We should take some small consolation in the existence of Myra Hindley; for she was the living proof - for those that need it - that evil exists on this earth. It is a palpable thing, this evil: it takes over people's lives, and society ignores it at its peril, writes Kevin Myers.
The evil which Hindley represented worked in many subtle ways, and were not confined to her person. That is the nature of evil: for all its magnetic power, it is both banal and insidious. Evil has charm, evil has charisma, evil beguiles, evil enchants, in the typing pool in which she once worked as much as in an SS barracks; so that at length even the innocent become enmeshed and are transformed into evil's handmaidens. Hence all the fools who campaigned for Hindley's release, declaring that she was a changed woman.
Dealing with evil
That's why society must face up to the evil with an uncompromising fierceness. The mood of the mob is not always right, but it was in the case of this devil. To have allowed her out of jail before her death would not merely to have made light of the unspeakable evil she was party to, but it would have declared that there is a limit to the price to be paid for the most wicked deeds most of us have ever heard of.
By ensuring that she never breathed a free breath of air again, the state unequivocally establishes a social and political imperative that it will protect children, absolutely.
For the issue is only partly about punishment, and about forfeiture in exchange for what has been taken: though one hundred lifetimes could not be payment enough for what this creature did. But it is also a tariff, public and predictable, for offences against children.
Can the same be said about Ireland? Have we shown an uncompromising ferocity towards those who have abused children in their power? Has the Catholic Church protected innocence with a requisitely ruthless vigour? We know the answer to this.
The day that Myra Hindley died, the Cork Circuit Criminal Court decided to release a creature called Brother Ambrose, real name James Kelly, after only serving three years of a 36-year sentence, for multiple rapes of boys as far back as the 1940s. The court was told that Kelly was in poor health, and that he is so old that he is in no danger of offending again.
That he is old and in poor health is excellent news. Being advanced in years, and being unwell, means that he probably won't live long, and death in custody, and preferably in agony, would be a most satisfactory outcome for this vile, disgusting creature.
But, unless he dies over the next few days, he will not die in a prison cell: and that is a disgrace. The state has him in a jail, and the least we might expect of it is that he dies there, in wretched ignominy.
There are no grounds for mitigation of sentence of this loathsome being; no reason for mercy. He did not come forward to confess of his own accord, but was uncovered after his victims made formal complaints about his deeds, some nearly 40 years after they occurred. He violated countless boys for decades. One man testified at the trial that as a youngster he had been raped hundreds of times by Kelly, who all along presumed he was safe because of the extraordinary power of the Catholic Church, and the utter powerlessness of his infant-victims.
But he is not going to spend the rest of his days alone in some cell: instead, this Saturday, he will be released to a treatment centre. And after Kelly has been "treated" he will be a free man again. This is grotesqe, monstrous. For if he committed acts that are worthy of a 33-year prison sentence - and he certainly did - then it cannot be maintained that justice is being done with his release after just three years.
The original trial judge, Judge A.G. Murphy, said that the experiences of those victims Kelly had raped and violated had "rendered their lives little short of a permanent crucifixion." That crucifixion will not end when the victims have reached the age of 77 or are in poor health, as Kelly now is. So why isn't he being given a sentence which somehow approximates to the punishment that his victims endure day and daily because of what he did? Why isn't he in jail for the rest of his despicable days, and undergoing the nightmares which those he violated endure in the private cells in which he imprisoned them for life all those decades ago?
Protecting our children
Yet the real issue isn't just the evil piece of filth, Kelly: the issue is how this State protects its children. Having learnt how it abandoned so many infants to the care of sexual sociopaths of the Catholic Church, it's reasonable for us to expect that all the institutions of the State will from now onwards strive to ensure that the bodily, emotional and psychological integrity of the child is protected with an awesome ferocity. The Kelly affair suggests that this is not the case.
It might be argued that he didn't kill as Myra Hindley did. But that wasn't an act of mercy - he showed no mercy, ever - so much as proof of his power. He didn't need to kill. He raped and tortured scores of boys for decades, confident in the long run that he would escape justice. And by God, he was absolutely right. He has.