Angela’s Wrightson’s murder was merciless and degrading. The 39-year-old, lonely alcoholic from Hartlepool, Co Durham, was attacked by two young girls (then 13 and 14) she believed to be her friends. They punched, kicked and battered her with a series of weapons, including a table, television and nail-studded stick, inflicting more than 100 injuries. They ignored her when she begged for her life and partially stripped and defiled her body as she lay dying. The girls also took selfies and posted them on Snapchat, one showing them in the back of the police van they were using to get back to their care placements “almost as a taxi service”.
Last week, the girls (now both 15) were convicted of murder, and each will serve a minimum of 15 years. Mr Justice Globe refused to allow them to be named, which, despite everything, seems to be the right decision.
I would also suggest that there needs to be an element of personal responsibility in how we all react to such cases – not just the media, but the public as well. The death of Wrightson was horrible, pointless and upsetting enough without the added ghoulish drama of her child murderers being publicised, dramatised and demonised as updates of the killers in Heavenly Creatures.
With a case such as this, you have to dig pretty deep to feel compassion for “Girl A” and “Girl B” – to give a flying chuff about their anonymity or circumstances. Yet their own pain and damage must be considered, not because of “woolly liberalism”, but because it is a highly important factor in what happened and what could happen next. Both girls came from violent, unstable backgrounds; they truanted, drank and took drugs, and were ricocheting around the care system at the time of the murder. Girl A tried to commit suicide four times during the trial. When the girls were convicted, they broke down, sobbing uncontrollably – they can be killers and overwhelmed frightened children. However, in cases such as this, the damning details tend to stick. Not only the selfies, but how expressionless and bored the girls could be in court, yawning and sucking their thumbs.
Why were they yawning – about Ms Wrightson’s suffering or, more likely, at court procedure? Trials can be long and repetitive. The yawning is surely a reflection of that, not proof that they are without conscience. These girls hardly had the kind of upbringing that taught them how to behave appropriately in a formal setting.
Then there’s the thumb-sucking. There it is, right there – the point where evil links with innate childishness in fanciful narratives. It sticks in the mind, just as many years ago during the trial for the murder of James Bulger, one noted how the feet of the young suspects, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, couldn’t touch the ground as they sat in court. A detail that actually drives a compelling narrative of corrupted innocence.
Sometimes, facts – they sucked their thumbs as they were sentenced – don’t remain as facts, they go out into the public sphere, and morph and transform into dramatic devices.
Isn’t it true that, just as hearing about terrible murders frightens and disgusts, in other ways, for some people, it entertains and titillates? An entire True Crime industry is set up to serve these tastes, with child killers featured strongly as a theme. All of which is important because, when these children emerge, as adults, by then possibly unmasked, they will still be framed in these terms, undermining years of rehabilitation, which in no way serves the public interest.
And for what – so that some among us can get a cheap thrill out of the baby-faced, selfie-taking, thumb-sucking child killers? Isn’t what happened to Angela Wrightson already tragic enough?
Why the bile about Bieber’s barnet?
Justin Bieber has been criticised for sporting dreadlocks, with some people accusing him of cultural appropriation. In fairness, Bieber does not look great with his new hair-do– his bleached-white dreads make it look as though his head is sprouting petrified pipe cleaners. However, the grand accusation seems a little harsh.
Yes, dreads have a complicated, politicised history. However, white dreads have also been around for quite some time. Some white people look great in them (the late Ari Up of punk band the Slits looked incredible); others, perhaps, not so much (see Justin’s impersonation of Cheestrings’ “Mr Strings”). White people with dreads are often of a type who are into a certain lifestyle. If you don’t like these people, they’re easy enough to avoid – just don’t go to rock festivals, beach parties in Goa or anywhere else where there’s a chance you might be sold a giant burrito wrapped in a napkin decorated with a cartoon of a cannabis leaf.
So far as I can tell, the worst crime white people with dreadlocks commit is to be astoundingly annoying – cracking on about how “dahn” they are with black culture, in a way that might be maddening and delusional, but is it really that harmful?
Where Bieber is concerned, he’s spent a considerable amount of his young life surrounded by black friends and mentors. So is it really such a surprise that he sports his hair this way and may for a period wish to entertain the world with his hilarious impersonation of the world’s dustiest tarantula?
Linda’s model way of growing old gracefully
It is my solemn duty to inform you that supermodel Linda Evangelista has disgraced womankind by having the temerity to appear in public looking a little unlike she did a quarter of a century ago.
Basically, she’s put on a bit of weight, leading to an outpouring of the new-style stealth-shaming, wherein the person doing the shaming pretends to be “concerned”, when really it’s just a new way of bitching, gossiping and denigrating.
Back on Planet Sane, where most people live, sure, Evangelista is not as lucratively skinny as she used to be.
However, at 50 years old, she’s still a lot better looking than most of us could ever be, not least because her skin is glorious, which just may have a tiny bit to do with the fact that she doesn’t starve herself.
In the meantime, I’m wondering if any of those who go in for this kind of podge-shaming/age-shaming/whatever-shaming have any of their own before and after shots they’d like to share – just to demonstrate how valiantly they’ve managed to stave off the ravages of time. Unlike poor hideous old Linda.
Don’t be shy now – we can’t wait to see them.
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