[Lilly]

Originally Posted by garinda

You, or anyone else, has no way of knowing if thet feel shame and guilt, or not. Fact. Unless of course you've spoken of the matter with one, or both, of them.

Are you saying that all killers feel guilt for their crimes?

I fear you're not learning much on your law course, unless the syllabus hasn't yet covered the more famous cases of child killers, of the last hundred years or so.

Very true, Garinda. We don't know that they feel shame and guilt. They might do, they might not do. Certainly not all killers feel guilt from their crimes. Apparently Rose West has yet to show any remorse for what she did.

I just think that the whole picture needs to be taken into consideration and that their backgrounds, which in no way excuse what they did, go some way to explaining how they came to do it.

I don't think that children should be tried in the same way and given the same punishments as adults. Like I said before, hopefully they are now rehabilitated and living honest lives just like Mary Bell who herself was the murderer of two ten year olds in the 1960s. She spent time in Red Bank and was released at 18. She is reported to be full of remorse for her actions, she too had a horrific home life and was abused by her mother. I read the book 'Cries Unheard' which Mary Bell contributed to and she said that she has always had counselling for what she did and still finds it hard to talk about. She is now living a quiet life with her husband and partner but she said she will never come to terms with what she did and especially since becoming a mother herself, she thinks of what she deprived those two boys' mothers of every day.