A former News of the World journalist accused of paying a prison officer for information about Jon Venables has defended writing stories about the killer, insisting the public had a right to know he was getting “special treatment” behind bars.
The reporter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the Old Bailey it was in the public interest to publish stories about the James Bulger killer being given board games and a personal trainer while in prison.
The journalist told jurors: “This was a public interest story. We were writing about Jon Venables, who abducted a two-year-old from a shopping centre, tortured and murdered him.”
The journalist is charged, alongside Tom Savage, 39, deputy news editor of the Daily Star Sunday, with conspiring with the prison officer Scott Chapman and his former partner, Lynn Gaffney, to commit misconduct in public office. They all deny the charges.
Chapman, 42, is accused of receiving almost £40,000 by selling information about Venables to newspapers including the News of the World, the Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star over two years.
The journalist told jurors that Venables had been given special comforts by the Prison Service after his 2010 conviction for downloading and distributing indecent images of children: “He had been taken in by the Prison Service, given millions of pounds for a new identity and then repeat-offended and the Prison Service deal with it by making his life as comfortable as possible. Public interest. What sort of message are they sending out to him that it’s OK to look at two-year-olds being raped?
“I’m suggesting that the public should know details of how someone like Jon Venables is getting special treatment. It’s his fault that he is held in isolation. He has done some despicable things. Did we ever hear about Myra Hindley or Ian Huntley getting that sort of treatment, one-on-one training? You only hear about it because it is reported.”
The journalist denies knowing that Chapman was a prison officer when writing the Venables stories based on information he provided. The reporter also denies receiving picture messages from Chapman showing his prison security pass and a wage slip.
Pressed on the consequences of the Venables articles, the journalist added: “I would have always thought about consequences of articles.
“I think I would have been thinking about the public interest of the story rather than the impact on Jon Venables’s mental state. I would have thought the fact he had to live with the fact he murdered a two-year-old would have more affected his mental state than a piece in the News of the World that he may or may not have seen.”
The reporter said both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers wrote stories about Venables’s treatment in prison “because they believed the public should know these things”.
In sometimes ill-tempered exchanges with the prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC, the journalist appeared on the brink of tears when speaking of the frustration of waiting three years to give evidence in court. “I was arrested in 2011. I’ve been waiting for three years [to appear in court]. I’m sorry, I need to calm down.”
The reporter denied “constructing” a defence of not knowing Chapman was a prison officer.
Judge Charles Wide QC told jurors they would begin their deliberations either on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.
The trial continues.
