My James: The Heartrending Story of James Bulger by His Father

by Ralph Bulger

  If we had been overprotective already, now we all became exceptionally paranoid and terrified for our families. I didn’t want to upset the girls, but at the same time my fear got the better of me and their safety was my priority. It wasn’t as if they were old enough to go out on their own yet anyhow. They were still only six, five and two, so the biggest impact fell on Ree who had started school but was already having her freedom clipped because of our worries. We didn’t like her to go to friends’ houses to play. It was fine if they wanted to come to our house, but we didn’t like her to be out of our sight when she wasn’t in school. Likewise, we felt safe if she was playing in the back garden with her younger sisters, but I wasn’t happy to let her play out the front because I was scared she’d be abducted like James. This would be our pattern of behaviour with all the girls as they got older and wanted to go out more. It was tough on them but they began to understand why as the years went by. That is the stress that was put on us all by releasing these two.

  Jimmy and Karen felt the same way, as Jimmy recalls:

  Ralph and I were in turmoil and we began living our lives like virtual prisoners ourselves. Mine and Karens children couldn’t move to the point that we didn’t even want them to go out and play with their friends. They noticed it more than Ralph’s kids because they were a few years older and so they were constantly complaining that it wasn’t fair that they were being kept in.

  I remember one incident clearly when Karen took our youngest to school and there was a camera crew in the playground. It was not long after the killers were released and so the media had been in the neighbourhood in force. This particular cameraman had nothing to do with the news. He was there at the invitation of the school to film everyday life as a way to promote the school. He didn’t have a clue who Karen or our daughter were, but when he innocently zoomed his lens around the playground to capture the kids playing and landed on our daughter, Karen freaked out. She started screaming and yelling to get the cameraman away and all the other mums who knew her ran over to the poor guy and almost threw him out of the school. It had been a mistake on her part, but we were all on high alert and so wound up that even the smallest of things would set us off.

  It was sad to see how the younger generation of our family was being affected by the release of Venables and Thompson. And the fear I had over my childrens safety brought back every bit of self-loathing I had for being unable to protect or save James. It was hard just to get through each day. The whole thing left me feeling hollow and empty because everything we had ever done to seek justice for my son had been for nothing.

  16

  The Tenth Anniversary

  The tenth anniversary of James’s murder was on 12 February 2003. By that time his killers had already been free for almost two years. The irony was not lost on me. It was a bleak and miserable day and I can say with my hand on my heart that my pain and sorrow were as huge as on the day my baby boy was stolen from me. My life had been shaped and rearranged by the death of my son and now, after years of hurt, it had become twisted and buckled beyond all recognition.

  The anniversary was not forgotten in Liverpool and the atmosphere in the city that day was dark and sombre. Once again the people of Merseyside showed how much they still cared. At the Strand, where Thompson and Venables abducted James, shoppers stood in sorrow for a two-minute silence and flags flew at half-mast across the county as a mark of respect. Churches everywhere dedicated their services specially to James and children in school said prayers for him at morning assemblies. I was so very grateful that my fellow Liverpudlians had not deserted us or forgotten my son. His anniversary also dominated the local TV news channels and papers, and the anger was still there in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. But alongside the fury lay a calmer and more reflective attitude. Things had most certainly settled down a bit from those early lynch mob days.

  But while the people of the city were calmer, I had no idea how to get rid of my anger and sorrow, and, despite a ten-year period of mourning, I had not moved on one bit. It’s not that I wanted to be like this, all chewed-up and mangled inside, I just didn’t know how to feel any other way, and my rage had been stoked by a legal system that trashed my son’s right for justice. I would have done anything to wake up for just one day and not be consumed by anger and bitterness.

  Several weeks before James’s anniversary, I flew to Cork in Ireland to visit Father Mick. He had remained in contact as he had promised, and he was still one of the few people I felt comfortable talking to about James and my feelings. I don’t know why really. I think it was because I trusted that he was such a good, kind man and that he didn’t expect me to be anything but myself.

  I was delighted to see him, and his welcome for me was as warm as ever. He had a very rare gift of connecting with people and making them feel good.

  ‘It’s wonderful to see you, Ralph. Come in, come in,’ he beckoned when I arrived at his front door.

  ‘It’s great to see you too, Mick.’

  No sooner was I through the door than he embraced me in a massive bear hug and instantly I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. It was a sudden rush of emotion that I had not been expecting.

  The first thing he did was put the kettle on to make us a cup of tea, and then we both sat down to catch up in the comfort of his cosy living room.

  I spent hours chatting to Mick that day, and even though I eventually broke down into tears, it was a very calm and peaceful visit. Sitting with him was like emptying my emotional dustbin. For just a few moments, I was able to shed the feelings that normally lay festering in my heart and soul.

  ‘I just don’t know how to do this any more,’ I admitted to Mick.

  ‘What don’t you know, Ralph?’ he gently replied.

