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WARNING v upsetting: The Doncaster Boys., who were attacked..

362 replies

ElenorRigby · 21/01/2010 19:58

a case from last year...
Here are the details, according a local paper.
Source

Its not pretty

"THE full horror of the terrifying and brutally violent attack on two young boys by a pair of brothers in secluded woodland in Doncaster last April has been revealed to a shocked courtroom.

A hearing at Sheffield Crown Court was yesterday given full and painfully graphic detail of the sadistic 90-minute attack by the then 10 and 11-year-old siblings involving a variety of weapons including branches, barbed wire, lit cigarettes and heavy rocks, which left one of their victims close to death and the other badly injured and deeply traumatised.

Members of the victims' families sobbed as the court was shown haunting video footage taken by the older brother on a stolen mobile phone midway through the attack. It showed his stricken 11-year-old victim shaking and covered in blood as he was prodded and taunted by the younger of the two brothers.

A child psychiatrist who had interviewed the younger brother later described him as "cold and calculating" in his ability to switch between seemingly good behaviour and acts of violence.

Dr Eileen Vizard told the court the boy represented a "high risk" to the public and warned that without prolonged and successful intervention by specialists he may have the potential to develop psychopathy.

The young perpetrators, now aged 11 and 12, were dressed smartly in shirts and ties and sat passively in the dock as their shocking catalogue of violence was laid out before a High Court judge, Mr Justice Keith.

The pair, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, robbery and intentionally causing a child to engage in a sexual act. Charges of attempted murder were dropped.

The court heard how they came across their two young victims at a playground and lured them to a secluded area with the promise of showing them a dead fox.

Once there, the brothers subjected them to a vicious 90-minute attack using branches, sharpened sticks, barbed wire, broken glass, rocks weighing up to two stone, and pieces of metal.

Both victims were repeatedly hit with tree branches and fists as they lay cowering on the ground, the court heard. Their faces were stamped on and heavy rocks dropped on their heads.

At one stage the battered and bloodied victims were forced to attempt to perform sexual acts together.

Later, one was choked with a metal hoop, the older boy putting his foot on his victim's back "for extra leverage", said Nicholas Campbell QC, prosecuting. The younger victim was strangled with a clothes line.

The same victim eventually sustained a deep wound to his arm, which the older brother forced a lit cigarette into. When the terrified nine-year-old said he needed the toilet, he was forced to urinate on his friend's face.

The court heard that as the attack reached its climax, the younger victim was ordered to kill himself. He repeatedly rammed a sharpened stick into his own mouth before slumping against a tree.

His older friend was left for dead after having part of a broken sink dropped on his head. He could not be interviewed by police until 10 days later due to the seriousness of his injuries.

The court also heard details of a strikingly similar attack carried out by the brothers on a choirboy in Edlington a week earlier.

The court was told how he too was lured to the patch of wasteland, this time with the promise of seeing a "massive toad", and how he was beaten and stamped on. The brothers have pleaded guilty to a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm.

On that occasion their 11-year-old victim was apparently saved from an even worse fate by the intervention of a passer-by. The brothers were identified a few days later and were due to attend a police station on the morning of Saturday, April 3.

Instead, they fled their foster home, and within an hour had begun their second savage attack. The pair are due to be sentenced tomorrow.

The hearing continues."

For most parents the details of case of the depravity is beyond belief.

OP posts:
drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:00

Ponders , "its not their fault" - really ?
they may have had a shit life, no love from parents, abused themselves but they had a choice to do what they did to the other boys.
there was no-one standing over them making them fear for their lives .
The fact the mother and father made excuses for them , she laughed when told of harrasment to neighbour , and he told police it wasnt his boys, shows that they have had excuses made for them all their life.pehaps if no-one had made excuses for them , none of this would have happened.
"its not their fault"- is just another excuse. But it is their fault .(and also their parents and every other person who has made excuses for them in the past.)

edam · 23/01/2010 00:00

It is their fault. They may well have had horrific lives but this is not something that happened without them knowing anything about it. They did it, they chose to attack the other children in the most unspeakable manner and they admit they only stopped when their arms were too tired to do any more.

I hope they can be reformed, I really do, but that depends upon them learning to take responsibility for their actions. Pretending they are innocent does no-one any favours, least of all them.

Sleeves · 23/01/2010 00:03

It's awful... but what will be done about preventing more of this in future?

What are the answers?

Awassailinglookingforanswers · 23/01/2010 00:04

obviously the nature/nuture aspect has alread been discussed at length on this thread.

But surely the chances of 3 children from the same family all being born as psychopaths or "evil" must be so incredibly small? (I read one of the links earlier which said one of the other brothers is in a young offenders institution already)

edam · 23/01/2010 00:05

Well, the government could start by publishing the full report, so we can all see exactly what fuck ups were made where. At the moment, it looks like yet another whitewash.

