Wind From Nowhere

EXTRACT: "Clearly, Jon Venables is a screwed-up individual - his fixation with child pornography amply confirms that. But, of course, he has long been screwed-up, hence his involvement in the hideous killing of James Bulger. Yet we should never forget that Venables himself is a victim of child abuse - first in the form of his violently dysfunctional family and then from the state itself, which treated this boy as a permanent threat rather than someone who desperately needed help, before effectively abandoning him to his own devices upon his release from prison (whatever the lurid and paranoid fantasies served up by the Daily Mail about how “the British state has gone out of its way to support Venables”). Communists, however, argue that society has a obligation to help and rehabilitate someone like Venables, both a victimiser and a victim - like so many people, to one degree or another. After all, this is the person who when visited in his secure unit by a psychologist before the Bulger trial, found a boy lining up his bed with furry animals in order to “keep the bad things away”. Yet, tragically, Venables was never given a serious chance at rehabilitation.
So, with almost dreadful inevitability, he was pulled into a cycle of decline upon his release ..."
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