A LEADING judge has angered victims' families by claiming North-East child killer Mary Bell was treated "too harshly" by the justice system.

Dame Elizabeth Butler Sloss, head of the High Court family division, said Mary Bell - and the killers of Merseyside toddler Jamie Bulger - had faced jail terms that were "excessively punitive".

Last night, June Richardson, mother of Bell's first victim, Martin Brown, called for children who killed to be treated in secure mental units rather than locked up in prison.

But she said she did not agree Bell and similar killers should have their sentences slashed, and condemned Dame Elizabeth - who last month granted Bell lifelong anonymity - for ignoring the needs of victims' families.

"I think it is disgusting if she wants to cut down sentences even more," she said.

"If the scales of justice were balanced then these children should serve much longer, say ten to 15 years, in a mental institution.

"Mary Bell served six years for each murder - my son's life is worth more than six years.

"But I don't think Mary Bell should have been put where she was. She should have been in a mental hospital.

"Children who kill should not be treated the same as adult murderers, but they should be put in special units to find out why they have done it, for as long as it takes, then maybe we can prevent it happening again."

Dame Elizabeth, writing in the latest edition of a legal magazine, the Justice's Clerk, said child killers should be reintegrated into the community after a shorter period, as they are in Norway.

The judge - who also ruled that the new identities of the James Bulger killers be kept secret -wrote: "I would suggest that in contrast to our protectiveness of children in need, we have an excessively punitive approach towards children who commit offences, however young they might be.

"This punitive approach was starkly illustrated in the two cases of Mary Bell, who, aged ten, killed two small children and Thompson and Venebles, who, equally aged ten, killed James Bulger.

"Imprisonment of young people puts them at great risk to their welfare."

Chris Johnson, a friend of James Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, said she had been "stunned" by Dame Elizabeth's comments.

Mary Bell strangled Martin Brown and Brian Howe in Newcastle when she was aged just ten.

In 1998, she was reputed to have received £50,000 from the publication of a book on her life, Cries Unheard.