Why Jon Venables wants to reveal his true identity

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were found guilty of killing the toddler, Jamie Bulger, in 1993. The youngest people to be jailed for murder in English history, they were released from custody under license in 2001. Both were given government protection of new identities so they could live a normal life outside prison with guaranteed anonymity. This protection was first granted to Mary Bell in similar circumstances.

Now aged 27, Venables has been recalled to prison for breaching his licence. The Justice Secretary will not reveal the nature of his violation, but press rumours suggest variously that he beat someone up at work, that he was seen in Liverpool clubs chatting up girls when he is banned from Merseyside, and/or that he has been caught snorting coke.

The most serious allegation, reported on Sunday, is that he committed an offence involving child pornography. There is no confirmation of any of these violations, but it is clear that the breach must have been serious for Venables to be recalled to prison.

What is undoubtedly of great concern ­ and curiosity - is that Venables has been telling people who he really is. He has been described as being in a state of "persistent self-disclosure", in which he has felt increasingly compelled to disclose his real identity to others, including strangers.

Having disclosed his identity to fellow prisoners and prison staff, he is now being held in isolation due to his deteriorating mental condition. There is also the fear that his real identity will become widely known throughout the prison system - putting him at great risk.

A new identity costs the government approximately £250,000 to create. There is also an emotional cost to the person who takes up a new identity. "Double lives are a burden for people," Ian Cumming, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, explains. The secrecy itself "takes its toll" but there is the further burden of what Dr Cumming describes as "the national demonisation of an individual".

While leading a double life is something that most of us would abhor, except in our occasional fantasy, in the case of Venables it is vital for self-preservation. So why tell?

There is a somewhat confused picture of Venables's mental state at the time of his conviction. During their incarceration, before trial, it was Thompson who was described as the psychopath. Venables, on the other hand, cried frequently and suffered from nightmares in which he saw James Bulger in his room. He was also held up by staff as being a role model for other young offenders.

However, during their trial it was revealed that it was Venables who first suggested to Thompson, "Let's get a kid lost", and who told the adults who stopped him as he was leading the distressed Bulger by the hand through the shopping mall (above) that he was his "little brother".

Hours later, Bulger had been beaten to death by the two 10-year-olds on a railway line. Although by this account Venables was in charge, he was also the one who suffered the most subsequently.

As a child, Venables had a history of trouble-making and disturbed behaviour at school. He once attacked another child so ferociously that it took two teachers to separate them. His mother was violent and suffered from depression, his two siblings had special needs and there was no father in the household. It is arguable that his eight years in custody would in many respects have equipped him to deal with the difficulties of life better than his family could have done.

Since his release from prison, claims have been made that Venables has become a heavy drinker, uses drugs, and has been involved in confrontations and fights. Venables would most certainly have received some form of rehabilitative care in custody, but the nature of this care is not reported. Whatever therapy was provided, it does not seem to have been effective in keeping Venables's demons at bay.

It is most likely that Venables's compulsion to disclose his identity is rooted in his sense of guilt and need for punishment. His murderous attack on a younger child indicates an intense hatred and envy of a child whom he may have perceived as loved and wanted in comparison to his own experience of life.

His own unconscious guilt was manifest in his nightmares immediately following Bulger's murder. The spectre of what he has done and his self-loathing are clearly just as alive and virulent today as they were when he was a boy of 10 ­ - perhaps even more so.

For someone who is not psychopathic and who feels remorse and concern, having to continue to hide their crime may well drive them insane. It is ironic that by all reports Thompson, who was described as psychopathic, seems in contrast to have settled into his new life.

Venables's apparent self-destructiveness may be his attempt to seek some form of acceptance of who he really is and a release from his internal persecution. There is the conflicting hope of being forgiven along with a darker desire for the murderer within him to be destroyed. He seems to be looking for a parent who will excise his sins and restore him to the world and the possibility of being loved ­ even if it is at the cost of his own life.

The predicament for Venables is that he has destroyed his chance of living a normal life under his own identity. This is not only a loss that is inconceivable for most of us but it is a loss that he must find some way of coming to terms with in order to truly create a new identity and a new life.
Coline Covington is a London-based psychoanalyst who writes regularly for The First Post. ·