Murders of teenage boys.

[Paul Barker]

Recent Scarborough events have made me feel so sad for the recent Scarborough events I feel I have to off load some of the burden on my friends here.

My son is the age group and knows the boys involved. Two perpetraters lived at the end of our street (now on remand).

Briefly the murdered victim was to have a one on one fight with one other lad. He took one friend the other lad took 9 or so. At that point it was only ever going to finish in murder. the poor victim was badly beaten so as he would die in the fight, and his friend tried to get the perpetrator off him at which point the friend was stabbed in the leg and the victim was stabbed to death.

All over "family issue" according to my son.

Friend I am so sad for the poor victim and his friend who tried to help him and his family. I don't know exactly what family matters it was over.

I feel that the pack empowered the perpetrator to comit murder and that the entire group should be tried for murder as without their strength by presence it may not have gone so far.

I have told sam not to get involved in these sort of disputes. I do hope he takes sensible advise. It is a little hard because he interacts in this type of culture, despight the fact that in his boxing and judo and gym, and in all his sporting events he is always top of the pack. I seriously don't want him to get involved in a street fight. I don't mind too much that he is involved and interested in fighting as a past time though I would prefer him not to. I see the amateur boxing influence in his life as positive. likewise the gym. I suppose he feels in this world which has lead to that death he has to demonstrate a certain amount of skill in these things. His friends seem all OK, but they are quite likely all at risk from such gangs. I have noticed they are always in groups.

sorry to offload this, tonight I feel almost as sick I felt the night after I buried my father when a young man.. And that is very sick indeed.

I just never felt it so close to home before. True in the nation today these pressures are on our young people a lot of the time. I recall my own time at that age spent quite a lot avoiding fairly bad trouble wherein some boys if singled out suffered greatly but non were murdered then. One had then to make sure one was in a group to avoid being isolated. But today the pressures are the same only controlled restraint has gone out of the window.

So sad.

[Greg]

Paul,

If your son is at the top of the tree in terms of his sporting fight skills, I hope he also has the self discipline that comes with that. If he has, not only will he have the personal respect needed but his peers, good or bad will also respect him. He should naturally rise above the issues and not get embroiled in the associated street life.

With regard to the murder, there is a factor in criminal law known as 'Joint Enterprise' which often comes into play in murder investigations. If the perpetrator's friends can be clearly indicated as being involved and influencing the circumstance, there is every likelihood they too could be charged with murder.

Greg

[Cressy Snr]

I feel for you Paul, especially with a teenage son.
Whatever happens he MUST NOT get involved in disputes of any sort.
I rammed this home again and again to our Ant, when he was an adolescent and luckily he has turned out a fine fellow. Don't do what I did, was a constant message from me to him, throughout his teenage years.

from the age of 13 I was beaten up at least once a week, sometimes daily by local hard boys. No matter how much I tried to keep away from them, they would find me.
There was no way I was going to grass them up to the cops as my teenage mind imagined all sorts of nasty consequences if I did.
It was incessant and ruined my youth completely, both socially and academically. I corrected all this by going to night school in the late eighties and gaining a university degree in the nineties as a mature student.

But going back to a September day in 1974 at the age of 16 I finally had had enough.
A friend and I were confronted by 17 of them pushing taunting and poking and I snapped, got in first and smacked the living daylights out of four of them, my mate dealt with another two.
It was fists and boots back then.

Later that night we walked into our house to be met by two coppers and both sets of parents.
Both of us were taken down to the Station the following day interviewed with child solicitors present, charged and later convicted of ABH at Doncaster Juvenile Court. I got a £15 fine, my mate £10.

After 3 years of beatings by these people, where I had suffered ABH every time I ran into them it was me who ended up with the criminal record.
Most of my tormentors either ended up inside, or got criminal records from fines from petty theft and several are dead; mostly from hard drugs or the damage done by excessive booze and cigarettes, both normal and funny.

Both of us now work in professions that require enhanced CRB checks and every time we fill one in, the shame, comes flooding back. It's a stain on our characters that can never be erased. Both of us came into our chosen professions late and never could have dreamed that one day these offences would come back and follow us around like some malevolent shadow. Maybe that was a subconscious influence on my choice of forum name; I don't know.

