Boys, aged 10 and 11, plead guilty to torturing and sexually assaulting two boys

[SomeGuy]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8233822.stm

"The victims first met their attackers as they played football in a park.

The boys were lured away by the brothers, who promised they would show them a toad they had found, but instead they were subjected to a horrific assault.

One of the boys had a sink dropped on his head, the pair had bricks thrown at them and they were repeatedly stamped on.

The nine-year-old managed to stagger to a nearby house to raise the alarm, covered in blood from wounds to his head and arm.

The 11-year-old boy was later discovered unconscious in the nearby wood.

Jean Wright said her 40-year-old son, who then found the badly beaten 11-year-old, was left so traumatised he could no longer walk past the scene of the attacks.

The brothers have each pleaded guilty to robbing one of the boys of a mobile phone and the other of cash.

They also admitted two counts of intentionally causing a child to engage in sexual activity.

The brothers were later charged with attempted grievous bodily harm with intent and making a threat to kill in connection with a separate attack on another 11-year-old boy in Doncaster a week earlier.

The court heard the brothers picked a "discreet" location for the scene of their first attack on the other boy, in trees, by a stream.

But they were interrupted by a passer-by, and a week later chose a "more isolated" place for the attack on the two boys.

The nine-year-old and 11-year-old were led to a large mound of timber, described as a "den", which was hidden from public view, where some of their injuries were inflicted.

The brothers then moved their victims to a second site, at the foot of a 15ft ravine. It was here that a broken sink was used to inflict the more serious head injuries on the 11-year-old"

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/8235661.stm
Also:

"A relative of the boys who carried out the Edlington attacks has told how their mother would lace their food with cannabis to get them to go to sleep.

She recalled how the brothers grew up in a chaotic household watching horror movies from a young age.

The boys would often be up all night and had even set fire to their own wardrobes in their bedrooms, she said.

From the age of about six or seven they used to watch horror movies, Chucky films, the sort that grown-ups daren't watch.

"She [their mother] just sat in the house doing nothing really, she wasn't really bothered.

"The father used to do a lot more for the children than she did.

"He was a tough dad, maybe a little too tough and strict and they rebelled against him.

"If he smacked the boys for being naughty she would just tell them to tell him to F off, it doesn't matter.

"She used to put cannabis in the tea so they could have an early night and she could have a quiet night in.

"My friend said she had walked into the house one day and was totally disgusted because she had caught her putting cannabis on a chocolate cake."

A former police officer described the brothers as habitual troublemakers who were "a cancer" in the local community.

He first came across the boys when he organised a tree planting scheme at Sandall Park in Doncaster in 2006.

"There was a lot of work put in by the volunteers there, but within 20 minutes of leaving the site the entire area was trashed.

"Five hundred pounds worth of plants got pulled up and thrown in the lake. One particular member of that family was responsible.

"That person was identified to me by someone who saw them trashing the plants.

"On one occasion we had it reported to us that at least one member of that family was seen to pick up ducklings in the park and kill them by throwing them against trees."

Londonone - where is your evidence that CHILDREN cannot be rehabilitated? I beg to differ. I agree some adults are past that stage but children can be.

There is lots of scientific evidence to support this.

Callisto - the CPS will take a view and balance further trauma to the victim v what they boys legal team will get them to plead to. In these circumstances I dont' really feel it makes much difference whether it is attempt murder or GBH with intent.

The number of psycho/sociopaths born that way are miniscule.

To say that these kids are just psychopaths is very lame and of course, dismissing anyone else's responsibility in these horrible incidents.

Why is everybody only outraged about the dreadful things that happened to the victims in this case?

These dreadful things or the like have obviously happening to the perpetrators for years and nobody gives a shit. What's the difference?

When do we start giving a shit? Because until something is done to stop fuckwits having children in their care, this kind of thing is going to happen again and again and again.

I hope those poor children who were tortured and abused find the comfort and help they need. All of them.

Exactly. There isn't even agreement across the mental health professions over whether psychopathy even exists in children per se. So to say they can't be rehabilitated is nonsense.

BTW Itsgrim - have to also agree about what can be done about fuckwits having kids. I don't know what can be done about it, morally probably not very much, but you look around at some parents and some pregnant women and you fear for their kids.

The only thing that can really be done is to prevent some of these people having children, but how do you decide who should and shouldn't have children? Should people be forced to go to parenting classes (something I would have rebelled against)? There is an attitude that it is every womans right to have a child, perhaps we should be challenging this assumption? Or the other option would be to take the babies at birth, but then how is that decision made? What would be the criteria for allowing a woman to take her baby home? It is a slippery slope to pit the rights of the parent against the rights of the child, and one that we are currently on.

I don't think you can ever stop people from having children. Or keeping them, it seems.

It's more about monitoring those children. You watch - I bet the social services come under fire for not doing more for these young 'criminals', for want of a better word. But then how much pressure are the ss under? And how much can they really do?

I'm starting to believe the 'broken Britain' bs now. I hate thinking of how many more kids there are out there who are being totally and utterly maltreated. And what on earth can we expect but more viciousness and abuse in the future?

What kind of freakshow thinks it's ok to put cannabis in kids' food so that they'll sleep?

Very upsetting and depressing.

Agree with londonone, having worked extensively with dangerous young people I believe some individuals are just too dangerous to be rahabilitated. Yes environment does play a part but the temperament were born with and it's interaction with environmental factors has a large part to play too.

