by Ray Black
The American government carried out a study in 1999 and discovered that by the time a child reaches the age of eighteen, he or she will have seen 200,000 dramatized acts of violence and 40,000 dramatized murders. Moreover, half of the video games that a typical schoolchild plays will have a tendency towards violence. It is through this kind of exposure that some troubled children develop a taste for violence. The difference between fantasy and reality is far more difficult for children to assess than adults and, added to the desensitization and conditioning that goes on daily from the media, it is clear that violent programmes and games do have a negative impact.
THE INTERNET
The Internet is now being accessed by younger and younger children, but what many parents fail to understand are the hidden dangers when they leave their children unsupervised at the computer.
In the wake of the tragic school shootings over the past few years, society has suddenly begun to realize what research has already shown. Children who frequently play violent computer games display more aggressive behaviour and actually teach children to kill. Parents need to carefully monitor the type of computer and interactive Internet games their children are engaged in and help to provide constructive alternatives.
BARRY LOUKAITIS
Barry Loukaitis was one of the modern day school- ground killers who was certainly influenced by the media. He was a pathetic loser with numerous problems, most of which stemmed from his upbringing. At his trial it came out that there was a history of mental illness on both sides of the family, with depression being quite common in both his parents’ genes. He was even subjected to listening to his mother telling him of her plans to kill herself in front of her ex-husband and his new girlfriend on Valentine’s Day in 1996. Apparently it was Barry who talked her out of it, and encouraged her to write down her anger – what a pity he couldn’t follow his own advice.
For some reason Loukaitis felt the need to take out his revenge on some classmates that must have agitated him. He planned the shootings carefully, getting his ideas from the book Rage, written by Stephen King, and the film Natural Born Killers. The book was about a high school student who takes a gun to school and fatally shoots two of his teachers. Loukaitis was also very keen on a band called Pearl Jam, and in particular, their song Jeremy. It would seem that young Barry took the song to heart, and for those who have never seen the video to the song – it shows a boy killing his classmates.
For Barry it all came to a head on September 2, 1996. He broke into the algebra class with a high-powered rifle and shot three students and their teacher. Two of the children died and so did the teacher. Hearing the shots, PE teacher, Jon Lane, decided to be a hero. He burst into the classroom, disarmed Barry and held him down until the police arrived. During questioning it came out that Barry had been having problems with another student, Manuel Vela, who had been one of the students he shot.
OTHER CASES OF SHOOTING
Barry Loukaitis was certainly not an isolated case. There has been such a spate of schoolground violence in America recently, that it is causing people to raise difficult questions about what leads a child to pick up a gun and kill another.
On 16 April, 1999, a second-year high school pupil fired two shotgun blasts in a school hallway in Notus, Idaho. No-one was injured.
In May 1998, 15-year-old Kipland Kinkel killed two fellow pupils at Thurston Hill High School in Springfield, Oregon, and then murdered his parents.
On the very same day, 320km north in Washington State, a 15-year-old boy shot himself in the head after taking his girlfriend off the school bus at gunpoint and back to his home in the town of Onalaska. He shot himself as the girl’s father tried to break down the door, his 14-year-old girlfriend was luckily unharmed.
Just two months earlier, two boys opened fire on classmates at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The boys, aged 11 and 13, killed four girls and one teacher, wounding nine more girls and one other teacher.
On May 19, 1998, an 18-year-old at Lincoln County High School shot and killed a student in a school parking lot in Fayetteville, Tennessee, three days before they were to graduate. The reason, apparently, because there had been an argument over a girl.
On April 25, 1998, a 14-year-old boy opened fire on an eighth-grade graduation dance at Parker Middle School in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, killing a teacher and wounding two students and another teacher.
On December 1, 1997, a 14-year-old boy shot and killed three girls and injured five others at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, while they took part in a prayer circle.
On October 1, 1997, a 16-year-old stabbed and killed his mother, before going to school where he proceeded to shoot nine fellow students. His ex-girlfriend and another girl at Pearl High School in Mississippi were among those killed. Seven other students were wounded and six boys, aged between 16 and 18, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
THE EFFECTS OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL
Illegal drug use among the young is on the rise and can play a significant role in their criminal conduct. Drugs and alcohol are attractive to young people for many different reasons. Firstly, as far as alcohol is concerned, drinking is seen by young people as an adult behaviour and thus a way to appear grown up. The appeal of alcohol is that it helps in social situations by making people more relaxed and uninhibited, and much the same can be said of cannabis. Of course another reason for children taking drugs is that it represents a rebellion against adult values. Finally, we should not ignore the fact that hard drugs can become addictive, either because of life circumstances or because of a personality disorder.
