British mothers have taken to patrolling the streets themselves as police fail to prevent or meaningfully punish youth gangs battering children as young as 11.
Parents in Chorley, an English town in the county of Lancashire, say police are barely bothering to respond to incidents in which children are being seriously assaulted, with one victim said to have been just one more blow away from “most likely” being killed.
“I got a phone call — with her absolutely screaming ‘Mum, please. They’ve got me. They’ve got my hair. My hair is falling out. Now they’ve stomped all over me,'” said Lisa, mother of daughter Bethany, 14, in comments to the BBC.
“I could hear what the girls were saying. ‘Kick her again. Kick her again. She’s down, kick her again,'” Lisa recalled, describing how the gang “punched [Bethany] numerous times and stamped on her head. They all took turns. They pretended to let her up, but then hit her back to the ground and did it again.”
“The doctor actually said that one more stamp to the head would have most likely taken her life,” she said — but police, called on the 999 emergency number while the attack was being carried out, did not show up in time to put a stop to the savage assault. Indeed, they “never arrived for 48 hours.”
Lisa said that it was two weeks before the attackers, who brazenly shared video footage of the assault on social media, were arrested, with two of them merely being let off with a conditional caution and writing a letter of apology for the violent crime.
The BBC spoke to eight sets of parents whose children were assaulted, seemingly by the same gang, in total, with all reporting vicious attacks, often involving the victim’s head being kicked or stamped, the police proving indifferent or ineffective, and the attackers being essentially let off where they were sanctioned at all, after long delays.
In a statement smacking of denial, Lancashire Police claimed they “recognise[d] the impact that these incidents have had on the victims and their families, and we have done a huge amount to both support them and to keep them updated” — a version of events totally at odds with that presented by the victims and their parents.
“[The gang] punched him, kicked him, headbutted him. He could have come home a lot worse. He could have not come home [at all],” said one mother, Toni, of an attack on her son, adding that police had failed to update them in almost four months.
“I can’t believe it’s come to this, but I understand why it has, because our children aren’t being protected,” said Lisa, of the fact that parents are now patrolling the streets themselves, on the basis that police foot patrols are, as far as they can tell, nowhere to be seen.
“I’ve got to make sure that if my daughter’s down here that I’ve got to do the police’s job. I’ve got to make sure she’s OK,” she said.
“Look what we’re having to resort to. We entrust the police to be there to protect our children. And because they can’t do that, we’re going to have to do it.”
Lancashire Police, again sounding as if they are in denial, claim that all the assaults were “dealt with appropriately” and that they had “identified and arrested offenders and… dealt with [them] in line with national guidance on dealing with juveniles.”
The only “punishments” mentioned in the BBC’s reporting were conditional or voluntary cautions, issued over the objections of parents who believe the assaults should have been treated more seriously, with no one actually charged with a crime.
Breitbart London has approached Lancashire police to justify their actions and subsequent response.