...but I feel more than a little sympathy for Maxine Carr.
Because of what I do, every morning I read each newspaper front-to-back (not counting sports pages, of course!) Actually, that’s a lie - I don't technically "read" the tabloids. I scan them. I do even less with the Daily Mail. I do a kind of sideways glance while barely touching it, even though I'm donning those white, latex gloves that Amanda Burton wears in Silent Witness. The two newspapers that I actually read for objective reporting are The Guardian and The Independent.
If I only read the tabloid press I would most likely be of the mind that Maxine Carr's mortal soul is doomed to burn in the eternal fires of Hades, but not before she is ripped apart, limb by limb, by some blood-thirsty, soccer-mum lynch mob. I know this, because on Thursday and Friday I had three separate conversations with friends and family who pretty much are of that mind - all of whom are devout Sun / Mirror / Mail readers.
This isn’t supposed to sound like some sort of stuffy intellectual snobbery - it really isn't supposed to come across like that. But had they read something with a few less pictures and a few more nouns and adjectives they would be a little more enlightened to certain facts. Such as, at the time of lying to the police for her lover, Carr was herself a genuinely sad, beaten down and mentally unstable victim. She was not a hideous child-killing or abusing monster the gutter press have and still are painting her as. She was never even close to a Myra Hindley or a Rose West. But these not so subtle comparisons have indeed been made, on countless occasions and, for the most part, have remained largely unchallenged.
It's also struck me that Huntley got off quite lightly really, considering that he was infact the soul homicidal maniac. I guess this is another example of a very complicated form of sexism - for what is worse than a monster, but a female monster? In fact so desperate was the media to have a reprise of the Hindley and West scenarios that at the time of the whole furor around the case it would make several completely unsupported claims which included suggesting that she concealed evidence and that it was actually her who suggested to Huntley that he should burn the girls bodies. The courts later established that these claims were wholly untrue and, at the time of lying for Huntley, that Carr was also unaware of the real extent of his crimes.
But then when has the truth ever been a valuable commodity for shifting papers?
On Friday I coaxed myself into reading the Daily Mail’s coverage of the story. I had to deal with the very real threat that I might vomit at any moment, but I got through the ordeal in the end. The news feature that I read was based on some really dubious claim that the false identity protection that Carr is being provided with will cost British tax payers at least £50million. It goes without saying that this illogical figure was not backed up or explained in any detail. But it doesn't make a lot of difference anyway, because had the press done what they are supposed to do (at least in Christopher's rosy tinted view of the world) they would have covered the whole issue with some degree of respect, objectivity and compassion. And the cost for Carr's official protection would have been minimised.
I hope this is not true, but I think I might belong to a minority who believe that Maxine Carr's only real crime was to lie for the man she loved. From what I have read and understand, that was all she did. Perhaps it was stupid, misguided, whatever, but each of us is capable of doing incredibly dumb things for love.
But this is what I hope the most - I hope that I’m not the only person who can see that the real monsters in this whole sorry mess are the cretin writers who have sunk the journalistic profession to previously unrealised depths of soul-selling idiocy by encouraging such vitriolic public hatred.
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