Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell
Author: Gitta Sereny
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 0805060677
ISBN 13: 978-0805060676
England's controversial #1 best-seller.
What brings a child to kill another child? In 1968, at age eleven, Mary Bell was tried and convicted of murdering two small boys in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Gitta Sereny, who covered the sensational trial, never believed the characterization of Bell as the incarnation of evil, the bad seed personified. If we are ever to understand the pressures that lead children to commit serious crimes, Sereny felt, only those children, as adults, can enlighten us.
Twenty-seven years after her conviction, Mary Bell agreed to talk to Sereny about her harrowing childhood, her terrible acts, her public trial, and her years of imprisonment-to talk about what was done to her and what she did, who she was and who she became. Nothing Bell says is intended as an excuse for her crimes. But her devastating story forces us to ponder society's responsibility for children at the breaking point, whether in Newcastle, Arkansas, or Oregon.
A masterpiece of wisdom and sympathy, Gitta Sereny's wrenching portrait of a girl's damaged childhood and a woman's fight for moral regeneration urgently calls on us to hear the cries of all children at risk.
Amazon.com Review
In 1968, cases like that of Mary Bell were almost unheard of. Two little boys were dead, and the two accused killers, Mary Bell and Norma Bell (no relation), were 11 and 13. Norma was acquitted, but Mary was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Almost 30 years after her conviction, Mary Bell was able to tell her story, from her troubled childhood to her eventual release from prison as an institutionalized young woman and her awkward attempts to build a life for herself in a hostile world.
In Cries Unheard, Gitta Sereny coaxes out Mary's story without becoming an apologist. She is blunt about the brutality of these crimes, and doesn't attempt to dismiss them as the acts of an ignorant child. When Bell gives explanations that don't ring true, Sereny pushes on, refusing to accept the easy answers. The questions raised are wrenching: Can children understand the finality of death? Are they capable of evil? Did Mary Bell understand what was happening to her in the courtroom where she was declared a "bad seed," a child so innately evil that she would have to be locked away for the rest of her life? Was she responsible for her actions at all, or were those responsible for her to blame? While Cries Unheard can't answer all these questions, it dissects Bell's unthinkable acts to the point that we can almost understand them. --Lisa Higgins
From Publishers Weekly
In a searching examination of how children become violent criminals, and how the judicial system treats them, Sereny focuses on the case of Mary Bell. At age 11 in 1968, Bell committed the motiveless murder of two boys, ages three and four, in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The British tabloids demonized Bell as a "born killer" and "vicious psychopath." But Sereny, who extensively interviewed Bell, her therapists and social workers, portrays Bell, at the time of the murders, as a cauldron of repressed rage and anguish who lived in a grotesque fantasy world dissociated from reality. A prostitute's daughter, Bell was forced to watch as her mother was whipped by clients; she was also sexually abused by her mother's customers. Sentenced to life in prison but released in 1980, Bell, according to Sereny (who covered the trial in a 1972 book, The Case of Mary Bell), today feels profound remorse, sees a parole officer regularly, has a stable relationship with a caring man and is raising a daughter. Sereny's account of Bell's 12-year incarceration is disjointed and overwritten, but it offers a scorching look at British women's prisons as cesspools of drugs, abuse and coerced sex. Sereny (Albert Speer) proposes that children under 14 should not be held criminally responsible and should be tried by a specially convened panel instead of by jury. Her harrowing inquiry, marked by a rigorous and by no means easy exercise of sympathetic imagination, will compel people to rethink how to deal with children who kill or commit other serious crimes.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From
Cries Unheard reminds us that understanding and accountability can coexist, that we need not choose between them.... In Gitta Sereny's competent hands, the faces of the guilty become distorting mirrors in which we are forced to acknowledge skewed but still recognizable versions of the faces we have seen, and lived with, all our lives.
From
In 1968, Mary Bell, age eleven, was tried and convicted of killing two toddlers in England, setting off a controversy about what to do with children who commit crimes. Sereny, who covered Mary's trial and followed her life for 30 years thereafter, was appalled that Mary was tried as an adult and that her apparently abusive background was not mentioned as a factor in her defense. Mary spent the next 16 years incarcerated, first in a juvenile facility where she received her first "moral re-education," and later in a women's prison where she regressed. In a search for the reasons behind Mary's crime, Sereny (author of the well-received Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, 1995) interviewed the police, lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers, and others who cared for or supervised Mary during her trial, incarceration, and afterward. But the most poignant voice in the book is that of Mary herself, examining the child she was and painfully recalling her childhood of abuse at the hands of her mother, who was a prostitute. In this haunting book, Sereny raises important questions about why children commit such crimes and how parents and caregivers might be responsible. Vanessa Bush
From Kirkus Reviews
An abused child who killed two toddlers is the subject of a lengthy profile that attempts to understand the root causes of such acts and pleads for a different approach to the treatment of youthful offenders. This study is Sereny's second book on Mary Bell, whose highly publicized trial she covered in 1968, and a continuation of her exploration of crime and conscience (Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, 1995; etc.). Working closely with Mary for two years, Sereny explores her feelings about her life as a child, as an adolescent in detention, as an adult in prison, and now as a mother trying to live a normal life outside prison. Sereny recounts the investigation, trial, and Mary's incarceration, including Mary's present-day reflections on past events. After being convicted of manslaughter, Mary, a clearly disturbed 11-year-old, was sent to a reform school for boys, a relatively benign environment where the staff was well-meaning but untrained in psychotherapy. At age 16, however, she was transferred to a maximum security prison for women. Seven years later, she was released on parole, poorly socialized and ill equipped for life outside. Under Sereny's persistent questioning, Mary reluctantly talks about her disastrous childhood and her love-hate relationship with her mother, a prostitute who had sexually abused her, had twice tried to give her away, and had made several attempts to kill her. Sereny, who has faith in the innate goodness of human beings and the healing power of therapy, argues that before the killings Mary was reaching a breaking point that ought to have been recognized by those around her and that children who commit serious crimes should be regarded not as evil but as severely disturbed. This book may not have the sensational appearl here that it had in England, where it was a bestseller, but this study of her case raises importantand very relevantsocial and moral questions about responsibility, rehabilitation, and redemption. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Cries Unheard will throw you off-balance. It will make it impossible to look at children accused of violent crimes in the same way ever again." (Alex Kotlowitz, The New York Times Book Review)
"A profoundly philosophical and reflective psychological study of culpability and innocence, conscience and redemption." (Francine Prose, The New Yorker)
"Even resolute believers in the throw -away-the-key school of criminal justice will find their convictions shaken by this powerful book." (Elizabeth Bukowski, The Wall Street Journal)
"The recent spate of school killings has raised the excruciating question, Why do children murder? In this acutely insightful portrait, Sereny comes perhaps as close as one can get to the answer." (Megan Harlan, Entertainment Weekly )
About the Author
Gitta Sereny is our foremost writer on questions of crime and conscience. Her previous books include Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. She lives in London.