Mary Bell is the 11-year-old English girl who commits two extraordinary baby murders in the spring of 1968 in Scotswood, 275 miles north of London.
Martin Brown was found dead on May 11, 1968, at the time they did not thought about such a small criminal as Mary Bell. There were no signs of violence and no any marks on the child leading to a criminal act, so the police thought that it was accidental.
The community asked for investigation, at the same time the two children Mary and her friend Norma who were behind the scenes asking Martin's family strange questions about their feelings after losing their son.
Some weeks later they found Brian Howe in a worse condition; Brian was not only murdered but there were strange wounds on his body and his belly was signed with a letter M by a razor.
All the suspicion concentrates on Mary Bell and her thirteen-year-old friend Norma. They were not mistaken in their suspicions.
The police charged Mary with murder but the court makes it manslaughter because of her psychopathic condition. Norma did not find guilty of manslaughter, but she sentenced for three years in probation under psychiatric supervision.
Mary remained in a reform school for some years and later in prison, she became free at the age of 23 and became the mother of a child.
This short essay tries to look at these two extraordinary crimes in an attempt to analyse them in relation to psychological perspectives of crime and childhood delinquency. Why Mary became a criminal?
Answering this question is very controversial; crime is one of the most complex issues in society. There are different schools of psychology trying to find reasons for children criminalities.
Psychobiological argues that the criminals are born, so it can be argued that Mary was born with a criminal gene in her chromosomes. What supports this argument is that she was a very young and dangerous criminal who:
Exhibited the classic symptoms of psychopathology (or sociopathology) by her lack of feeling toward others. “She showed no remorse whatsoever, no tears and no anxiety. She was completely unemotional about the whole affair and merely resentful at her detention,” reported Dr. Orton. “I could see no real criminal motivation.”
If there is no criminal motivation, it can be argued according to psychobiological theory, that Mary is not guilty for her crimes; she is born like this.
Biochemical theorists argue that lack of vitamins and hormonal balance leads to child aggression. They may argue that Mary was not a happy child at a real family so her diet should be bad and affects her behaviour. What supports this argument is that:
Mary's brief childhood was a nightmare of abandonment and drug overdoses. Betty was anxious to get rid of her daughter-she would drop her off with relatives… when she was one year old, she nearly overdosed after taking some pills that were hidden…
Drug overdoses is dangerous for everybody, and what about small children:
Overdoses, particularly for a developing child, can cause serious brain damage, a common trait among violent offenders.
So, in Mary's case it can be argued, according to biochemical theory that her drug overdoses leaded to her criminal behaviour.
However, another school of psychology, psychoanalytic theory looks at the issue from another point of view. They may argue that early childhood experiences are deciding on the behaviour of the child i.e. pleasure principle.
If the early pleasures of a child are not satisfied, the child remains in need for its unsatisfied desires, so becomes a criminal.
Mary had experienced a very abusive childhood. She was subject to beating, humiliating and the worth of all sexual abuse as a child, as Scott says:
Perhaps the greatest tragedy, if true, is Betty's use of Mary during her prostitution. In what she calls “one of the worst cases of child sexual abuse I have ever encountered,” Sereny recounts the horrors that Mary had to endure as her mother's sexual prop.
Mary's mother, Betty was a prostitute and her so-called uncle was a thief. Her biological father is unknown. From the very day she comes to this world she was an unwanted child. “Take that thing away from me” that's the way her mother welcomed her.
Mary was always afraid of her mother, she did not talk about her childhood sufferings until she became an adult; Scott's description of Mary's relation with her mother is a good example:
When a mother is a source of fear for a child, some cope by developing protective mechanisms against the outside world, which, for the developing sociopath, is a constant threat.
In an interesting study about psychoanalysis theory of children Gross (2001) pointed out that:
One suggestion Freud made was that the girl may fear loss of the mother's love. To keep the mother "alive"inside her, she internalises her, becoming the "good" child that her mother would want her to be.
It can be argued that for this reason Mary became her mother's "sexual prone" without telling anybody about her sufferings.
Mary suffered from maternal deprivation, so it can be argued that the way her mother treated her leads her to criminality. Her mother, Betty wanted to get rid of her, she left her with relatives and at the age of three, which is very sensitive for maternal deprivation:
Betty brought Mary to an adoption agency, giving her to a distraught woman who wasn't allowed to adopt as she was moving to Australia. “I brought this one in to be adopted. You have her,” Betty Bell said, leaving Mary with the stranger. Her sister Isa had followed Betty, and soon found the woman, who had already bought new dresses for Mary.
