BRITAIN'S tabloid newspapers like nothing better than pursuing an “evil monster”. A campaign for harsher punishment gives vent to a satisfying mix of self-righteous indignation and salacious detail. For many years Myra Hindley, the moors murderess, has been a favourite fiend. In recent weeks, there have been campaigns against dangerous paedophiles being released from jail. Now there is Mary Bell.

At the age of 11 Miss Bell killed two smaller children near her home in Newcastle. She was convicted of manslaughter in 1968 and was held in custody for 12 years, before being released on probation in 1980. Now 41, she has changed her name and has a 14-year-old daughter. But her life as an anonymous mother has now come to a close. Inflamed by the publication of a new book on the case—and by the fact that Miss Bell accepted a substantial sum of money from its author, Gitta Sereny—Britain's tabloids have eagerly pursued their new quarry.

The fact that the papers are legally constrained from publishing her whereabouts has not prevented them from laying siege to her home. At two in the morning on April 30th the police took Miss Bell and her daughter into custody to protect them from a crowd of journalists.

Certainly, Miss Bell is partly to blame for her renewed notoriety. Her decision to accept money for her story is, at the least, morally questionable. It has been condemned by Tony Blair, who said that it was “inherently repugnant” for anyone to make money from such terrible crimes. And the government, ever sensitive to the demands of the tabloids, has promised to see if it can legally confiscate Miss Bell's share of the money for the book.

But in all the hue and cry, there is little comment on the fact that the case of Mary Bell, while tragic and disturbing, also appears to be a model of successful rehabilitation. It is clear that Miss Bell had a highly disturbed childhood. Her mother was a prostitute specialising in sado-masochism, and the book claims that Miss Bell was herself regularly subjected to sexual abuse as a child. Although the details of her case provoked much horror and sorrow in 1968, there was little of the media-stoked outrage that accompanied the case of Robert Thomson and John Venables, two children from Liverpool, who also killed a smaller child, James Bulger, in 1993.

As a result Miss Bell was treated with a degree of compassion that was almost totally absent in the Bulger case. She was released after 12 years and has never harmed anyone since. In contrast, Michael Howard, the home secretary at the time of the Bulger case, decided to increase the sentences passed on the child's killers to a minimum of 15 years, and explicitly justified his decision by reference to public opinion.

When Miss Bell committed her crimes, the press was less rapacious than today. By deciding 30 years later to co-operate with an author—and accept money for it—she has given the tabloids all the excuse they needed to embark on a belated lynching.