Cries Unheard Read Free

Sweden, Austria and the UK saying they were receiving calls from London asking what they knew about Mary Bell, and what their connection was
    with me: this is how we found out that our telephone introduction TO THE paperback /XXi bills had been illegally obtained, i. e. bought by the tabloids, no doubt in an effort to discover Mary’s whereabouts. And on 29 April, ten days into the scandal, they found her. At 10. 30 p. m. that night, dozens of reporters and photographers surrounded the small house Mary and her family had only moved into a week earlier and knocked on doors along the street, asking the people, none of whom had even met their new neighbours, whether they knew that a killer had moved in next to them. Four hours later, with the media mob still in place and raging, police and probation officers, covering Mary and the child with blankets, removed them from their home and drove them to a place of safety.
    “What was it all about, Mum?” the thirteen-year- old asked in the car, and the probation officer said that now she had to tell her.
    So, crying and near collapse, Mary did.
    “I knew there was a secret,” the child said.
    “But, Mum, why didn’t you tell me? You were just a kid, younger than I am now.” And they hugged each other.
    Over the years, since the child’s birth in 1984 when, as is customary for children born to prisoners released on license, the baby was made a ward of court, the Official Solicitor issued unprecedentediy strong injunctions against the media’s always threatened disclosures about Mary Bell’s life. Already, as of 1987, when a tabloid was about to divulge her family’s location, the court ruled that nothing could be published by any media that could interfere with their anonymity and privacy. Following the furore in the spring (of 1998), the court issued a further injunction, unique in British legal history, forbidding anyone to approach, or from any distance photograph or film the family, their friends, their neighbours, their carers or the child’s school, and Mary and the child have been given mobile alarm units which can bring the police to their side within minutes.
    Tabloids, by no means only in Britain but in America too, claim as a justification of their sensationalist treatment of serious issues that they are merely reflecting their readers’ opinions and feelings. But, as we can clearly see from this case, this is not true. The popular British media’s prediction was that Mary’s child’s life would be ruined by the manner in which she found out about her mother’s past, and that the very existence of Cries Unheard and the reaction of the public to
    it XXii / introduction TO THE paperback and to Mary’s family would drive them into hiding, away from the place where they had chosen to live.
    The truth is very different: the child, as we can see, was relieved that there was no longer any secret. Moreover, at thirteen she understood at once that the acts of a small child, however terrible they were, have to be seen and only seen in the context of childhood: she, after all, has known her mother as an adult for thirteen years and she knows the difference between that child and this adult.
    As for the public, who can be momentarily misled by superstition, fear or indeed misinformation, in the final analysis, whatever their social or educational background, like to make up their own minds. Even more to the point however is the fact that human beings are essentially kind, a quality Mary and her family have benefited from this past year, both from the people entrusted with their care the police, the probation service and the child’s school and from the public. Not one angry word has been said to any of them, by anyone in the locality where they settled and where they have chosen to stay.
    Offered the choice by the authorities of a new identity and a move to any place they liked in the United Kingdom, Mary didn’t hesitate for one moment.
    “I’m not letting anybody