You’ll remember the shocking close-up pictures in all the tabloids, and broadsheets, of a schoolgirl whose face had been slashed with a pencil-sharpener, a network of horribly painful-looking stitches. Much ink was expended on a similar web of “what is the world coming to” outrage. But it turns out, the whole story was rather more complicated, and it sounds like the jury made a very humane decision in opting to throw out the more serious charge levelled at the 12-year-old:
During the three-day trial, jurors heard that Shanni [the victim] assaulted the girl the day before the classroom attack, punching her and banging her head against a wall as more than 100 pupils looked on. Nobody came to the girl’s aid.
The jury was told that the defendant was the only Somali girl in her year and had few friends. She lived in Somalia for the first 10 years of her life, without any formal education, and was orphaned when she was young.
Her isolation at school led to bullying – some of it racially motivated – at the hands of her peers. Teachers were aware of this problem and they also knew the girl had learning difficulties.
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