The teen years are when many young people begin dangerous experimentation with drugs, alcohol, tobacco, sexual activity and engage in other life-threatening behaviours. Drugs can have a severely debilitating effect on the physical and psychological development of a child, not just at the time of use, but for many years to come. Continued drug use can lead to self-degradation, loss of control and disruptive, antisocial attitudes that can cause untold harm to young people and their families. Children from the ages of 12 to 17 who smoke marijuana are twice as likely to play truant, steal, attack people and destroy property.
Another alarming statistic is that suicide rates jump in the teen years due to many factors, including greater access to firearms, drug and alcohol abuse, social pressures and negative family situations outside of the child’s control.
STREET GANGS
Street gangs are usually formed according to ethnic or racial guidelines, although there seems to be a current trend to form gangs for more sinister reasons. The gangs discussed here are a group of people who form an allegiance for a common purpose and engage in violent, unlawful, or criminal activity. A gang may or may not claim control over a certain territory in the community. Young people (as young as nine or ten) gave the following reasons for wanting to be a member of a gang:
• To belong to a group
• For excitement
• To get protection
• To earn money
• To be with friends
Gangs thrive on intimidation and notoriety. They often find violence glamorous and a necessity in order to maintain individual and gang status. Like most groups, street gangs depend upon both individual and group participation. Unlike legitimate groups or organizations, street gangs generally do not have an identified leader. It is generally the person who is considered to be the toughest, the one who has the guns, or has the most money, that emerges as the leader, but often this status is short-lived.
Gang membership extracts a terrible toll from the lives of all who are in contact with the member. Families of gang members must be concerned for their own safety as well as that of their son or daughter who is the gang member. Friends who are not involved with the gang’s activities are cast aside and soon the youth’s only friends are other gang members. Belonging to a gang, even if only a temporary phase for some youths, will shape the individual’s future. Formal education is discarded bec
ause it is counter-productive to the gang’s objectives. Gang members who are not killed or seriously injured often develop patterns of alcohol and narcotics abuse, and extensive police records that limit their future employment opportunities.
Gang members frequently seek showdowns with rivals and the resulting violence often claims the lives of innocent victims. Gang violence can vary from individual assaults to drive-by shootings. Common gang activities are the sale of drugs, extortion, robberies, motor vehicle thefts, or other criminal activities for monetary gain. Vandalism in the form of graffiti and the wanton destruction of public and private property is often done as the sign of a gang’s occupation of a territory. Abandoned houses are a favourite target for vandalism but even occupied houses do not escape. Local businesses suffer not only from property damage and graffiti, but also from loss of customers and employees.
Of greater concern is the inbred violence that is associated with gang graffiti. As mentioned previously, gang members use graffiti to ‘tag’ their ‘turf’ or ‘territory’. They also use it to advertise the gang’s status or power and to declare their own allegiance to the gang. When a neighbourhood is marked with graffiti indicating territorial dominance, the entire area and its inhabitants become targets for violence. Anyone on the street or in their home is fair game for drive-by attacks by rival gang members. A rival gang identifies everyone in the neighbourhood as a potential threat, and consequently, innocent residents are often subjected to gang violence by the mere presence of graffiti in their neighbourhood.
There have also been cases of murder, in which children kill children, and very often these killings are associated with child gangs. In many cases, it is an entire gang of children that decides to bully, attack and consciously or subconsciously kill other children or people. There are many potential roots of this type of violence – peer pressure, broken families, abusive parents, easy access to guns, violence in the media – in fact all the subjects that have been discussed earlier that help to develop our ‘child killer’.
FAMILY MEMBERS
What would induce a child to kill members of its own family for reasons other than an accident? Maybe it is because they feel pressured by demands, abuse, hatred, desire for gain, or even by the need of other family members. One 14-year-old enlisted his brother to help him murder their parents, and one mother provoked her son into killing his father. A 14-year-old in China killed his family because he thought his mother was not taking care of him properly. When he was ill one night, she ordered him back to bed. Instead of returning to his bed, he stabbed his father 37 times, his mother 72 times and his grandmother 56 times, then he washed his hair and watched a videotape as if nothing had happened. In truth, it is possible nobody will ever really know why they did what they did.
Mary And Norma Bell
The body of a little boy was found covered with grass and purple weeds. He had been strangled. Nearby, a pair of broken scissors lay in the grass. There were puncture wounds on his thighs, and his genitals had been partially skinned.
In the autumn of May 1968, three children were playing around in a deserted house when they came across the corpse of a toddler, who was later named as Martin Brown. Martin George Brown was only four years old. He was a popular little boy with fair hair and a mischievous face. Minutes before his death he had been seen in the local shop where he had bought some sweets. Now he lay in what had been a spare bedroom with blood and saliva dribbling from his mouth.
Only a few days after the discovery of Martin’s body, a vandal broke into his nursery school when it was closed and scribbled some graffiti on the walls. Written in crayon was the message, ‘I murder so that I may come back’. Handwriting experts were positive it was the work of a child.
