For four years the lives of David Bray, a 67-year-old former truck driver, and
his wife Sheila were blighted by two boys waging a campaign of hate against
their neighbours.
The brothers made an otherwise quiet cul-de-sac on a north Doncaster council
estate a scene of daily fear and violence for residents. They smashed
windows, threw eggs, damaged cars and hurled abuse.
“They were pure evil,” said Sheila. “They could do what they wanted. The
mother couldn’t rule them, and when she did she was just effing and blinding
at them. You’d tell her what was going on and she’d just shrug her
shoulders.”
In March, the boys, aged just 10 and 11, were taken into care at a foster home
in the nearby mining village of Edlington, where their behaviour escalated.
Less than a month later they battered, tortured and sexually humiliated two
innocent children using bricks, lit cigarettes and a noose.
The victims, aged nine and 11, only just survived the attack. The
nine-year-old raised the alarm after being found wandering the streets
barefoot and dazed. The man who found him thought he was covered in red
paint. It was, in fact, the boy’s own blood.
His 11-year-old friend was found a short time later at the foot of a short
ravine. He was unconscious, naked from the waist down and half submerged in
water. He had been left for dead after a broken sink was smashed on his
head.
“Leave me. I can’t see. Leave me to die,” he had begged his attackers.
Last week the brothers pleaded guilty to robbing, sexually abusing and
intentionally causing grievous bodily harm. An attempted murder charge was
dropped to avoid their victims having to face them in court.
The grim details of their sadistic violence have led to a public outcry and
drawn parallels with the case of James Bulger, the two-year-old from
Liverpool who was murdered by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, themselves
just 10 years old, in 1993.
The Edlington attack shocked former neighbours, despite a widespread feeling
that the boys would “come to no good”. “We knew something was going to
happen but not this,” said David Bray. “I didn’t think they would go to this
extreme. You can’t believe kids would do that to other kids.”
Politicians, social workers and psychiatrists are now asking what can be done
to avoid a repeat of the horrors of Edlington. How, in an affluent,
civilised society are young children still emerging as savages? And what can
be done to stop them?
FOR Doncaster social services, the Edlington attacks are just the latest in a
catalogue of failings. The beleaguered department, condemned as “inadequate”
by inspectors and ranked one of the worst in the UK, was taken over by the
government in March after it emerged that seven children known to social
services had died since 2004.
They included Amy Howson, a 16-month-old girl murdered two days before
Christmas 2007 by her father James, who snapped her spine.
Last year it was revealed that the number of children on the child protection
register in Doncaster was almost double the national average, yet almost a
quarter of those had not been allocated a social worker.
The Edlington case bears similarities to previous failings. Both boys were
well known to Doncaster children’s services. They lived with their mother,
who had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, her partner and five siblings.
Both were on the child protection register, had been expelled from school and
were being educated in a special pupil referral unit.
Neighbours said it was well known that they were neglected. They were
regularly spotted scavenging for food. That prompted numerous calls to
social services. They were also regularly reported to the police, but to
little effect. Yet according to experts, Doncaster is beset by a problem
facing social services across the country — a lack of resources.
Joanna Nicolas, an independent social worker, said: “Social services spend
most of their time firefighting. They are investing what resources they have
in crisis management rather than preventative work, even though it makes no
sense in the long term.”
Wes Cuell, director of services for children and young people at the NSPCC,
said: “Often what you are dealing with is a lot of high-risk factors but the
children’s actual behaviour hasn’t got beyond the point where they [are a]
danger.
“So children being rude, throwing stones, causing trouble for neighbours — a
lot of people would be saying, well this is really awful but there are lots
and lots of children behaving in this way. The challenge for local
authorities is do you take all of them away from their parents or carers or
do you only take away the ones you think are seriously at risk?”
It is an invidious balancing act which many within social services departments
feel puts them in a lose-lose situation. Bold interventions can lead to
complaints about heavy-handedness; whereas inaction, and the bias towards
keeping families together, can produce tragedies such as the death of Baby
Peter, the London toddler killed by his carers in 2007.
Politicians and experts increasingly believe the long-term solution is early
intervention, providing support and direction to vulnerable mothers even
before the baby is born.
Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo's, said last night that many
more children need to be taken into care at birth to stop them being damaged
beyond repair by bad parenting.
There is neurological and obstetric evidence to support the view. The brain
develops at its fastest while the baby is in the womb and in the first three
years of life. Stressful prenatal environments for both mother and baby can
have a profound impact, creating abnormalities in parts of the brain which
regulate emotional responses. In dysfunctional children this can leave them
uncommunicative and lacking empathy.
Essi Viding, a psychologist at University College London who studies
antisocial behaviour in children, said: “Maltreatment or neglect has a
profound impact on a child’s brain development. It creates abnormalities in
the circuitry which is crucial for interpreting people’s emotions.” This can
produce behaviour such as that seen in Edlington.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader and head of the Centre for Social
Justice, a think tank, is a strong proponent of early years intervention.
