TWO YOUNG brothers who sadistically tortured two boys last year in south Yorkshire and left them for dead have been jailed for a minimum of five years. The victims, aged nine and 11, suffered a 90-minute ordeal during which they were burnt with cigarettes and cut with knives.
The brothers, who cannot be named on the orders of Mr Justice Keith, were sentenced yesterday in Sheffield after the trial case, during which Doncaster social services were forced to issue an apology for their failings.
Police who found the victims last April on wasteland in Edlington, near Doncaster, where they had been lured, were in tears, many describing it as the single worst moment of their careers.
During the prolonged assault, the brothers, who were aged 10 and 11 at the time, hit their victims with sticks and bricks, made them perform sexual acts upon each other, burnt them with cigarettes, stamped on their faces, put a noose around one and told both they were going to die.
One of the victims, who was found later covered in blood and on the brink of death, had a kitchen sink dropped on to his head, while the other was stabbed so badly that the knife penetrated to the bone.
It has emerged that the brothers had attempted to carry out a similar attack the week before, when they enticed a 12-year-old to the same spot on the pretext of showing him a toad, only to be interrupted by a passing fisherman.
Clearly stunned by the boys’ conduct, Mr Justice Keith told them they had chosen their victims “because of their vulnerability” and because they wanted to “use aggression, extreme violence and sexual degradation to inflict maximum pain”.
Psychiatric reports showed that one of the attackers, known only as A in court, was “emotionally detached, desensitised and lacking in empathy towards your victims”, while the other justified his actions “with a degree of righteous indignation”.
This “chilling detachment” and “intense rage”, said Mr Justice Keith, showed clearly that both brothers posed “a risk of serious harm” to the public if set free.
Neither of the boys displayed any reaction when he said: “The two of you know that you are going away for a very long time for boys of your age.
“I’ve got a lot to say to you, and I’ll try to put it as simply as I can.
“It may be that you won’t understand everything I say, but it will be explained to you later by your lawyers or social workers.”
During the trial, the court was told of the “toxic home life” of the brothers, which was filled with “routine aggression, violence and chaos”.
One of the brothers smoked cannabis and drank cider from the age of nine and watched horror films and pornographic DVDs.
The victims’ parents were told by the judge that the brothers may be held in a secure home for much longer than the minimum five years.
In addition, they were each given 24 months detention for causing a child to engage in sexual activity, 18 months for robbery and 30 months for causing actual bodily harm. Both were also placed on the sex offenders register.
The parents of the brothers may face prosecution. They had been removed from their mother, who is a drug addict and sent to foster parents who were unable to cope with their behaviour.
During meetings with psychiatrists, the mother said she and her five sons had suffered years of abuse from her partner, who had once threatened in front of the children to “take a knife to her and slice her face to bits”.