Jon Venables jailed for 40 months over child abuse images

James Bulger’s killer Jon Venables was jailed for 40 months today after pleading guilty to having more than 1,000 indecent images of children and possessing a so-called paedophile manual.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Venables admitted that he had “let people down again”. 

“This is my own fault,” he reportedly said. “I have had stupid urges, inquisitive. I’m not going to be seeing this for a lot of years. It’s not going to be a slap on the wrist for me.”

Venables, who pleaded guilty to three charges, was described as “manipulative and dishonest” during sentencing. Justice Andrew Edis called the child abuse images “heartbreaking for any ordinary person to see”, says the London Evening Standard. 

The images depicted children mainly aged between six and 13, although some were younger. Police also found a paedophile manual aimed at teaching abusers how to have sex with children “safely”, Sky News says.

Chris Johnson, of the Justice for James Campaign, spoke for Bulger’s mother Denise following the hearing, calling the sentence a “farce”.

“The length of the sentence is too short. Three years is really a farce because this is reoffending and there is a pattern to this behaviour,” Johnson said, according to the Press Association.

Venables was given lifelong anonymity and a new identity when he was released on licence in 2001 after serving eight years for the murder of the two-year-old.