Three months later in August 1968, three-year-old Brian Howe was found strangled near his nursery school (the very same one attended by Martin Brown). By now people who lived in the vicinity were becoming extremely concerned for the safety of their own children. This drove Newcastle’s law enforcement officers to begin interviewing all of its 1,200 underage residents. It was during these investigations that the police arrested two suspects – Mary and Norma Bell.
A TOUGH BACKGROUND
Both the above crimes were committed in Scotswood, a depressed area of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in Northumberland. The question which was on everyone’s mind was that if a child was so emotionally disturbed to commit such heinous crimes, surely there must have been some warning signs.
In the case of Mary Bell there were plenty. Mary’s childhood was a continual nightmare of abandonment and drug overdoses. For some unknown and bizarre reason, her father pretended to be Mary’s uncle. Her mother, Betty, was a disciplinarian, but not the sort of discipline that was desirable for the bringing up of a young family. She was a prostitute with a speciality, she used whips and bondage to ‘discipline’ her clients. Betty always felt her daughter was kerbing her activities and was anxious to get rid of her. She very often dropped her off to stay with relatives. Realizing that Mary was very unhappy at home, the family pleaded with Betty to let them keep her, but for some reason she always returned to her family home.
In 1960 Betty took Mary to an adoption agency, giving her over to a distraught women who wasn’t permitted to adopt a child as she was about to move to Australia. Mary was left with this strange woman, but luckily her aunt, Isa, who was suspicious about the whole arrangement, had followed them and soon found out the whereabouts of Mary.
Even at the age of two, Mary was having difficulty in forming any form of bond with others of her own age, and always behaved in a cold and detached manner. Mary became a little hardnut, never crying when she was hurt, lashing out violently and once even smashed her uncle’s nose with one of her toys. Her mother’s constant rejections and reunions didn’t help the situation and only further distanced Mary from the rest of her family.
Another fact that had a devastating effect on Mary and further retarded her ability to bond with others, was when she witnessed her five-year-old friend being run over by a bus. Mary’s kindergarten teacher described her as a naughty child. She once discovered Mary with her hands around the neck of another child and when she was told not to do it, she replied, ‘Why? Can it kill him?’ She was a loner and was subjected to constant teasing by her classmates. She would retaliate by punching and kicking and was known to tell a pack of lies.
One of the most disturbing aspects of Mary’s childhood, were the frequent drug overdoses, which were more than likely administered by her own mother. When Mary was only one year old, she nearly overdosed after taking some pills that were hidden inside the family gramophone. It seemed impossible that a baby could reach the pills and very strange to think that a child would eat so many of the very nasty-tasting pills anyway. Again, when Mary was three she and her brother were found eating ‘little blue pills’ together with some sweets that their aunt Cath had treated them to. Betty said that they must have taken the pills out of her handbag, which had been left nearby. Cath and her husband offered to adopt Mary, but Betty refused to let the child go and soon broke off any contact she had with the rest of her family.
The most serious overdose was when Mary swallowed numerous ‘iron’ pills, which again belonged to her mother. This time she became unconscious and had to have her stomach pumped. Mary, together with a young playmate, said that Betty had given her ‘Smarties’ that made her sick. Overdoses in a developing child can cause serious brain damage, a common trait found in violent offenders.
As if the overdoses were not disturbing enough, perhaps the greatest tragedy of all was Betty’s use of Mary during her prostitution activities. Mary’s case was perhaps one of the worst of child sexual abuse ever to have been uncovered, as she recounted the horrors she endured as her mother’s sexual prop. No other relatives, including her younger brother, were aware of this abuse.
All these things added together would certainly help to explain Mary’s erratic behaviour. It was probably her constant violation wit
hin her home unit that incited her to abuse her own little victims.
Norma’s background, on the other hand, was surrounded by a much more sympathetic family. She was the third of eleven children and reacted to evidence and testimony with a more childlike combination of fear and nervousness. During the ensuing trial Mary showed none of these weaknesses.
THE BELL GIRLS
Both Mary and Norma Bell were eleven years old and close neighbours. Although they shared the same last name, they were in fact not related. The first time that anyone became suspicious about the darker side of Mary’s nature was when the police and an ambulance were called to the Delaval Arms on May 11, 1968. Mary’s three-year-old cousin had been discovered with some injuries at a nearby shed. The next day police took statements from the two girls who had discovered the injured child – Mary and Norma. Both girls told the same fabricated story, that they had heard someone shouting and on investigation discovered Mary’s cousin, John G., lying on the concrete path with blood coming from his head.
This was not the only encounter the two girls had with the police that weekend. That same Sunday night a lady called Mrs Watson made a complaint to the police about a girl who had attempted to strangle her seven-year-old daughter, Pauline, at a local sandpit. Mrs Watson wasn’t sure which one of the Bell’s girls was involved. Once again the police took statements from the two girls and again their stories were totally different. After further enquiries the police decided to take no action beyond informing the Children’s Department and giving the children a ‘warning’ as to their future conduct.
