I'm doing this as a reply to Modulus because I can't face reading the entire thread. I checked out the first post and the last page of posts, so forgive me if I repeat things which have already been said.
This case was awful and I have to try conciously not to think about it on a regular basis.
When my son was a few months old and I started to spiral into a horrendous post-natal depression, the question of the release of these two boys made the story headline news all over again. I avoided the news like the plague. Then the inevitable happened and I heard someone describing what had been done to James. It tipped me over the precipice. For weeks, I had vivid pictures in my mind which tortured me. I really couldn't function properly and even now six years on, this is a case that causes me much distress.
My gut reaction as a mother is that I would want those two boys to have done to them what they did to James, except make it last longer. Then I realised that the boys themselves were someone's sons too. How would I feel if it was my son that had done this? Would I disown him at the age of ten? Or would I still love him as my son?
I think I basically came to the conclusion that, while ten year olds have the capacity to knowing right from wrong and understanding what criminality is, it doesn't mean that they do. For example, I'm sure I have the capacity to understand most undergraduate physics, yet I actually know very little because I've never learned any beyond first year undergrad level.
I truly believe that these boys did this because there was something wrong with them, whether it be their upbringing or trauma in their earlier years. I'm not trying to excuse them, not one little bit, but this case reached the prominence it did
because it was so unusual, it's not a regular occurrence, it's unfathomable. That's what tells me that it's more than just the evil that humans in general are capable of that caused this.
I don't pretend to know what it is. I don't know why they did it. I have no idea what the proper sentence for them should have been, but I do think that they deserve another chance. They were ten when they did it, they were about eighteen when they were let out. Their "freedom" is not what most of us would call freedom. They will continue to pay for what they did.
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