A female friend of my wife, who came into nursing late in life also feels the shame of having a 40 year old juvenile offence, as she puts it "sniggering off the paper" at her.
Its a raw sinking emotion in the pit of the stomach every time she changes jobs or has to renew her CRB. Same feeling with me.

I'm sure a person enduring what I had to put up with would not have survived long enough to hit back at his tormentors. Too many weapons in too many young hands these days.

Do your best to keep him on course Paul.

[Paul Barker]

Thank you Greg.

[Paul Barker]

Sorry to hear your experiences Steve.

I can only hope Sam doesn't have such pressures going on as yours were.

[Cressy Snr]

Sorry to hear your experiences Steve.

I can only hope Sam doesn't have such pressures going on as yours were.

Its not something I like to be reminded of, but when I read about yet another senseless death it makes me despair for the future of some sections of our young society. Territorial young men with no sense of where they fit into the world, destroy each other, whilst the rest of society sits on its collective hands and lets it carry on. I really don't envy the Police as they try to clear up the mess. Postcode gangs are another phenomenon we are going to have to get to grips with as a matter of urgency.

[Greg]

Post code gangs have been a feature in Bristol for the last five years and probably much longer.

Steve, you and your friends need to get your heads around criminal offence disclosure for the purposes of CRB checking. There is every likelihood that your original offences have now been expunged from the record considering the passage of time. In that case, if you make disclosure as you have suggested, you are telling the authorities about things that have been removed from your record. Therefore, you no longer need to make such disclosures.

To check this out, contact your local constabulary and ask to be connected to the PNC data manager. You might need to submit an application under the freedom of information process, but that is not too difficult.

You will probably find that your history has been expunged and accordingly, you will never ever have to refer to that information again in any application you make.

I hope that brings a smile,

Greg

[andrew Ivimey]

For people who work with children and vulnerable people a criminal record is never expunged. I expect poor old Steve and his friend know this. It is something one just has to live with.

As for the state of things today as exemplified by Paul's experiences, I can't find appropriate words to express myself just that I hope and expect those closer to him can give support and courage to face these things.

[simon]

We live in sad times. I've seen the reports of the incident on our local news and was actually stood in the exact location sheltering from a bit of rain last New Year's Eve day. We had a good day just under four months ago, it's a shame that something so horrific has happened there.

Regardless of your record Steve it doesn't sound like you have anything to be ashamed of at all. You were bullied for a number of years then finally when faced by a big threat (and a good kicking) you defended yourself. They then went crying to their mummies. Where's your shame in that?

[Cressy Snr]

I do feel the shame of it Simon even after all these years. We didn't turn the other cheek, we could have got the hell out of there somehow all sorts of things we could have done.....maybe. Regardless of the degree of provocation, or the vast number of past beatings, on that occasion, we hit first and as Greg'll tell you, that was assault whether we liked it or not. The pair of us have been treated for depression and both of us have traced things back with counsellors to the bullying and a deep rooted sense of injustice at the consequences of taking things into our own hands. But no matter how we try to justify what we did, the law we broke is there for a reason, to try to keep the thin veneer of what we call civilisation from being cracked open lest we descend into anarchy.

I guess I'm lucky to still be alive to feel that emotion, as if it had happened today, neither of us would be here to talk about it, just like the poor victim of this crime.

Teenage boys do the most idiotic things sometimes, and I'm sure the perpetrators, out to get this young lad had absolutely no idea of what the consequences of their actions were going to be. To them it was a fight over some probably stupid issue, where losing face in front of mates was unthinkable. Now there is one lad dead and several others who will no doubt spend a very long time inside.
There is also the ripple effect on parents of both victim and perpetrators and all over some family issue. Lives destroyed left right and centre. A senseless waste.

"I didn't mean it" is a phrase I've heard all too often in my line of work. No doubt Greg has heard it even more times than me, him being an ex copper.

Trouble is "I didn't mean it" is a phrase too late when somebody is dead.
It could have gone one of two ways for my mate an me. Luckily we pulled ourselves out of the mire we had got perilously close to drowning in and made something of ourselves, later in life I grant you but we got there.
Sadly all too often the opposite happens, seemingly more and more often with some young men these days.

A bit of shame over a criminal record is small fry really. Neither of us can change the way we feel about what happened, the hurt lessens as the years pass, but as Andrew said, as did our respective counsellors, it is about liveable with, considering how things could have gone and unfortunately have gone for the victim and perpetrators of this crime.