Desculpem lá, mas não tenho tempo para traduzir. No fundo, é um debate sobre qual a idade limite para se ser considerado imputável e consciente pelos actos cometidos.

Reparem que a morte de uma criança às mãos de outras, foi considerada desagradável. No fundo, uma outra versão da postura que considera as vítimas como frágeis e que é necessário não perturbar os agressores.

É que, parecendo que não, mesmo sendo apenas palavras, é este discurso que cria um ambiente geral de oscilação de valores. Em especial quando surgem na boca de quem deveria ter o papel de prevenir os comportamentos agressivos.

James Bulger’s mother calls for sacking of children’s commissioner

Denise Fergus says comments that Venables and Thompson were too young to stand trial were ‘twisted and insensitive’.

James Bulger’s mother has called for the children‘s commissioner, Dr Maggie Atkinson, to be sacked after she said the age of criminal responsibility should be raised and that the toddler’s killers should not have stood trial because they were too young.

Denise Fergus described Atkinson’s comments in a newspaper interview – stating that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson could not have understood the full consequences of their actions – as “twisted and insensitive”.

Despite England and Wales having one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in the EU, the Ministry of Justice yesterday ruled out Atkinson’s proposal to raise the limit from 10 to 12 years. It insisted that children aged 10 and over did know the difference between “bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing”.

Atkinson described James’s killing as “exceptionally unpleasant” but said it was wrong that Thompson and Venables, who were 10 in 1993 when they were charged with the boy’s murder, were tried in an adult court.

Fergus said: “This woman owes James and me an apology for her twisted and insensitive comments. Then she should resign or be sacked. To say that his killers should not have been tried in an adult court is stupid. They committed an adult crime – a cold-blooded murder that was planned and premeditated – and they were tried accordingly.”

She added: “It is a shock to people like Dr Atkinson that children can be truly evil by 10. But it is a fact and I fear there will be more of them and we need laws to be tightened up so we can deal with them.”