Child killer Jon Venables ‘not safe for release’ from prison
Officials also mentioned his progress in prison including his involvement in sex offender programs.
Jon Venables has been denied parole after experts warned that he uses ‘sex and pornography as a means of coping’ and ‘thinks about sex a lot’.
The child killer, now 38, was one of the ten-year-old boys who brutally murdered two-year-old James Bulgar on February, 12, 1993.
Venables was jailed from 1993 to 2001 but was recalled to jail in 2017, after he was found with child pornography, and has been imprisoned since.
The prison Parole Board refused to recommend Venables for release about a month ago and the Sun newly revealed why they made that decision based on a summary they obtained.
The summary said: ‘The risk factors identified at the time of his offending included his sexual interests and an attraction to sexual violence as well as other issues considered relevant but amenable to change.
‘Risk factors identified in subsequent reviews include thinking about sex a lot, problems in maintaining relationships, concerns about self-awareness, and his ability to deal with stress.’
Officials also said that James Bulgar’s murderer had difficulties with employment.
They argued that ‘Features leading up to his offending as an adult included a sense of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment in life, a need for excitement, and a tendency to turn to sex or pornography as a means of coping.’
But officials also mentioned his progress in prison including participating in sex offender programmes and finding ‘better ways of thinking’.
The report also suggested ‘protective factors’ that might help Venable not to reoffend again.
They mentioned his ‘level of intelligence, making constructive use of his time, a capacity and motivation for self-reflection, and a supportive social network in the community’.
They said ‘intensive interventions’ were helping Venable and predicted a positive outcome if they continued for a few months and had a ‘period of consolidation on completion’.
The report has a list of limitations on his ‘contacts, movements and activities’ before he should be granted freedom.
The panel concluded that Venables was not suitable for re-release or transferal to open prison and said it was because the ‘key areas of risk remained subject to continuing interventions’.
‘As required by law, he will be eligible for another parole review in due course,’ the panel said.
The James Bulgar murder shook the nation in 1993 when Venables and his friend Robert Thompson snatched the toddler from his mother as she let go of his hand to pay for sausages at a butcher’s in a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside.
The pair then battered James with a 22lb iron bar, poured modeling paint into his eyes, stoned him and clubbed him with half-bricks and then left him on the railway before a train sliced him into two.
When Preston Crown Court found the two guilty of murder and abducting it made them the youngest convicted murderes in the country for 250 years.
Both were released in 2001 where they had to live with strict restrictions and given new identities.
The Sun predicts that Venables alone has cost the taxpayer £5 million since he has been released, including £1.5 million by creating new identities for him.
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