I think it’s more her youth at the time than her sex that people are commenting on tbh. And her vulnerability with her father terminally ill and feeling she couldn’t speak to her mother.
As a general principle, do people really believe that children should be tried on the same terms as adults?
To agree with that, surely you would have to believe that there aren’t any major differences between the maturity, reasoning skills, confidence, ability to cope in adverse circumstances, ability to discern what is going to happen in the future, planning skills, impulsivity, and self awareness of a fifteen year old teenage girl and say a 30 year old woman. When clearly there are many!
Any parents of teens on here would tell you about the differences. Go and read the teenage boards if you don’t believe me. The teen threads here bear witness to specific issues unique to that age group.
To be clear, no one here is excusing this horrendous crime so please don’t keep saying we are. She should have sought help. What she did was unremittingly awful, despicable, and wrong. But I think any reasonable person could imagine the scenario being potentially very different if the mother had been ten years older at the time of this appalling incident.