  ‘I don’t know how to cope with these feelings any more. It’s like they are just too big for me to handle.’

  ‘You have to give yourself permission to have compassion for yourself, Ralph. And you have to ask yourself if you really want to let go of those negative feelings. Maybe you are frightened of what you will be left with if you let them go. The healing process has to start with forgiveness, Ralph. And if you can’t forgive the boys who murdered your son, then try to begin with forgiving yourself. You are carrying so much guilt and hurt inside, but you are not to blame for James’s death. There was nothing you could do to prevent it. You weren’t there and you didn’t know about it, so you couldn’t have saved him.’

  ‘But I should have been there, Father Mick. I should have been there for him and I wasn’t. I just can’t get the thought out of my head of James begging for mercy and crying out to his dad for help. I am so angry with myself and I don’t even know if I can forgive myself. I want to, I really do, but I failed him as his dad. He was my flesh and blood and I failed him, and I don’t know if that will ever go away. How can I get rid of it? Please tell me. I think I’m going mad sometimes.’

  ‘You have to slowly try to let go and have compassion for yourself. James would want you to forgive yourself. He was a loving and kind boy who would have wanted to help his dad feel better.’

  We had never really spoken in such detail before. He had always tried to bring me comfort and was forever telling me it was not my fault, but I was so angry during our early chats that I don’t think this gentler approach would have helped at the time.

  It was an incredibly emotional afternoon as I wept buckets of tears to Father Mick and felt not one ounce of embarrassment. Afterwards, I went for a walk in the quiet countryside and I thought about what Mick had said. Could I ever forgive myself? Could I ever stop blaming myself for James’s death? I just didn’t know if that was possible. The truth is that my anger was the only thing that kept me going sometimes, but I also knew that it was eroding every fibre of my humanity. I knew I could never forgive Thompson and Venables, and I didn’t want to, but I desperately wanted to feel normal again. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to start each day with joy and happiness, as I had before James wa
s killed.

  My trip to see Father Mick was a delight. Despite the deeply emotional nature of our chats, there were some very short periods of light in the darkness for me as we spent time together and talked. As well as comfort, he gave me a little belief that maybe one day I will be able to move forward, no matter how long it takes. Father Mick taught me that it was OK to feel the way that I did and that, despite the passing of ten years, it was normal to still feel the pain of losing James. He reminded me that you don’t get over something so horrific as James’s murder and that time doesn’t heal. You just find different ways to cope.

  I returned to Liverpool feeling better prepared for the anniversary, thanks to Father Mick. I thought a lot about the conversations I had shared with him and it dawned on me that I had a lot of unresolved issues. It wasn’t just my guilt; the fact that I would still binge drink at times was another problem, as was my anger. The time had come for me to confront a lot of things and Father Mick had helped me see that. There was one thing in particular that I was finally ready to face. I had never been to the railway track where James was murdered — the last place he was alive. For ten years my subconscious had been nagging away at me to go there. I think I carried some deep, primal need to connect to the place where my son had drawn his last breath. It was almost as if it was one of the missing pieces of the jigsaw. I thought about it for a long time before I committed myself to going. I questioned why I wanted to go there and how I would react. And I spoke to Jimmy and Karen about it.

  ‘Do you think I should go to the railway track where James died?’ I asked them.

  ‘Why do you want to go?’ Jimmy responded.

  ‘I’m not sure. I just feel that I should go. It’s where my son died and I have never been there in the ten years since he has been gone.’

  ‘If you feel it will help, then you should go,’ Jimmy replied with certainty.

  ‘What if I can’t handle it? What if it makes things worse?’

  ‘I don’t think it will,’ he said. ‘It sounds like you need some closure around this and by going there just the once, you will feel as if you have paid your respects to James at the place where he died.’

  ‘I’ve never been able to face this before. I didn’t think I could ever go down there, but it’s a part of James’s life I have never confronted and I think I need to. I can’t explain it very well but I just feel a strong need to do it.’

  ‘Then you have answered your own question, Ralph,’ Jimmy concluded.

  He was right. It wasn’t something I relished the thought of, but I did need closure on it. I needed to go there and then move on. It was a few weeks before the official anniversary that I decided to be brave and face my fears head on. I ordered a wreath crammed with yellow and white flowers, all bright and sunny just like my James. Across the rim of the circular arrangement was a pure white ribbon, bearing the words ‘For James’. It was with a heavy heart that I set off for the railway track that day, and I must have tried to change my mind a hundred times, but I kept returning to the belief that I somehow owed it to James to visit the place where he had been killed. I thought about many of the conversations Father Mick and I had shared, and I knew I had to do right by my son in his death.

  Jimmy and Karen had offered to come with me, and I was very grateful to them, but it was a moment I needed to spend with James alone. The railway line where James’s body was severed in two by a freight train was still used occasionally so I’d had to get permission to go onto the tracks at a safe time. As I climbed the steep grassy hill to reach the embankment, I thought about how hard that must have been for my son with his little legs. He had already been walking for nearly three miles by the time he reached the railway and he would have been exhausted.

