excerpt from the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller on Mary Bell: The July 27, 1979, issue of Die Zeit contains an article by Paul Moor about eleven-year-old Mary Bell, who was put away for life by an English court in 1968 on two counts of murder. She was twenty-two when the article appeared, was still in prison, and had received no psychotherapeutic treatment to date. I quote from the article: Two little boys, three and four years old, have been murdered. The clerk of the court in Newcastle asks the accused to rise. The girl replies that she is already standing. Mary Bell, accused of murder on two counts, is all of eleven years old. On May 26, 1957, seventeen-year-old Betty McC. gave birth to Mary in Dilston Hall Hospital, Corbridge, Gateshead. Get that thing away from me, Betty is said to have cried, and she recoiled when the baby was put in her arms a few minutes after birth. When Mary was three years old, her mother Betty took her for a walk one day--secretly followed by Bettys curious sister. Betty was taking Mary to an adoption agency. A woman came out of the interview room in tears and said they didnt want to let her have a baby because she was too young and was emigrating to Australia. Betty said to her: Im putting this one up for adoption. Take her. Then Betty pushed little Mary toward the stranger and left.... In school Mary was a troublemaker: for years she hit, kicked, and scratched other children. She would wring the necks of pigeons, and once she pushed her little cousin from the top of an air-raid shelter onto the concrete eight feet below. The following day she tried to choke three little girls on a playground. At the age of nine she started at a new school; two of her teachers there later stated: Its better not to delve too deeply into her life and circumstances. Later a policewoman who got to know Mary during her pretrial custody gave the following account: She was bored. She was standing by the window watching a cat climb up the drainpipe and asked if she might bring it inside.... We opened the window, and she lifted the cat in and began playing with it on the floor with a piece of yarn.... Then I looked up and at first noticed that she was holding the cat by the scruff of the neck. Then I realized that she was holding the cat so tightly that the animal couldnt breathe and its tongue was hanging out. I ran over and pulled her hands away. I said, You mustnt do that, youre hurting it. She answered, Oh, it doesnt feel anything, and anyway I like to hurt little things that cant defend themselves. Mary told another policewoman that she would like to be a nurse-- because then I could stick needles into people. I like to hurt people. Marys mother Betty eventually married Billy Bell, but on the side she cultivated a rather special clientele. After Marys trial Betty enlightened a police officer concerning her specialty; I whip them, she said in a tone of voice that indicated to the listener her surprise that he didnt already know this. But I always kept the whips hidden from the children. Mary Bells behavior leaves no room whatsoever for doubt that her mother--who gave birth to her at the age of seventeen and then rejected her, who made whipping people her profession--tormented, threatened, and probably tried to kill her own child in the same way that Mary dealt with the cat and the two little children.* There is no law, however, that would have prohibited her mothers behavior. * After this book appeared in German, I learned that Marys mother, who as a child was schizophrenic, tried not only once but four times to kill her daughter. See Gitta Sereny, The Case of Mary Bell (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972). Psychotherapeutic treatment is not inexpensive and is often criticized on these grounds. But is it less expensive to lock up an eleven-year-old child for the rest of her life? And what good will that do? A child who has been mistreated at such an early age must be able to tell in some way or other about the wrong that has been done her, about the murder perpetrated on her. If she has no one, she will not find the language for it and can tell it only by doing what was done to her. This awakens our horror. But the horror should be directed at the first murder, which was committed in secret and has gone unpunished. Then we might be able to help the child to experience her story on a conscious level so that she will no longer have to tell it by means of disastrous enactments.* * I later learned that Mary Bell, who had become an attractive woman in the meantime, was released from prison and had expressed the wish to live near her mother. pages 229-231. excerpt from the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller (scroll about half way down the page of this link to read the above) nospank.net/fyog16.htm Afterword to the Second Edition (1984) of the book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller nospank.net/fyog19.htm#afterword from Project NoSpank nospank.net/main-x.htm the entire book of For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence by Alice Miller nospank.net/fyog.htm Alice Miller Index nospank.net/milindex.htm
Posted on: Thu, 05 Dec 2013 05:27:03 +0000
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