On November 24, 1993, at Preston Crown Court, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were convicted of the murder of James Bulger, a two-year-old boy from Merseyside, and were ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure, the sentence the law substitutes for life imprisonment when the offender is a child. Both had been ten years old when the offense was committed in February 1993 and were eleven by the time the jury returned its verdict. The way the law treated them has been argued over in the House of Lords, in the European Court of Human Rights and in the High Court for more than three decades.
The criminal case itself was brief. The legal consequences were not. The boys' minimum term was fixed by the Home Secretary, held unlawful by the House of Lords, and finally recommended afresh by the Lord Chief Justice. In December 1999 the European Court of Human Rights found that the trial and the way the minimum term was fixed had breached the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2001 both men were released on licence under new identities, protected since January of that year by an injunction that has no end date. Venables was recalled to custody in 2010 and again in 2017, was convicted of further offenses on each occasion, and in November 2026 the Parole Board published its latest decision that he should remain in custody.
During the trial the two defendants were referred to in court only as Child A and Child B. When the trial ended, the judge lifted the reporting restrictions that had kept them anonymous and allowed the boys to be named, saying that the public interest overrode the interests of the defendants. From that point they were named as Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, and that order and form has been kept in the courts since. Later High Court judgments refer to them by the initials JV and RT, and the Parole Board decisions of 2026 name Venables as Jon Venables.
Alongside the lifting of the restrictions, injunctions were granted to restrain publicity about their circumstances and throughout their childhood. Their lives since release are protected by a later injunction, granted in January 2001.
James Bulger was two years old and lived on Merseyside. His death in February 1993 is the offense for which the two boys were charged and convicted. He was the only victim. The courts that dealt with the case at every later stage were concerned with the boys' trial, their sentences and their treatment. His mother, his father and an uncle took part in later proceedings, including the 2018 application to vary the injunction and the applications for a public Parole Board hearing in 2026.
Venables and Thompson were arrested in February 1993, within days of the offense, and were charged with murder, with other charges. On February 22, 1993 they made their first appearance at South Sefton Magistrates' Court in Bootle. Because they were ten, they were of an age at which a child in England and Wales is criminally responsible, a rule the European Court later examined and held not to be inhuman or degrading treatment in itself.
By the time of the verdict both boys were eleven, and their age at trial became central to the European Court's later criticism of the proceedings.
The trial was held in Preston and lasted 17 days. It was a Crown Court trial in a public courtroom. The European Court later held that it was highly unlikely either boy would have felt sufficiently uninhibited to consult his lawyers, and that a child of eleven would find the formal setting intimidating in the face of public hostility. On November 24, 1993 the jury convicted both of murder, and both were sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure.
No appeal was brought against either conviction. The Home Secretary told the House of Commons in December 1999 that no appeal against the convictions had been lodged.
Detention during Her Majesty's pleasure is the sentence that English law requires for a person convicted of murder who was under 18 when the offense was committed. It has no fixed length. It is the juvenile counterpart of the mandatory life sentence for adults, and it is served on the same footing: release on licence is possible after a minimum term, called the tariff, has been served and the Parole Board is satisfied that the person can be safely released, and the person remains subject to recall for life.
In 1993 the tariff for a child detained during Her Majesty's pleasure was set by ministers, not by a court. The trial judge recommended eight years. The Lord Chief Justice of the day recommended ten years. In July 1994 the Home Secretary did not follow either and fixed the tariff at 15 years. Both boys challenged the decision in court, and the dispute then ran for more than six years.
The boys' challenge to the 15-year tariff reached the House of Lords. On June 12, 1997 the House of Lords decided, by a majority, that the Home Secretary had acted unlawfully in setting the tariff as he had. The Home Secretary told Parliament in March 2000 that, as a result, there was no tariff for either offender at that time. The Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, passed after a related decision of the House of Lords, transferred the release decisions for persons detained during Her Majesty's pleasure from the Home Secretary to the Parole Board.
The two boys brought separate applications to Strasbourg, which were decided together on December 16, 1999 in T v United Kingdom and V v United Kingdom. The Commission had already found in March 1999 that the boys had been denied a fair trial and fair sentencing. The Court's judgment in December 1999 found no violation of Article 3 of the Convention in the fixing of the age of criminal responsibility at ten, in the public trial in an adult court, or in the sentence. It found no violation of Article 5(1), because detention during Her Majesty's pleasure was lawful under English law and was not arbitrary.