  I think the short walk to the spot where his body was found must have been the longest journey of my life. I felt exactly as I had done when I carried James’s coffin into his funeral. It was bleak, dark and soul-destroying. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to conjure up how frightened my son must have been. Weary, scared and crying for his mummy and daddy, he was dragged onto the embankment of that desolate track and tortured repeatedly. There wasn’t a sound on the trackside that day, but in my head were the screams of my son as these boys ripped his clothes from him, battered him with bricks and smashed him with an iron bar. I saw his face screwed up in agony as they dripped the tin of paint in his eyes and mouth, as James begged them, ‘Please don’t hurt me. I want my daddy.’

  Every last detail of my son’s murder, already ingrained in my mind, sparked into replay in vivid technicolour, and the rage and shock coursed through my blood once again. How could they have done this to such a loving, helpless child? And how could our legal system have released his killers to enjoy the rest of their lives as if the murder had never happened? I tried to place myself in James’s shoes on the day he was murdered. He would have been looking up at the boys with fear and confusion, crying as he begged for mercy. And he would have suffered so much pain. It was almost too unbearable to be there, revisiting his attack in my head.

  I knelt slowly down to place the wreath on the track in the exact same spot where ten years earlier these boys had laid his battered and dying body to be finished off by a train. The beautiful wreath of flowers looked frighteningly out of place against the dirty stones and railway sleepers, just as my bright and vibrant boy would have looked as he was stretched on the track to die.

  ‘I’m so sorry, James,’ I whispered.

  It was time for me to leave this place. I began to walk away and didn’t look back. I don’t know if I did find any closure that day, but it was one last job that I had needed to do for my son. And it had been torture. It certainly didn’t bring me any peace, but I realized it wasn’t for my benefit. It was all about James. He had suffered so much that day, and perhaps I wanted to make a small sacrifice of my own to show him how sorry I was. Perhaps I was even punishing myself, I don’t know. But it was over and I knew I would never go back there again.

  On the day of the anniversary itself, I just wanted it to be over. When I woke up, my mind drifted back a decade. I could still see James waving goodbye to me from the front step of his grandma’s house, as if it were only yesterday. He gave me the widest, most loving grin you could wish for, and that would be the last I ever saw of him. Inevitably, regret flooded over me once again, remorse and self-hatred for not taking him with me that day to go and fix the wardrobes, and that horrible knot in my chest rose up with a passion as if to remind me what a terrible father I had been.

  I didn’t really want to be around anyone that day and so I spent many hours alone, quietly reflecting and mourning the son I had loved so much. Eileen knew what day it was and offered me her support, but the girls were still too young to realize and I didn’t want them to see their dad unhappy. I tried so very hard to think about James and the amazing love he had brought to all our lives. I wanted to banish all thoughts of his killers from my mind but it proved to be impossible. I thought about how much of his life James had missed over the past ten years, and then I compared it to how Thompson and Venables were just twenty years old and free to live their lives.

  I decided to visit the James Bulger Memorial Garden and sat for over an hour under a small circle of trees opposite a stone memorial tablet which was inscribed, ‘James’s Garden — A place of peace and beauty’. When it was time to leave, I laid a small posy of flowers and a card next to the plaque, which read:

  ‘James, I miss you today more than ever, but I know you are at peace now, son. I think about you every day and I love you with all my heart. Stay safe and warm with the angels now and keep laughing, my little “smiler”. All my love, your Ralph (Dad) xxxx’.

  It was hard to leave the garden that day because it was so quiet and dignified, and it brought a small touch of calm to the madness inside my head. I missed my son so much that my body hurt both inside and out.

  Just a few weeks after the tenth anniversary was James’s birthday, on 16 March. H
e would have turned thirteen and become a teenager. I spent hours and hours fantasizing about what he would have been like and I had a clear vision in my mind of how he would have looked and sounded. I’d had so many dreams for the son who never even got to three.

  I imagined the pair of us still playing football together, laughing, and sharing private jokes. In my head I could hear us chatting about what he wanted to be when he grew up — a rally driver maybe, or an airline pilot? He could have chosen to do anything he wanted because he was smart and bright and clever. It didn’t really matter what he wanted to do. If he had told me he wanted to be a dustman or a brickie, I would have been delighted for him, just so long as he was happy and healthy. My greatest sorrow is that I never had the chance to do the ordinary things with him that fathers do with their sons.

  I know if James were alive today, I would take him fishing and we would talk about anything and everything. I would have bought him his own rod and tackle and we could have set off together on days out, wasting hours away side by side on the banks of a river. I know he would have loved that. What’s more, he would have been the older brother to Michael and his three little step-sisters. I know in my heart he would have been a brilliant big brother and that he would have looked after each and every one of them. So many people lost so much when they took James away. He lost the chance to grow up and welcome his new family, and his brothers and sisters never had the opportunity to get to know him.