Mary Bell was convicted of two murders in 1965, when she was just 15. Freed in 1980, and protected by a court order in favour of her daughter since 1984, Bell's privacy was shattered following a book serialisation. Media editor of the times, Brian MacArthur, picks up the story...

I was closely involved with Peter Stothard, the Editor of The Times, in negotiating the serialisation of Cries Unheard, Gitta Sereny's book on Mary Bell. So I write with passion about the subject that is obsessing some of the national tabloids. I have worked with Gitta Sereny in the past and admire her as a writer and journalist of the utmost seriousness and integrity. I read Cries Unheard in one evening and had no moral qualms whatsoever about recommending that it should be serialised in The Times. There were two main reasons. One is that Mary Bell committed her crimes 30 years ago and has paid her price to society. It has been a high price. She suffered years of often appalling treatment in England's prisons and a subsequent life in hiding, often on the run with the ever-present fear of her real identity being revealed. Surely, said one of Britain's most respected publishers, a practising Roman Catholic, as we discussed Macmillan's decision to publish, Christians believe in redemption? It is a thought that Tony Blair, Jack Straw and the editors who have exploited populist passions and inflamed a deeply sensitive situation should consider before they rush to judgment on a book they haven't read and a woman they haven't met. As her literary agent Hilary Rubinstein wrote in The Times, Mary Bell is now a decent woman who has had no favours from society but who has picked herself up, confessed her sin and become a good mother. Has she not now redeemed herself? The second is that nobody who reads this book can finish it without gaining sobering insights into what makes a child a killer. Sereny reveals that Mary Bell was so brutalised by her life as a child that she did not know what was right and what was wrong until she went to a Special Unit and came under the care of James Dixon, the only officer of the State who showed any understanding of her plight and how to rescue her. As The Guardian recognised yesterday, Mary Bell did not kill because she was evil but because she was badly and brutally damaged by her sado-masochist mother and the men who visited her. Cries Unheard is emotionally searing reading and is therefore - to answer a specious leading article in The Independent yesterday - unlikely significantly to boost sales. But it is the job of serious journalism to throw light on the dark corners of our society and to show that many more children than middle-class journalists can comprehend obviously live in constant fear. That is what some of us see as the job of journalism, a job that has been all but sacrificed by most modern tabloid editors. If it had not been for two malicious tip-offs, one settling a score with Sereny, which alerted The Observer (to the book) and The Guardian (to the payment of money), the serialisation would not have started until tomorrow. [May 2 - Weaver] The mothers of the dead children would have been told about the book by Sereny instead of reporters, Mary Bell would not be under police protection and her 14-year-old daughter would not yet know her mother's terrible secret - at least not in this pitiless fashion. For there can be no doubt that the old-fashioned, knee-jerk reactions of most tabloid editors would have been the same, only later. Even so, Mary Bell's daughter could by then have been protected. Yet there is no mercy in a tabloid newsroom. So the tabloid pack set out to track down the "child monster" and to destroy her cover. They succeeded only too well, raising questions about whether all the methods used were legal. There are certainly strong suspicions that Sereny's phone has been monitored. By Monday, the Daily Mail had found Norma Bell, the child who had stood beside Mary Bell in the dock but who was acquitted. She was "livid". Was that, I wonder, because she was asked if she was livid. A Sun headline said: "Shun this evil book." Yet nowhere in the Sun report was the book described as evil. That was a headline writer's invention; the book is in no way evil. By Wednesday, The Sun had found Mary Bell's seaside hideout. After 18 years, her greatest nightmare suddenly began to come real as a press pack gathered outside. Her daughter started asking questions, Sussex police were forced to move her into hiding, and within hours her daughter discovered her mother's secret and in the most inhumane circumstances. The Sun also published an open letter to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, from Eileen Corrigan and June Richardson, the mothers of the two children she killed, about the money Sereny paid to Mary Bell. Did they think of that stratagem for themselves? The Daily Mail also discovered a "new outrage" when Sereny sent a letter to June Richardson attempting to explain why she had paid Mary Bell. This was a courtesy. What was Sereny supposed to do? Ought she not to have written? Meanwhile, the Mail devoted two columns to lifting the first day's serial from The Times. Comment has also intruded into reporting. Yesterday the Daily Mail report of The Times serial described Sereny's observations as "extraordinary" and "self-serving", adding, without checking, that The Times had paid a "reported £70,000" for the rights - a sum which was way over the top. As it tried to find a writer to knock Sereny's book, the Mail also hired its favourite consultant psychiatrist Raj Persaud, who has not read it, and gave him almost a full page to desribe Bell as The Manipulator. The Express argued that Sereny's book was redundant - psychiatrists had already analysed Bell's mind. Yet Sereny convincingly demonstrates that Mary Bell had almost no psychiatric treatment. Playing to the gallery, both Blair and Jack Straw inflamed the situation, Blair by describing the payment as "repugnant", and Straw by replying in The Sun to Richardson and Corrigan, and thereby offering to sanction tabloid behaviour. Blair had spoken for us "all", said The Sun - whose You the Jury poll had shown that a surprisingly high minority of 1,329 Sun readers thought Bell should keep her money, against 8,906 who thought she should give it back. [And 3,739,765 who couldn't be bothered to vote either way - Weaver] Editors have been obsessed with Sereny's payment of money to Mary Bell. That is because she is an honest woman who tells the truth. Many authors would have fudged the question, or lied. One effect of the payment, which ought to be applauded, will be to make Bell less dependent on state payouts. So why are newspapers still peddling the sum of £50,000 which Sereny has repeatedly denied? On two occasions last month - the other was the case of paedophile Sidney Cooke - some tabloid editors were guilty of so manufacturing outrage and inflaming a news story that they created lynch mobs. It is not the fault of Gitta Sereny, Macmillan or The Times that Mary Bell's life has once again been ruined or that a 14-year-old girl is now aware that her mother was one of Britain's most notorious killers. It was the fault of the tabloid editors who have mercilessly hounded her. It need not have happened and there were many journalists around me yesterday, especially the youngest, who were ashamed of their trade. But they come from a more compassionate generation. None of the staff who has worked on The Times serial has a guilty conscience. It was not The Times but The Guardian which said yesterday: "Child killers can be rehabilitated. Mary Bell . . . has posed no threat since her release 18 years ago. The tabloids should be ordered to call off their hounds."

MacArthur doesn't point out that The Sun is owned by News International, also owner of The Times.

News: Home Office knew about Bell cash deal