I've worked with highly dangerous psychopathic youngsters who've experienced some level of lovelessness and neglect but also some who've had reasonable upbrinigings in comparison to some. They will probably be incarcerated for life and so they should be. They are too dangerous to be in society their crimes are horrific and their lack of emotion and empathy shocking.

But I also agree with posters high-lighting the complete lack of boundaries and guidance and the effect this will have had on them. In my current job (community CAMHS) we often get screamed at by abusive parents who take no responsibility for their childrens difficulties telling us it's our responsibility to "sort it out" blaming us, social services, school, anyone apart from themselves.

Yes their behaviour and lack of empathy is shocking but children can be rehabilitated from this. Read up on any current psychological periodicals, particularly around neurospsychology and you will see there is evidence of this.

And yes I have worked extensively in this field too.

Children's services need a fuck load more money. But that would have the taxpayer bleating about 'public spending'.
There is little support for children with behavuoural issues even when the parents are begging for it, let alone when the parents don't give a toss.

Of course there are children who cannot be rehabilitated, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. Having said that though, even if these boys are rehabilitated to the extent that they realize what they have done is wrong, I think it's unlikely they will ever recover from the emotional scars they clearly will have suffered during their early upbringing.

And whether we care to admit it or not, the reality is that they will be for ever tarnished by what they have done, even in the eyes of those who feel sorry for what they have gone through in their own lives. Would you want your daughters to go out with one of them? As much as I feel for them, I wouldn't (I don't have daughters but ykwim), or my son to look up to them.

there is a definite gap in services provision for families with children with behavioural difficulties. Social services no longer do this sort of work (in our patch anyway) and CAMHS focus is supposed to be on disorder specific issues e.g. depression, ASD, ADHD, psychosis, eating disorder OCD etc i.e. a mental diagnosis.

Parenting courses aren't for everyone and there simply isn't the capacity to do intensive individual behavioural interventions and/or family therapy in current services. If by some miracle caseloads are small enough to see families weekly/fortnightly for as long as it takes then you do see a difference but this occurence only happens when you start or are leaving a role and have the capacity.

It's not workable on full time hours to see more than 5 cases 1xper week when you have 40+ cases to review overall.

what a horrific story

the chilling way in which they planned the attack and their total lack of empathy with fellow human beings in pain is horrendous.

their poor victims

But I hope they can be helped, because they are victims too - perhaps it is not too late

Have just been reading this in the paper - why do i do this? Not reading it makes me feel guilty as though i dont care i think, but reading it brings such ferociously sad feelings i pysically feel sick.

The poor poor victims, one said "just let me die" when he was found and what they were forced to do.

Oh things just get to you deeply sometimes more than others dont they

Our paper described what was done to the 2 boys, adn I was sitting reading it and had to stop, I got 2 paragraphs in and felt sick and tears were streaming down my face. When they did those crimes they were the same ages as my 2 are now

Actually the thing that shocks me most about this story is not that social services didn't manage to prevent it but that they had been committing crime after crime for years and the police couldn't or didn't step in.
Obviously the boys needed helping, but society also needed protecting from them, and there doesn't seem to have been a mechanism for that, either.

I wonder what will happen to the parents. They are largely responsible for this, but sadly they are not the only "parents" in the UK who do this to their children. There is a child at my mother's school (aged about 8) who was forced to watch Chucky by his father, many with drug addict parents ... and this is in leafy Surrey, not the depths of Mossside in Manchester. So far this year, we've had these two, Baby P, the father who fathered multiple children by his own daughters and effectively kept them prisoner ... and these are the ones that have ended up in the media.

In the Times there is an article about these two boys neighbour, who is a Kurdish Iraqi. His children were too afraid to go out into their own garden, they had things thrown at them by these boys (and in some cases were injured by it), had racial abuse shouted at them, and the police told them to only report every 6th incident, social services said note down incidents. Incredible (this also shows up all the BNP lines about racially-motivated crimes getting all the police attention).

Am I the only one thinking "where were the parents?" of the victims while all this was going on? Surely the 9 year old at least is too young to be playing out without adult supervision? Whenever I hear of children being assaulted/kidnapped/murdered whether it be by other children or adults I always wonder, "where were their parents?"

I really, really do not get the whole targets thing. For Social Services, they have a target for the number of children they take into care, with the aim of reducing it during more constrained times. But surely the number of children needing to go into care does not necessarily reflect the target? It's like in Communist countries when they tried price items on a political basis; it doesn't work. Surely the system should be flexible enough to take as many children into care as need it, rather than a random number worked out on statistics? It's so wrong IMO.

Can't read the article, poor poor children, all of them, more money into welfare of children is obvious answer but all governments, whether Tory, Labour or Lib Dem, prefer spending £ millions on war and their own lifestyles than on measures to ensure safety of children

Saxonne - I think playing out at 9 and 11 is fairly usual in most places (though not in some cities which are obviously dangerous). Normal parents round here certainly allow children of that age to go to the park and for walks alone.
I don't think there is anything to suggest that the victims' parents were in any way neglectful.

Oh God. This has sent chills down my spine.

If only something could be done to stop children from being born into these kinds of situations, it is so sad

It's cases like this that make me think having to apply for some sort of licence to become a parent wouldn't be such a bad thing.

No Saxonne, my dcs have played out from an early age and 9 is certainly not too young IMO.