 |
| Terrifying attack: The final attack happened in the toilets of this McDonald's in East Ham |
An 11-year-old girl was raped in a McDonald’s toilet in a campaign of sex attacks involving up to eight underage members of a street gang, a court heard yesterday.
They took it in turns to rape the child a dozen times over several months at various east London locations.
As if the ordeal of being raped wasn't enough, they later beat her up as a warning not to tell anyone about what had happened.
The sex attacks, on three separate dates between September 2009 and March 2010, are said to have been motivated by a ‘mixture of bullying and possibly gang bravado’.
The 11-year-old was first attacked in a park by two boys, one said to be the gang leader who was the youngest member, aged just 13 at the time, Inner London Crown Court heard.
He led a second attack at his east London home, involving a queue of up to eight thugs.
On the final occasion in March 2010 she was cornered by three boys in the McDonalds toilet in East Ham, where one of them raped her.
The leader, now 15, was convicted of two rapes following a trial but he was released on bail yesterday, ahead of sentencing next month.
He claimed he was playing football at the time but jurors rejected his story. Another 15-year-old boy earlier admitted raping the girl in the McDonald's cubicle.
At one of the suspect's houses, police also discovered pornographic images depicting a gang rape attack.
Prosecutor Elizabeth Smaller said: ‘The girl appears to have been raped in furtherance of an unattractive mixture of bullying and possibly gang bravado.’
 |
| Horrific: The first attack on the 11-year-old was at Central Park in Canning Town, East London where the ringleader and another boy started asking her about sex and then both raped her |
‘She went to walk off - but she was pulled back by one of them. She said to him 'don’t touch me' but he turned her round and she ended up in a corner.
‘She remembers saying 'can’t you leave me alone' but she also said that she knew what was going to happen and in the end, just let it happen.’
After the first boy had sex with her, jurors heard a second then raped her too.
This was followed by bullying, with the boys calling and texting her not to tell anyone what had happened, the court heard.
A week later, the girl went to the ringleader’s home in east London, where she was attacked by him followed by the rest of the gang.
A couple of weeks later, she was beaten up again, and afterwards she was verbally abused by some girls - asking her why she was with the gang and calling her a slag,' said Ms Smaller.
Several months later, the girl was spotted by the 15-year-old in McDonald’s in East Ham, and he followed her into the restaurant’s toilets where he proceeded to rape her.
She initially did not say anything about the attacks, but was convinced to go to the police by a cousin in September 2010.
When police searched the home of the boy who was later cleared, they found pornographic pictures on his laptop depicting a gang rape similar to the attack in the bedroom.
His mother told the court the porn actually belonged to her and 'even though she admitted she thought the images were nasty, she claimed she had looked at them out of curiosity,' said Ms Smaller.
The boys were arrested in September 2010, and officers seized their computers.
Police recovered details of a Facebook conversation about the girl contacting police between the ringleader and another 15 year-old boy.
‘There was a Facebook chat between the two boys, where they discussed the rumours that she had gone to the police,’ said Ms Smaller.
During their police interviews the boys denied raping the girl, and answered ‘no comment’ when asked specifically about the girl.
The 15-year-old ringleader denied three counts of rape and was convicted of the first and third offence.
The 15-year-old admitted the McDonalds rape.
A 16-year-old denied the Central Park rape and was cleared.
A third 15-year-old was also cleared of rape.
Miss Smaller said there was only enough evidence to bring charges against the four teenagers, but others may be prosecuted in the future.
Following the verdicts Judge Patricia Lees allowed the leader bail with a strict tagged curfew ahead of sentencing on March 20.
Info : News
0 comments:
Post a Comment