Court told pair aged 10 and 11 showed no apparent remorse for violent assault on two boys in Edlington

This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

Two brothers aged 10 and 11 who subjected a pair of boys to a long ordeal of torture, beating and sexual assault told police they had only stopped hitting their victims because their "arms were aching", a court heard today.

Although the boys eventually admitted much of what they had done in the brutal attack, which happened on waste ground near Edlington, south Yorkshire, they showed no apparent remorse, Sheffield crown was told.

The older brother could give no other reason for the attack than to say there was "nowt to do".

The assault, on a Saturday morning last April, happened without warning or apparent motive and lasted for more than an hour.

The older of the two victims, then aged 11, was left near death with severe head injuries. He was only saved after the younger victim, his nephew aged nine, raised the alarm.

The victims were led away from a playground and robbed, punched and kicked, hit with bricks and sticks, burned, choked, cut with glass and made to perform sexual acts, the court was told.

Today's evidence was the first time the attackers' version of events had been heard. Neither can be named for legal reasons.

Nicholas Campbell QC, prosecuting, read out the boys' answers to the same question – why had they eventually stopped their attack?

The older brother, now 12, said he had "had enough", Campbell said. When the boy was asked: "Why didn't you want to do any more?" he replied: "My arms were aching."

Campbell continued: "[He] was asked how close he thought he and his brother had come to killing either or both [of the boys], and he replied, on a scale of one to 10, perhaps eight or nine."

The younger brother, now 11, was told in his police interview what his brother had said. Asked why he had also stopped the attack, he responded: "My arms were hurting."

Campbell read out the next exchange, saying: "If your arms hadn't been hurting, would you have carried on?" to which the reply was: "Yeah."

On being played the mobile footage, seen by the court yesterday, the younger brother was asked how he felt. He replied: "All right," but then added that he felt bad.

Asked why, he answered: "Because I didn't know [my brother] were recording it."

The younger brother told police that when they first encountered the victims, both attackers had said simultaneously: "Do you want to bang them?"

Campbell continued: "By 'bang them' he meant and understood his brother to say 'batter them', and by that he meant to convey that they would punch them and continue to punch them.

"He again said that he didn't know why and said that they had never seen either [of the victims] before that morning."

In contrast to the apparent lack of remorse or insight into why they had decided to act as they did, both brothers, after initially denying responsibility and then blaming the other, were able to recount details of the attack.

Campbell read out the older brother's description of how he had caused a deep wound to the younger victim's arm.

"He said he had used a brick to do that, and that [the younger victim] had screamed out in pain 'at the top of his voice'," Campbell told the court.

"He said that blood had poured out of the wound, which was 'horrible'. He added: 'I don't like looking at other people's blood.'"

The younger brother told police he had hit the older victim's head with a brick "as hard as he was able". The victim had screamed and tried to use his thumb and finger to staunch the wound.

His older brother looked on, Campbell said, adding: "The wound looked deep and dirty and made [the younger brother] feel sick.

"He did nothing to help him either, because he did not want to get blood on his clothing."

Earlier, the court was told what happened to the victims when the brothers eventually left to go and meet their father.

The younger victim had gone over to the other, his uncle, who had serious head injuries.

Campbell said: "He asked him if he was all right. [The older boy] replied: 'No. I can't see and I can't move my body.'

"[The younger boy] tried to encourage him to move, but he said: 'You go, I'll just die here.'"

In September the two attackers pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm with intent and charges relating to the robbery and sexual element of the attack.

They admitted attacking another boy a week before the assault.

This week's hearing is due to end with sentencing tomorrow.

The court heard how the attackers moved to Edlington from nearby Doncaster less than three weeks before the attack after being placed in foster care.

Both victims had recovered physically but had some scarring and suffered trauma and nightmares, Campbell told the judge, Mr Justice Keith. The younger victim was coping notably less well due to guilt at leaving his uncle behind and had started to be disruptive at school. Formerly close, the pair were seeing each other rarely.

The attackers have sat seemingly impassive throughout long descriptions of the attack. But the younger brother, now 11, broke down and wept today as the court heard a description of his "toxic" home environment.

Peter Kelson QC, representing the older brother, talked of "routine aggression, violence and chaos". Their heavy-drinking, obsessively jealous father hit and kicked their mother, turning on any of the family's seven sons who tried to intervene, he said. The hearing was adjourned as the other boy slumped forward on a desk, sobbing.

Kelsen's mitigation statement noted that the older brother had viewed pornographic and violent films, smoked his father's home-grown cannabis and regularly drank vodka and cider. The court was told of a series of violent incidents involving the brothers in the two years before the attack.

The older boy attacked a younger child, punched and kicked two teachers, and punched a mother with infant children on a local street. His sibling hit one teacher, a woman, and headbutted another, the court heard.

A serious case review, to be published after the trial but leaked to the BBC, concluded that Doncaster social services had missed dozens of chances to intervene with the boys' natural family and thus prevent the attack.