It found violations on three points. The first was Article 6(1), because the boys had been unable to participate effectively in their own trial. The second was Article 6(1) again, because the Home Secretary, who had set the tariffs, was not independent of the executive and so could not be an independent tribunal. The third was Article 5(4), because there was no judicial supervision built into the initial fixing of the tariffs and the boys had no opportunity to bring proceedings in which a court could review the lawfulness of their continued detention. The judgment did not overturn the convictions and did not direct that either man be released.
The Home Secretary made a statement to the Commons the same day, and the matter was debated in the House of Lords. He said that no compensation had been claimed.
On March 13, 2000 the Home Secretary told the Commons that ministers should no longer set tariffs for juveniles detained during Her Majesty's pleasure. He said he would introduce legislation under which the trial judge would fix the tariff in open court, with a right of appeal for the offender and, if the term was unduly lenient, for the Attorney General. Until that law was passed, he would be bound to accept the Lord Chief Justice's recommendation, and for the cases of Thompson and Venables, which had no tariff at that time, the two men's lawyers and the Director of Public Prosecutions, who could speak for the family, would make written representations to the Lord Chief Justice.
The Lord Chief Justice set out his approach in a practice statement. He took as the starting point the usual 14 years for an adult mandatory life sentence, adjusted for aggravating and mitigating features, and he named the age of the offender, the absence of an intention to kill, and genuine remorse among the mitigating features. On October 26, 2000 he gave his tariff recommendation in the two cases: that the tariff of each man should expire at once. The Home Secretary accepted it. The tariff is the minimum period set for retribution and deterrence, and once it expires release depends on the Parole Board finding that the risk to the public is not unacceptable.
On January 8, 2001 the President of the Family Division of the High Court granted an injunction in favor of both men that was unlimited in time. It prohibited publication of any image, film or voice recording of either man or any description of his appearance, voice or accent, of any information likely to identify him under any new identity, and of any information likely to lead to the identification of his past, present or future whereabouts. She said that the case was exceptional. No appeal was brought against the order.
On June 22, 2001 the Parole Board told the Home Secretary that it had decided to direct the release of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables on life licence, subject to conditions. The Home Secretary announced that both men would be on licence for the rest of their lives and could be recalled at once if they posed a risk, that the licences barred each of them from contact with the other and with the Bulger family and barred them from Merseyside without written consent, and that a High Court injunction protected their identities and whereabouts. The Parole Board's later decision records that Venables was released on licence on July 25, 2001.
Robert Thompson was released in 2001 under a new identity, on life licence and under the protection of the injunction. No later conviction, recall or Parole Board proceeding concerning him has been made public.
On February 24, 2010 Venables was recalled to custody under the licence attached to his life sentence, and in the following months it became public that he faced criminal charges. On June 21, 2010 a judge of the High Court lifted reporting restrictions to the extent of allowing the charges and some of the detail to be reported, while keeping in place the restrictions on his new identity, whereabouts and appearance. On July 23, 2010 he appeared at the Central Criminal Court by video link and pleaded guilty to three offenses concerning indecent images of children. He was sentenced to two years in custody, made subject to a sexual offenses prevention order for five years and to the notification requirements for ten years, and barred for life from working with children.
The judge gave his reasons for continuing the injunction on July 30, 2010. He said there was compelling evidence of a threat to Venables's safety, that the public interest in the conviction did not extend to his appearance, his place of custody or where he had been living, and that because Venables had pleaded guilty under his original name, his new name was immaterial to that interest. The judge said he would have reached the same decision under either European or domestic law.
The Parole Board directed his release again on June 20, 2013, and he was released on licence on August 28, 2013.
On November 17, 2017 Venables was recalled again. He was charged, pleaded guilty "at the first available opportunity" to three counts of making indecent photographs of children, contrary to section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978, and one count of possession of a paedophile manual, contrary to section 69(1) of the Serious Crime Act 2015, and was sentenced at the Central Criminal Court on February 7, 2018. The sentence was 32 months, two years and 18 months on the three counts of making indecent photographs, to run concurrently, and eight months for the fourth count to run consecutively, a total of 40 months. In his sentencing remarks the judge said that an injunction remained in place to protect Venables's life.
In January 2018 the victim's father and an uncle applied to the High Court to vary the injunction. On March 4, 2019 the President of the Family Division dismissed the application, with two exceptions: the amendments allowing reports of the second criminal proceedings, already made in February 2018, and an agreed change allowing the Secretary of State to say whether Venables was in custody or on licence.
