Letter: Mary Bell

Mary Bell

HOWEVER dark the detail of 's crimes and childhood, however repugnant the issue of payment, the plain fact is that we urgently must come to understand the intergenerational transmission of abuse and brutality which has created the culture of violence in which we presently live. The extremes are most often the ground on which we learn.

Other less publicised sadistic abuse cases are thrown out of courts as improbable, because the general public, including lawyers, juries and doctors, read newspapers and see no detail of the blacker depravities of human behaviour. It is a journalistic duty, however unpleasant, to lay these open to scrutiny and investigation without prurience. Satiation and revulsion are inevitable but we need to focus if there is any hope of finding even partial long-term solutions.

MARJORIE ORR

Director

Accuracy about Abuse

London NW3