Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell

Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell

England's controversial #1 best-seller. What brings a child to kill another child? In 1968, at age eleven, Mary Bell was tried and convicted of murdering two small boys in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Gitta Sereny, who covered the sensational trial, never believed the characterization of Bell as the incarnation of evil, the bad seed personified. If we are ever to understand the pressures that lead children to commit serious crimes, Sereny felt, only those children, as adults, can enlighten us. Twenty-seven years after her conviction, Mary Bell agreed to talk to Sereny about her harrowing childhood, her terrible acts, her public trial, and her years of imprisonment-to talk about what was done to her and what she did, who she was and who she became. Nothing Bell says is intended as an excuse for her crimes. But her devastating story forces us to ponder society's responsibility for children at the breaking point, whether in Newcastle, Arkansas, or Oregon. A masterpiece of wisdom and sympathy, Gitta Sereny's wrenching portrait of a girl's damaged childhood and a woman's fight for moral regeneration urgently calls on us to hear the cries of all children at risk. In 1968, cases like that of Mary Bell were almost unheard of. Two little boys were dead, and the two accused killers, Mary Bell and Norma Bell (no relation), were 11 and 13. Norma was acquitted, but Mary was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Almost 30 years after her conviction, Mary Bell was able to tell her story, from her troubled childhood to her eventual release from prison as an institutionalized young woman and her awkward attempts to build a life for herself in a hostile world. In Cries Unheard , Gitta Sereny coaxes out Mary's story without becoming an apologist. She is blunt about the brutality of these crimes, and doesn't attempt to dismiss them as the acts of an ignorant child. When Bell gives explanations that don't ring true, Sereny pushes on, refusing to accept the easy answers. The questions raised are wrenching: Can children understand the finality of death? Are they capable of evil? Did Mary Bell understand what was happening to her in the courtroom where she was declared a "bad seed," a child so innately evil that she would have to be locked away for the rest of her life? Was she responsible for her actions at all, or were those responsible for her to blame? While Cries Unheard can't answer all these questions, it dissects Bell's unthinkable acts to the point that we can almost understand them. --Lisa Higgins Cries Unheard reminds us that understanding and accountability can coexist, that we need not choose between them.... In Gitta Sereny's competent hands, the faces of the guilty become distorting mirrors in which we are forced to acknowledge skewed but still recognizable versions of the faces we have seen, and lived with, all our lives. In 1968, Mary Bell, age eleven, was tried and convicted of killing two toddlers in England, setting off a controversy about what to do with children who commit crimes. Sereny, who covered Mary's trial and followed her life for 30 years thereafter, was appalled that Mary was tried as an adult and that her apparently abusive background was not mentioned as a factor in her defense. Mary spent the next 16 years incarcerated, first in a juvenile facility where she received her first "moral re-education," and later in a women's prison where she regressed. In a search for the reasons behind Mary's crime, Sereny (author of the well-received Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth , 1995) interviewed the police, lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers, and others who cared for or supervised Mary during her trial, incarceration, and afterward. But the most poignant voice in the book is that of Mary herself, examining the child she was and painfully recalling her childhood of abuse at the hands of her mother, who was a prostitute. In this haunting book, Sereny raises important questions about why children commit such crimes and how parents and caregivers might be responsible. Vanessa Bush An abused child who killed two toddlers is the subject of a lengthy profile that attempts to understand the root causes of such acts and pleads for a different approach to the treatment of youthful offenders. This study is Sereny's second book on Mary Bell, whose highly publicized trial she covered in 1968, and a continuation of her exploration of crime and conscience (Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, 1995; etc.). Working closely with Mary for two years, Sereny explores her feelings about her life as a child, as an adolescent in detention, as an adult in prison, and now as a mother trying to live a normal life outside prison. Sereny recounts the investigation, trial, and Mary's incarceration, including Mary's present-day reflections on past events. After being convicted of manslaughter, Mary, a clearly disturbed 11-year-old, was sent to a reform school for boys, a relatively benign environment where t