The Children Who Kill: Are They Getting Younger? | British News

When 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai was beaten and hacked to death in a brutal machete attack in a Wolverhampton park, investigators were shocked to discover his killers were just 12 years old.

Days before, in another part of the country, Alfie LewisThe 15 year old was stabbed by a 14 year old boy outside of a primary school in Leeds.

Later that month, a girl and a boy were brought to trial Manchester for the so-called “sadistic” knife murder of a 16-year-old Brianna Ghey when they were both 15 years old.

Murders committed by children have always frightened us as a society – but are they becoming more common or are the murderers getting younger?

A Sky News analysis of available Office for National Statistics data on the number of suspects under 16 convicted of murder – murder, manslaughter and infanticide – shows a relatively flat trend line from 2006/7 to 2022/3.

However, the proportion of murder convictions for under-16s compared to other age groups has doubled over a decade, from around 1 in 50 in 2012/13 to 1 in 25 in 2022/23.

The 2022/23 figure is the highest since at least 2008/09, but as the proportion of under-16s is low overall, the averages may be heavily skewed by relatively few convictions.

“Much more serious and extreme”

Dr. Simon Harding, an expert in criminology, says there has been “an increase in serious violence among young people” and that there is greater “acceptance of extreme violence between children”.

“Even something that would have been settled with punches or anti-social behavior can suddenly turn dramatically into something much more serious and extreme,” he says.

“What would have been a punch in the face ten years ago would have been a stab in the arm or leg five years ago, today it is a stab in the neck or heart, which can result in death.”

Bardia Shojaeifard was found guilty of murder after a jury heard how he attacked Alfie as he walked home on November 7 last year “in revenge” for an argument a week earlier.

He had posed for photos with knives and had taken a 13cm kitchen knife, which he used to kill Alfie, from home to school in the Horsforth area of ​​Leeds.

Sentencing him to life in prison with a minimum term of 13 years, a judge in June described Shojaeifard as “outwardly normal” but with a “worrying interest in knives”.

Shawn, who was walking with a friend across the playing fields at Stowlawn in Wolverhampton on November 13 last year, was hit in the back, legs and skull, with the fatal wound more than 20cm deep and piercing his heart.

Read more:
Children and young people convicted of knife murders
Grieving sister shocked at murderer’s age

The boys responsible, Britain’s youngest knife murderers – who were imprisoned for at least eight and a half years – They are believed to be the youngest children since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables to be found guilty of murder.

Thompson and Venables were just ten years old when they kidnapped, tortured and murdered the two-year-old James Bulger 1993 and 11 when they were found guilty of murder.

A quarter century earlier, 11-year-old Mary Bell was sentenced to life in prison in 1968 after being found guilty of manslaughter for fatally strangling two boys, ages four and three.

She was also only ten years old when she killed her first victim.

But Sharon Carr is believed to be the youngest girl in the country to commit murder.

Carr was 12 when she fatally stabbed and mutilated 18-year-old stranger Katie Rackliff after she left a nightclub in Camberley, Surrey, in 1992. However, she was not sentenced for another five years.

In another crime that shocked the nation, Ricky Preddie was 13 and his brother Danny was 12 when they killed 10-year-old student Damilola Taylor in 2000, although they were not jailed for manslaughter until 2006.

Is there now a greater “willingness to suffer”?

So there have always been cases of children committing murders and other shocking crimes, but Dr. Harding says, “We just tend to forget.”

However, due to his experience in providing reports on trials relating to gang crime, exploitation and modern slavery, he has noticed a greater “willingness to inflict pain and suffering”.

At the beginning of the year it was Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe life imprisonment with minimum sentences 22 and 20 years respectively after they were convicted of Brianna’s murder when they were both only 15 years old.

Jenkinson enticed the vulnerable teenagerwho was transgender, was taken to Linear Park in the village of Culcheth, near Warrington, where she was stabbed 28 times in the head, neck, chest and back with a hunting knife on February 11 last year.

Fascinated by violence and torture, the couple drew up a “kill list” and spent weeks meticulously planning the “frenzied and cruel” murder of Brianna, it was revealed at their trial.

Jurors were told it was “difficult to understand” how they could share such “dark thoughts” and commit such a “disturbing” crime.

Aside from the high-profile cases that attract widespread media attention, much of the country’s gang violence, including children killing other children, remains largely hidden from the public, says Dr. Harding.

He sees “very extreme things that wouldn’t have happened a few years ago,” such as disabled people being subjected to levels of cruelty bordering on torture and young women being abused by people who sell them Forcing drugs, raping and waterboarding.

Another Dr. Harding, the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Duncan Harding, works with adults and children who commit serious crimes. He says we really don’t know if murderers are getting younger or if violent crime among youth is increasing because there’s just no evidence.

But crime reporting and expanding use of social media means that cases that may not have passed the threshold for widespread coverage in the past are gaining attention, reinforcing the impression that this is the case.

‘Dehumanization is spreading.

Even if violence among young people is not increasing, the “horrific” crimes that are being reported to us are unacceptable and we as a society must try to understand what is going on and try to improve things, adds Dr. Duncan Harding added.

The psychiatrist, who has provided expert evidence in trials involving murder, serious violence and terrorism and recently published his memoir “The Criminal Mind,” says the “dehumanization” seen in gang violence appears to extend beyond gangs.

Our divided society has been in an existential crisis since the COVID-19 pandemic, which is being exacerbated by social media, he says, also citing cuts in youth services due to austerity measures as a possible factor.

But “abolishing youth clubs alone will not result in anyone stabbing or killing anyone,” he says, and children do not always commit violent crimes because of mental illness or difficulties in their lives.

“Of course they are not normal, well-adjusted people, but in my experience it is not that easy either,” he says. “I don’t think all perpetrators are victims.”

“There must be an appropriate sentence for knife crimes”

The possible solutions are equally complicated – the psychiatrist suggests a public health approach that recognizes the “epidemic” of knife crime among vulnerable young children and where schools, health workers and police work together to spot the early warning signs.

But he also supports the broader use of controls and government Ban on so-called zombie-style knives to try to keep guns out of the hands of children and says there must be consequences for teens carrying knives.

Shawn’s parents urge children to “think about what they’re doing” and not carry guns, but want harsher punishments for teens like the boys who killed their son.

“There must be an appropriate punishment for knife crimes,” says his father Suresh Seesahai.

“Murder is murder. There is no return for murder. If you murder someone, they can’t come back… A life sentence is best for you.”