The dark side of trendiness

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Two drunken youths who acted like "wild animals" in a brutal attack on a Goth woman because of the way she looked have been convicted of murder.

Ryan Herbert, 16, and Brendan Harris, 15, savagely kicked and stamped Sophie Lancaster to death as she begged them to stop beating her boyfriend. The 20-year-old's pleas as she cradled Robert Maltby in her arms went unheeded as Harris delivered a flying kick to her head and Herbert volley-kicked her in the face "like a ball in flight" during the assault in a park in Bacup, Lancashire.

Neither of the defendants knew their victims and the only motive was that they simply looked different to them, Preston Crown Court heard.

Miss Lancaster, a gap-year student, died from serious head injuries two weeks after the attack in Stubbylee Park in the early hours of August 11 last year. Her boyfriend, art student Robert Maltby, 21, also a Goth, survived but suffered memory loss and has no recollection of the attack.

Mr Maltby, who did not attend court, said he had lost his "entire world" and wished he had been kicked to death instead so his girlfriend could have been spared.

A jury of nine men and three women took just two hours to unanimously find Harris guilty of murder. Harris, of Spring Terrace, Bacup, had denied the murder charge but pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Maltby after drinking two litres of cider, a bottle of Stella Artois lager and "quite a lot of" peach schnapps.

Herbert, of Rossendale Crescent, Bacup, who had also been drinking alcohol throughout the night, admitted murdering Miss Lancaster before he was due to go on trial. He also pleaded guilty to assaulting her boyfriend.

Three other youths, two aged 17 and one 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, earlier pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Maltby. Charges of murdering Miss Lancaster against them were dropped.

Outside court, Miss Lancaster's mother, Sylvia, 52, who works with young offenders in her job at youth advisory care service Connexions, said society needed to make changes to prevent similar deaths.

She said: "Sophie was a thoughtful, sensitive individual and she would not have wanted her death to have been in vain. I hope therefore that, as a society, we can use what has happened to reflect on where we are going and what changes we need to make to prevent others suffering in this way."




http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lanc ... 316601.stm

And they call us the sociopaths...

Just goes to show, the intolerence inherent in some NT's is staggering...

If you go to the link you will notice the headlines do not call out the dark side of the trendy boys but instead dark side of goth....same as usual.

There are, incidentally, both Facebook and Myspace groups about this. There are organised protests in the offing as well. This story has been touted across the major papers as a shocking and brutal, unreasoning attack, that everyone should be outraged by. It is. However.. it does not exist in a vacuum. There is a LONG history of exactly this kind of attack, stretching back a good 20 years or more. The goth/metal/alternative group have always been the target for prejudiced attacks based on appearance alone. There are calls for this kind of assault to be recognised as akin to racism and other hate crimes. IT IS. This young girl was literally kicked to death.. stamped into a pulp so unrecognisable that paramedics called to the scene could not identify which of the victims was male, and which female... for no greater crime than protecting her lover.. and for looking slightly different. If it is a crime to beat someone because they happen to be black, then it is surely a crime to beat them because they have a lip ring, or long hair...

Do not be fooled by the shock reporting. This is NOT an isolated incident.. this is NOT a freak and abberant event. This is DAY TO DAY. It is part of a continuing stream of attacks, which the authorities are completely blind to. The only difference between this and other similar events is that this young girl died. Oh.. and her killers will be free again before they are 30... thats justice for you.

Who called US the sociopaths? Us as in Aspies? Has it occurred to you that sociopathy and autism can exist indepedantly? Again and again I will defend the profiling of Neuro-Typicals as sadists, freaks, monsters, and fools. My family are NT. I do not understand this vendetta against NTs.

Obviously we don't have the whole story here, only the aftermath. On the surface of it, a few young punks are guilty of brutal assault and murder. A Goth girl died, and her Goth boyfriend lived. It appears to be a hate-crime.

Some of us ACTUALLY ARE SOCIOPATHS.

Its not an NT thing anyway. Its a goth/mainstream thing. There have been articles about this in most major papers here, including the music press.

Maybe it's because NT's when they do something wrong, there is no demonization but if someone different does there is demonization. It's getting old and redundant.

There it is...the line the defines the majority of todays youth. "Looked different"....heck, we are all flesh and blood!!
Even though the majority of teens wouldn't go around beating someone to death, they majority DO judge others and how much they are worth, based on appearances.

This sickens me. The two boys who did this obviously have serious issues.

Yes, that and the assumption that 'normal' always means 'morally good.' In Nazi Germany, it was normal to be a Nazi (I am reminded of in After the Fall when Quentin visits a concentration camp and what really horrifies him is its very normality, its ordinary air - it is not an alien thing, he can imagine all the perfectly normal people building it, glad that it's someone else and not them that is going to die, all the perfectly normal guards and officers continuing their perfectly normal concerns about wives and girlfriends in the middle of genocide) just as under the Taliban it was normal to be a rabid fundamentalist.
Sadly, as the OP says, they're going to be out of jail in a few years.

well, there's a history of that sort of thing, from Punks in the 70s, 'Football Hoolgans' later, and 'Pak-bashing' even later than that. That said, the UK hardly has a monopoly on this sort of behavior.

Either you don't have a full grasp of the definition of the word 'defend', or you need to back off your meds a little, "Slow."

I don't know where you get this pathetically paranoid notion that the term NT actually refers to a definable group of people that you can point at and refer to as 'them.' From what I see in posts here, it's just a catchall for those not specifically diagnosed on the spectrum. It could just as easily include people with other issues, such as Dyslexia or OCD and those are not actually neurotypical. People who've been marginalized by the society they live in need some way of verbally identifying the difference between those who share their worldview and those who do not. That does not qualify as demonization. There is no mounting civil war perpetrated by Aspies against everyone else, so stow the obnoxious holier-than-thou rants, Mr. suffering Christ.





No s**t, Sherlock. And it shows.

Avengilante, I think slowmutant just chose the wrong word (defend). He obviously meant "protest." It happens.

I can only hope that these two repugnant murdering bastards AT THE VERY LEAST spend the next decade getting raped and beaten for "looking at someone funny". Then, just maybe, a little justice will be served. At least when referring to religious hate-crimes, or anti-muslim/christian/jewish attacks .. or even anti-whatever team the other guy supports attacks.. there is the shadow of a reason..a logic or a history to fall back on as an excuse. With this attack there is NOTHING. A girl died for NO GOOD REASON. The best that can be said is that perhaps her actions shielded her partner and saved his life.

those boys have serious issues....I hope they get bashed in prison a lot.

RIP Goth Girl.

Does UK send youths to prison or try them as adults?

These are reasons why I support the death penalty.

You don't like to read or pay attention to context, do you? It is obvious that Slow left out "against" or meant to put "protest" as noted by Yowling.

From your post it appears you have something against Christianity. Could that be why you decided to attack him?

Wait, who am I kidding? Of course it is!

Such scumbags have no place in society, and no chance of redemption. I hope they rot for what they've done.