible crimes she committed. The book concentrates on the painful suffering childhood Mary endured at the hands of her Mother, a prostitute who introduced Mary to the most horrendous kind of child abuse and how the legal system appallingly mismanaged her time in detention.

Gitta Sereny searches for reasons as to why certain children take the leap from being simply 'off the rails' to committing heinous crimes. Contrary to the judges opinion at Bell's trial that she was a monster and born evil, that all children are born good and pure and that childhood influences mainly parental can take a child to breaking point and commit crime.

After reading this book I think you will feel what I now feel towards Mary Bell, utter sadness and pity that social workers or the legal system did not intervene or become aware of Mary's disturbances. The saddest thing of all is that if they had been as vigilant as Gitta Sereny and probed a lot deeper into the reasons behind Mary's actions, the two little boys would have very likely been alive today.

A lesson to us all about how to reduce crime.
The furore that surrounded the publication of this book must have in part be due to the fact that it is likely to be used as salacious entertainment by the sort of sick people who are the protagonists. We read (towards the end of the book) of how before the murders Mary Bell was used in her mother's business as a prostitute. Men who liked strangling young girls were allowed to strangle her until she was unconscious. She did not die, she woke up again. It is unlikely that she would know that such experiments were highly dangerous and sometimes people did not wake up again. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that she tried similar experiments herself on other people with the tragic consequences everyone knows about.

Other reviewers have written about the book's demonstration of the flaws in the British legal system. Whether a criminal is an adult or a child, the only way we can seriously reduce crime is to investigate *why* crimes are committed. If the court in this case has made as thorough investigation as Gitta Sereny then it would have uncovered not an isolated evil person, but a whole system of evil in which the humans were just mere links. Punishing Bell and no one else is totally idiotic - those that were really responsible for initiating it all still go free.

Also shown by the book is the fact that this mass psychosis doesn't just involve men with peculiar desires visiting prostitutes, but all those who stand outside courtrooms in cases like this banging on police vehicles transporting the accused, or avidly read accounts of it in popular newspapers, or lapping it up in tv programmes whilst at the same time saying how appalling it all is.

The chain of evil also includes those officials and lawyers who made fee income from it, the prison officials and elected officials who persecuted Bell far beyond what was appropriate for someone of her age and circumstances. It also includes the British public, who as a whole encouraged the whole circus and in whose name the officials act.

We live in a world where a lord chief justice has had to resign because he was discovered with a prostitute. A member of the legislature died during an auto-erotic activity involving breathing control (I cannot recall whether it was actually strangulation). I know an ordinary family where a young man with apparently everything to live for and who was certainly not depressed apparently hanged himself. There are a vast number of crime novels and television films and so on about strangulation, blatantly presented as entertainment.

So in a way we are all "the sort of sick people" who are part of this awful event. However the book is a lesson to us all. If many people read it, it may brings us back from the slippery slope down to a fruitless cycle of violence and revenge and on to a system that really reduces crime, instead of just feeding on it.

A 'must' for every serious thinker
Sensitively written, well researched, story of Mary Bell, dubbed a 'child murderer' but clearly presented here as more sinned against than sinning. Her story should be compulsory reading for all who have to handle children in such circumstances, but especially by parents and police, social workers and journalists, and the general public before they rush to pass judgement. One of the best books I have ever read.