LIKE a pack of hounds scenting the fox, national newspaper journalists descend on the seaside home of the child killer Mary Bell in matters that are not in the public interest in their tactless and tacky trade of exposing the past and trying a person in print twice for the same crime.

In scenes more in keeping with a 'Ku Klux Klan convention' or 'The French Revolution,' pencils were sharpened like weapons in the disgraceful name of modern-day journalism.

As a direct result of this inhumane action, a 14-year-old girl has now learned the true identity of her mother, following her heinous crime of manslaughter in 1968. Now both mother and daughter, some 30 years on, have had to abandon their besieged home and seek police protection as chequebook journalism rears its ugly head.

The same people who had the audacity to unfairly criticise author Gitta Sereny and The Times newspaper which, quite properly, purchased the serialisation rights, in an endeavour to get to the roots of the original crime. I am not excusing Mary Bell's crimes. But, in mitigation, what about the seven years of sexual abuse committed against her from the age of four.

Little wonder she was confused, disordered and didn't know right from wrong after being dragged up, not brought up, by a sado-masochistic prostitute mother, who allowed her clients to use her tiny daughter as a sex toy, and who had overdosed her with pills, leaving her with an extreme intellectual dullness and vulnerability.

Newspapers should have challenged the negligence of Northumbria police, the Social Services and the education authorities in Newcastle, who must surely shoulder some of the blame for this tragedy.

Mary Bell has expressed her remorse in print and should be treated with some compassion for crimes committed for which she has been punished in law, and not victimised like this.

EVAN WILLIAMS, Carr Meadow, Clayton-le-Woods, Preston.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.