“These children are conditioned to become violent by their family life,” he
said. “You are either violent first or get hit and beaten up. Violence
becomes logical. We need to intervene when the children are very, very young
to break the cycle. By the time they are 10 or 11 it’s too late.”
Duncan Smith favours the nationwide roll-out of a pilot scheme called the
Family Nurse partnership. Under the scheme, which is being tested in 30
areas, nurses visit first-time teenage mothers on a weekly basis from 16
weeks into the pregnancy. They provide a range of support, including health
and parenting guidance as well as tips on how to return to work or
education. The partnership continues until the baby’s second birthday.
Kate Billingham, project director, said: “It’s a way of connecting with people
and their intrinsic motivation to do the best for their children. There are
a small number of very ½vulnerable babies and we have to find a way of
helping.”
In America, where the programme has been running for more than 30 years, there
is strong evidence it can have a dramatic impact. Three trials — in 1977,
1987 and 1994 — led to improved prenatal health, fewer childhood injuries
and a big reduction in child abuse.
Other programmes that have impressed Duncan Smith include Save the Family, a
charity in north Wales that takes mothers and children into care so they can
be supported together. “If you save the mother, you save the child,” he
said.
The main stumbling block is the cost. The Family Nurse partnership has cost
£30m over the past three years, and supports 2,000 families.
Professor Judy Hutchings, director of the Incredible Years, an early intervention
research group, fears for the future. She said: “We know that if we have the
time and resources to build up relationships with these families we can do
effective work with them. But it’s expensive and I don’t see us having more
money to spend in the near future. It’s a pretty gloomy picture right now.”
Duncan Smith recently co-wrote a report with Graham Allen, the Labour MP for
Nottingham North, to try to persuade both main parties to commit to early
intervention in their election manifestos.
They have met with a lukewarm response, with both Labour and the Tories
reluctant to burden the public purse with such an expensive scheme.
Duncan Smith hopes to make early intervention more palatable by securing
private investment through a bond scheme. The government would sell early
intervention bonds to institutional investors, who would be paid back over
20 years by savings made in the NHS and justice system.
A study in America suggested that spending on such schemes costs the taxpayer
up to 17 times less than keeping somebody in the criminal justice system.
Allen said: “Either we help them and their parents at the earliest possible
moment or we reap the consequences with acts of violence, drink and drugs
problems and teenage pregnancy in later life.”
THE MORAL outrage surrounding the Doncaster brothers is just beginning. The
pair are likely to be held at a secure children’s home at a cost of £210,000
a year each, before being given new identities and lives when they are
released.
They will now be lavished with psychological and educational attention that
could transform their lives. For those in the local community denouncing
them as “pure evil”, this appears unjust.
Yet Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company, a charity for
vulnerable youngsters, said the children were themselves victims.
“People make the mistake of thinking that this is a moral question,” she said.
“It is not that these kids don’t know right from wrong, it’s that they don’t
feel anything.
“The moral courage is for a politician to say, ‘In the fourth richest country
in the world such large-scale child abuse is an absolute failure on the part
of us, the organisers of this society. We have to do something to stop this
situation’.
“And if the solutions look different from what has been delivered since
Victorian times then let’s have the courage to make those changes.”
The under-10s who rape, rob and rampage
CHILDREN under 10 have committed more than 6,000 offences in the past three
years, according to figures released under freedom of information laws,
writes Steven Swinford.
They include nine-year-old alleged rapists, boys as young as four accused of
causing more than £5,000 worth of criminal damage and eight-year-olds
suspected of grievous bodily harm. The children are all under the age of
criminal responsibility so cannot be prosecuted or put into custody. Nearly
20 forces disclosed information about reported crimes by children.
There were 2,845 cases of criminal damage, 1,238 assaults, 1,049 counts of
theft and 126 burglaries. There were 39 cases of sexual assault and six
instances of rape.
A total of 24 children as young as seven were caught in possession of knives
or weapons. There were 117 racially aggravated incidents.
Greater Manchester had 650 young offenders, the most in England. They included
a nine-year-old who allegedly raped another boy.
In Derbyshire a three-year-old was interviewed by police for common assault
and battery. He was one of 355 children believed to have committed offences
in the force area.
In Avon and Somerset 85 children under 10 caused up to £430,000 worth of
damage. A seven-year-old was accused of sexual assault, and an
eight-year-old of grievous bodily harm.
In North Yorkshire a five-year-old was interviewed after an assault on a
police officer, and a four-year-old after an assault with intention to rob.
In Scotland the highest concentration was in Strathclyde, where 882 under-10s
committed offences. In the Highlands a nine-year-old was caught driving
without a licence.
Additional reporting: Susan Cater and Rose Marshall
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