Appeal judges free guilty girls

FOUR teenage members of a traveller girl robbery gang have been freed by the Court of Appeal — which ruled that locking them up doesn’t help society.

The ladette mob, from Oldham and Nelson, Lancashire, took a mobile phone from an eight-year-old child in Manchester, and one of their number attacked older teenage boys in a bid to snatch iPods and Blackberry mobile phones.

Three of the girls, aged 16 to 18, were given four-month custodial sentences at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court last month for robbery, and the other, 15, was sentenced to six months in a young offenders’ institution.

Two senior judges sitting at London’s Court of Appeal yesterday freed all four.

Mr Justice Openshaw told the court all of the girls came from difficult backgrounds, with one traveller youngster having had to fend for herself and her siblings since she was 12.

Another, who had learning difficulties, was illiterate and hadn’t been to school since she was 11.

The youngest was involved in a string of mobile-phone robberies in Salford last year, and even verbally abused and intimidated the victims’ parents when they went to their children’s aid.

The court was told all four had been drawn into the gang by an 18-year-old ringleader, who bullied the others to get involved and didn’t appeal her 16-month sentence.

Mr Justice Openshaw, sitting with Mr Justice Burnett, quashed all four sentences and replaced them with youth-rehabilitation orders, which include supervision from probation workers for a year.


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