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

[ElenorRigby]

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.

*awassailing' you've gotta laugh though dontcha

bloody hell, although I don't have the same level of compassion for these boys(I save that for the victims) I would never ever call for them to be executed. that is shocking.

indeed - often it's humour that gets you through the shite in life

I understand from a (self-paced, DVD-based) course that I've almost finished, that there is plenty of evidence for foetal brains being damaged by maternal circumstances (not just drugs), and how that then affects a child's subsequent development in terms of empathy, morality, etc. Add to that any reinforcement due to poor circumstances as their brains grow and it's possible to end up with youngsters of that age who are, in a sense, 'programmed' to think/behave in an antisocial way. It's also possible that transferring them at a young age to much better circumstances can compensate for their early deprivation.

Also, human brains undergo a restructuring during the teenage years and these two brothers are at the point where a structured and caring environment can rehabilitate them. As far as the sentence is concerned, I'm a bit unhappy that the minimum was set at five years. In my opinion, they need longer rehabilitation than that, preferably until they each reached the age of 19, which would be the point where they would be transferred to the ordinary prison system - something which almost certainly wouldn't do them any good at all, and possibly undo any good that may be achieved in the meantime.

Similarly, the victims are at an age where with appropriate and consistent support they can be helped to heal psychologically but, sadly, I can't feel so confident that that will happen.

'Whatever happened to the criminals to make them do this, however tortured their own lives, society must be protected. (And I hope their siblings are being helped and monitored too.)'

Society won't be, though. The system has failed us again and again and again. And still allows violent and dangerous criminals like Peter Tobin to walk free, without careful monitoring, to continue to rape and murder people.

The system allows in known criminals like Mareck Harcar into the country to live totally unsupervised, and free to rape, murder and beat a 40-year-old woman to death in a park.

It can't be trusted either to rehabilitate these children or to properly supervise them once they are released.

Poor wee boys , hope they make a full recovery.
I dont think a history of abuse is the only cause of behaviour in the boys who did this.
I believe that there must be some kind of genetics at work too.It must make them react to abuse in an extreame negative way.
How else can you explain the kids who are abused who would never hurt anyone?.
There was a program on tv about serial killers ,(think it was crime channel,cable) and it showed a study on them. Their brains were scanned and it showed up diffences in the way the psycopaths/sociopaths brains worked.The bits that lit up on the scan were not the same as most people.The parts that were controlling the "empathy" did not respond in the usual way.
Perhaps it was brain damage or perhaps it is genetics , but the strange thing is most of them showed violence at a young age.Some could "behave" and control themselves to appear like normal people , having normal lives.hiding what they did from family and friends.
That bit reminded me of the younger brothers "switching between seemingly good behaviour and acts of violence". I do think the boys have a serious problem that needs carefull management and mental health care.In the wrong hands theyll just learn what to say to appear "cured".

Here's what I would like:

• every bit as much care, concern and rehabilitation expended (and that means cost) on the victims as the perpetrators. Both pairs of children are damaged now, but which pair will get £138K a year spent on them? and

• a recognition that Social Services' work is bloody hard: either they're being damned for intervening when they "shouldn't have" or they're being damned for not intervening when they "should have". Sorting that out needs more resources. I really look forward to a manifesto that is honest about what it will cost and how it will be done.

psychopaths are not the same as sociopaths (the latter usually being used for those suffering from Anti Social Personality Disorder). Most psychopaths fit ASPD criteria, but not all ASPD diagnosis are psychopaths.

It's all so fucking sad. For all 4 kids. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Makes me mad at chain of abuse that created such appalling parents.

what disorder is worse? Awassailinglooking ?
i cant quite remember , the full details of which is which. But i think one type can act normal ,even be charming, but has no empathy , and the other doesnt have any concience ? is that right?

think pyschopath is worst - as most psychopaths are also sociopaths but not the other way round.

Read an interesting journal on the OU library when this subject came up a while back but can't remember all the details now.

the chain of abuse theory has one question....for it to be a chain someone must have originally started it. How far back can these chains go? grandparents ,great-grandparents?

only know bits and pieces from general interest research I've done on my own in the past.

I would bet that the greater part of that £138k would be spent on incarcerating the brothers rather than on anything particularly constructive.

The victims should get every support to aid their recovery. The families should be financially supported to enable their parents to spend as much time helping them as possible.

If a child is severely neglected in the first 3 years, their brain doesn't grow properly. It is actually smaller than a 'normal' childs developing brain
There are illustrations somewhere, this is Hubbys line and here's not here to help but it's true.
Knowing all this, i still can't comprehend how they had NO compassion for the poor victims. (which i guess is the point of how empathetic i feel towards them and the perpetrators felt none).
As others, i wonder why some abused/neglected children grow up to be so nasty (can't think of appropriate word!!!) when others come through it damaged and yet functioning and not wanting to murder or torture.

I'm not excusing them btw, i'm more on the side of lock them up and throw away the key, but my mind knows it's not that simple!

I haven't read the details of this case.

I don't need or want to know.

However, when politicians, etc use it to spout forth about lack of family values, etc, I do get annoyed.
Surely there have always been a tiny number of children who have done awful things to other children? Usually as a result of awful things haiving been done to them or in thier presence? Or am I wrong? [genuinely wondering]

good point Nickytwotimes .
Another intresting point is that out of the thousands of kids who are sadly abused and mistreated, there are only a few who have done crimes like these.
If only there was a way to stop all the abuse ,and make sure all children were treated with love and care.
Dont think politicians spouting "family values" will do much good .

chegirl, yes, there'll be overhead costs of course. I didn't mean at all to suggest that the perpetrators shouldn't get rehabilitation, and, indeed, they should get all that is necessary. I just would like the victims to have equal care. So yes, financial support for the parents; but also access to the stable, committed, long-term-planned psychological and educational input that it's now going to be the state's duty to provide for the others (as it should, in my view).

what kind of care would the victims get now? . i just always assumed that they would get help to recover.

Bink I agree with you. After all the media uproar I think there will be an assumption that the victims will have access to whatever they need. Unfortunately being involved in a notorious case does not put you at the front of the queue or create resources where there are none.

Ironically I suppose that the victims of this crime will be competing for treatment with those very children who are at risk of carrying out similar attacks.

cannabis is supposed to make mental-health disorders worse. so can large amounts of alcohol.
And thats in adults - god knows what it would do to a child.

MadameDeath - that's a good point your raise about the cannabis/alcohol combination - one would hope that as they were in foster care at the time of this attack it is quite possible that the have some form of damage to the brain.

My H's relatively brief "affair" with skunk and alcohol had horrifying effects on him, and that was over only a matter of months and not years, and on a "fully formed" brain, one can only imagine the effects on a small child

Bink - this case is one in a long series of cases where Doncaster SS fucked up very badly indeed. Doncaster was known to be a basket case long before this happened. Indeed IIRC the govt. took over the SS department immediately before these boys carried out the two attacks in Edlington (althogh both boys had records for violent behaviour). So it's extremely worrying that despite assurances that Steps Will Be Taken nothing changed.

In this case, the SS dept. clearly is culpable - recognising their failures has to be at the heart of any attempt to limit the chances of something so horrendous happening again.