Painful truths: Andrew Garfield as Jack in Boy A. Photograph: Channel 4
They were dubbed "evil" and compared to Saddam Hussein. A newspaper published a pixelated photo of them sucking lollipops outside the courtroom with the headline: "Without a care in the world". But most people were stunned to silence.
In 1993, two 10-year-olds, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, abducted two-year-old toddler James Bulger from a shopping centre in Bootle, Liverpool, tied him to a rail track, and beat him to death. The BBC called it a "landmark case". The whole nation felt a sense of guilt about living in a society where two boys, so young, could commit such a violent act.
Last night I watched Boy A, a feature-length drama on Channel 4 about a 24-year-old called Jack who assumed a new identity after being released from prison for committing what is to some an unforgivable crime. Based on a novel by Jonathan Trigell, this film raised subjects of social responsibility and adults' attitudes to children that at the time of Bulger's murder were also perhaps too difficult to discuss.
It reminded me of questions that were on the tip of our tongues at the time: What would happen when the boys were released? What drove them to it? Should they be locked up forever or given a second chance? And if they were given a second chance, would we, the media, let them live in peace? Thompson and Venables have now been released from prison, but what sort of life can they expect to lead? There will always be someone out there desperate to uncover their story. And a public that are fascinated to know it.
Boy A touched on all these points. From the insatiable desire of the media to uncover a scandal, to the painful realisation that Jack may never form any emotional relationship again. But had this screenplay been due for release at the time of the Bulger incident, would it, or should it, still have been screened?
Only a few months ago, Channel 4's excellent drama The Mark of Cain, directed by Tony Marchant and based on the experiences of soldiers in Iraq, was postponed following Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors and marines. The broadcaster said it was subject to the diplomatic stand-off between Britain and Iran being "satisfactorily resolved".
The nature of these docudramas constantly runs the risk of being criticised for misrepresenting the truth, while being close enough to it that depending on current events they may be pulled off-screen and deemed too sensitive.
Ian Johns in the Times wrote about the Mark of Cain: "Marchant had clearly been inspired by documented cases. So why didn't he come up with a straight drama-documentary that would have clarified the division between fact and dramatic licence?"
More recently, Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, was supposed to be screened at the London Film Festival but due to its apparent similarities to the Madeleine McCann case, it wasn't. Affleck said: "All the people involved in the film have much greater concern for Madeleine McCann than we do for the release of our project. The movie will not be released if it is going to touch a nerve or inflame anybody's sensitivities."
But aren't movies meant to touch the soul? Once a film has passed the laws of censorship we have in place, and providing they remain within a commonly accepted moral framework, shouldn't the viewer be able to make up their own mind, regardless of the timing?
If newspapers can print sensational pictures of the McCann parents with headlines such as "Suspects", and the BBC can go ahead with a Panorama on the McCanns after David Mills, the original producer, disowned it, saying it was "insufficiently analytical" and "verges on the dishonest", where do we draw the line?
It is now 14 years since Venables and Thompson committed their crime. Yet even as recently as this year, newspapers jump on leads that may reveal their real identity. Viewers of Boy A may sympathise with Jack, who committed a similar act - but if this was a documentary where would we stand? I'd like to say child killers - real or fictional - deserve a second chance. Otherwise we might as well just go and hang them.