Venables's case was considered by a Parole Board panel in September 2020 and he remained in custody afterward. In October 2023 the then chair of the Board decided that the next review would be heard in private, because of the injunction and the risk of harm to him if people were able to listen. The hearing took place in mid-November 2023. On December 13, 2023 the panel announced that it was not satisfied that release at that point would be safe for the protection of the public.
A later review was decided on the papers and did not direct release. On January 7, 2026 the fourth review since the second recall was directed to an oral hearing. In August 2026 the victim's family and others applied for the hearing to be held in public. On September 28, 2026 a judicial member of the Board, acting on behalf of the Chair, refused the applications, on the ground that a public hearing would make it very difficult for Venables to give evidence while people who wished to harm him might be listening and that the test for a public hearing was not met. The decision records that victims could observe the hearing through an audio recording made afterward and checked for compliance with the injunction.
On November 9, 2026 the Parole Board published a summary of the outcome. Venables told the panel that he accepted he needed to do further work in custody and was not asking to be released. The panel considered the evidence of probation officers and mental health experts, all but one of whom concluded that he should remain in custody, and it was not satisfied that he was suitable for release. As of November 12, 2026 he remains in custody in England and Wales.
Under the law of England and Wales a child of ten is criminally responsible, and the European Court held in 1999 that this was not in itself a breach of the Convention. The same judgment holds that a child on trial must be able to understand the proceedings and take an active part in his own defense, at least to the degree reasonably expected of a child, and that mere presence in the courtroom is not enough.
A practice direction on juvenile trials in the Crown Court was issued by the Lord Chief Justice in February 2000. Courts have power to restrict reporting that would identify juvenile defendants, while the details of the case and the arguments in court remain open to full report. The litigation also established that tariffs for juveniles are sentences, to be set by a judge in open court and not by a minister. Venables's present custody rests on the Parole Board's assessment of risk and on the recall of his licence, not on a minimum term.
No part of either conviction has been disputed in any court: no appeal was brought and the European judgment left the verdicts untouched. The disputed questions in the later proceedings concerned process: who should set the minimum term, whether the trial allowed two eleven-year-olds to take part, and how far publicity about the two men could be restrained. The injunction was kept in place in 2010 and 2019 on evidence of a threat to Venables's life, and the courts have declined to make public his new name, appearance or place of custody.
February 1993: Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both ten, are arrested and charged with murder, with other charges, in Merseyside.
February 22, 1993: First appearance at South Sefton Magistrates' Court, Bootle.
November 24, 1993: After a 17-day trial at Preston Crown Court, both are convicted of murder and sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure. Reporting restrictions are lifted and the two are named.
July 1994: The Home Secretary fixes a tariff of 15 years, against the trial judge's recommendation of eight years and the Lord Chief Justice's of ten.
June 12, 1997: The House of Lords holds the Home Secretary's tariff decision unlawful.
March 1999: The European Commission of Human Rights finds that the boys were denied a fair trial and fair sentencing.
December 16, 1999: The European Court of Human Rights gives judgment in T v United Kingdom and V v United Kingdom: violations of Articles 6(1) and 5(4), no violation of Articles 3 or 5(1).
March 13, 2000: The Home Secretary announces that ministers will no longer set tariffs for juveniles.
October 26, 2000: The Lord Chief Justice's tariff recommendation: the tariff of each man to expire at once.
January 8, 2001: The High Court grants an injunction, unlimited in time, protecting the two men's identities.
June 22, 2001: The Parole Board directs release on life licence.
July 25, 2001: Venables is released on licence.
February 24, 2010: Venables is recalled to custody.
July 23, 2010: Venables pleads guilty to three offenses concerning indecent images of children and is sentenced to two years.
July 30, 2010: The judge gives reasons for keeping the new identity secret.
August 28, 2013: Venables is released on licence again.
November 17, 2017: Venables is recalled.
February 7, 2018: Venables is sentenced to 40 months for three counts of making indecent photographs of children and one count of possession of a paedophile manual.
March 4, 2019: The High Court dismisses the application to vary the injunction, apart from two exceptions.
September 2020: A Parole Board panel considers his case; he remains in custody.
December 13, 2023: The Parole Board is not satisfied that release would be safe.
January 7, 2026: A further review is directed to an oral hearing.
September 28, 2026: The application for a public hearing is refused.
November 9, 2026: The Parole Board publishes its summary: not suitable for release; Venables had told the panel he was not seeking release.