Two London teenage girls were sentenced on Wednesday on for a series of antisemitic crimes last December in which they attacked seven Jewish residents of Stamford Hill, leaving one woman unconscious, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The girls, aged 14 and 15, were both found guilty of attempted robbery, religiously aggravated harassment, actual bodily harm, and one of them was found guilty of attempted theft. Both minors were sentenced to a Youth Rehabilitation Order for 18 months, ordered to participate in 30 and 45 hours of rehabilitation activities, and were placed under three months of curfew with an electronic tag. CPS said that it had applied for tougher sentences because the crimes were hate-motivated.
The four incidents, which occurred over thirty minutes, saw the girls first approach a Jewish woman demanding money. One of the teenagers attempted to hit the victim, but the woman managed to escape. Ten minutes later, they made the same demands of a 12-year-old girl, but the released her when it became evident that she had no money.
The teenagers then found a group of four 11-year-old girls, hurling antisemitic abuse as they demanded their money. The girls fled, but the miscreants pursued one of them and managed to catch her. They “intimidated” the girl and then took her lunch bag. In the final incident in the crime spree, the teens approached a women and demanded money. When the victim tried to walk away, they struck her in the back. She tried to cross the road to flee, but the two teenager pursued. They grabbed the phone from her hand, slapped her, pulled off her wig, threw her to the ground, and then kicked her. The woman briefly lost consciousness and sustained “significant” bruising.
Crown Prosecution Service London North Magistrates’ Court Unit Senior Prosecutor Jagjeet Saund said that the evidence presented at the trial proved that most of the victims were targeted because they were Jewish.
“Key witness testimony proved that the defendants were mocking them, using antisemitic language, making it plainly obvious that these attacks were hate crimes,” said Saund. “At the sentence hearing today, we used a Community Impact Statement from a Jewish community leader to further demonstrate the wider impact this display of hatred can have on the local community, causing trauma and fear across society.”
Saund said that the CPS and police would work together to ensure that such hate, prejudice and hostility would be prosecuted.
Jewish population in the area
Stamford Hill has a high population of visibly religious Jews, and has been the focal point of high profile and violent antisemitic attacks in recent months.
In late November a 14-year-old Jewish schoolgirl suffered head and facial wounds when Jewish teenagers were pelted with glass bottles and plates by a male attacker.
Last Thursday, the London Shomrim presented new video evidence filmed from the perpetrator’s balcony, showing “a plate being deliberately thrown, smashing on one of the girls’ heads as she walked past.”
“The video is captioned ‘wicked’ with laughing emojis, highlighting the deliberate and hateful nature of this attack,” the Shomrim said on social media.
Mathilda Heller contributed to this report.