MollieO · 23/01/2010 00:07

I assume the victims didn't fight back as the attack was so unexpected and they were scared. I would imagine in those type of circumstances it is pretty easy to becoame paralysed with fear.

It is also apparent that had a passer by not intervened in the first attack that that boy may have been even more severely injured or killed. I also think it was pure luck that the older boy in the second attack did not die.

I re-read a summary of the Bulger case tonight and what stands out for me is the number of adults who saw Jamie with Venables and Thompson, injured and bleeding and did nothing.

drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:07

the thing about murderous psychopaths - they were all children once.

mateykatie · 23/01/2010 00:08

edam, I agree entirely.

How patronising is it to suggest that it could compromise the children? It would take a civil servant about 10 minutes to either black out, change, or anonymise all the names.

edam · 23/01/2010 00:10

quite, matey.

Clearly the real reason for not publishing it is to spare the blushes of those responsible for this horrendous catalogue of failures.

Mongolia · 23/01/2010 00:10

... and to be honest, they attacked a child, were given the benefit of doubt which they used to go and attack other two... Well, it doesn't give me much hope that things will change, or that authorities can be trusted in turning people around.

But when they do it again, it wouldn't matter, because they would have by then a new identity and nobody would notice.

It's is the same with the Jamie Bulger's killers, they can tell us that they have been turned around, but FWIW they can be misbehaving and under the protection of their new ID, we have no way to know. They have ruined the lifes of a full family and caused a complete society to become wary of their own children, but wtf? they may be the successful professional talking to you at the bank, or the lovely man who married your DD, so they are sorted up while the damage is still ongoing.

MollieO · 23/01/2010 00:12

I assume the answer must be to better fund social services and to develop it into a profession rather than a job. There are lots of dedicated social workers who do an excellent job. There are others who do their best but can't do a good job because of their case load. Then there are those who are utterly incompetent and useless. If it is developed as a profession then hopefully the worst will not be able to become social workers.

drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:12

mollie ,perhaps the victims tried to fight back ? the brothers has previously attacked adults - a child of the similar age/build would simply have been a pushover to them.

TheCrackFox · 23/01/2010 00:13

I think it is disgraceful that the judge wasn't allowed to see the report.

I think the boys are psychopaths.

Mongolia · 23/01/2010 00:13

I do think that the answer is not more social services but for us, as individuals to be responsible.

-Responsible to correct our children rather than blaming everything on phases, expecting they will correct themselves when they are older, and that love can change the world.

Sorry, I'm becoming a bit cynical..

MollieO · 23/01/2010 00:16

With the attack on the first boy I think the police probably delayed questioning thinking that a child attacking another child couldn't be that bad, despite presumably already knowing these brothers for their previous behaviour. From what I've read the first boy attacked (a few days before the other two boys) still can't talk in full about what happened to him.

I also don't understand why the younger victim of the second attack isn't receiving psychiatric support - which he apparently needs.

MollieO · 23/01/2010 00:19

Mongolia aren't you assuming that all people who become parents are capable of being good parents? I'm not sure that is possible unfortunately.

drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:19

I dont believe social workers will ever stop this from happening again.
All the funding and support in the world wont "cure" psycopaths. they cant be fixed , or therapied into a new person. it simply cannot happen.

edam · 23/01/2010 00:19

Mongolia - I think what this case, tragically, shows is that a lack of love can change the world. If only is easy to say but IF these boys had been loved and cared for, or taken away from their awful parents and looked after by someone who had a tiny clue about how to care for a child...

drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:23

mollieo , was that the boy who was too traumatised to tell the judge ?
i wept for him.for them all.
How can he be expected to understand why this has happened to him?
i dont understand why there is such evil in some people.

drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:26

Edam they had been place in foster care at the time - so supposedly with people who had a clue how to care for a child. it didnt work did it.?

Mongolia · 23/01/2010 00:27

The problem is defining love, for some people loving their children is allowing them to do as they please. For others, is to help them mature into independant balanced adults, for others is just about keeping them around, for others is to feed them good food, for others getting them out of every tricky business, etc etc.

I had a classmate who killed a man, she was trying to scare him with her 4x4 (the guy was walking on the pavement and she pretended she was going to run him over, just for fun, couldn't stop the car and killed him). The parents paid a lot of money to police to ensure she was never charged (this was in another country). She wasn't and could continue with her life. I'm sure her parents made it out of love. The dead man was a poor ilegal immigrant, his family probably never knew.

TheCrackFox · 23/01/2010 00:29

I think their parents, in their own sick twisted way, did love them. Unfortunately, they were also too thick, self absorbed and lazy to have any idea about how to raise children.

TheShriekingHarpy · 23/01/2010 00:31

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

drloves8 · 23/01/2010 00:32

mongolia thats awful. why was she trying to scare the man with her 4x4? unhinged ,imo.

MollieO · 23/01/2010 00:33

I don't think you threaten to slice up your wife's face in front of your children if you do love them or beat your wife and then your children if they try to intervene, do you?