Girl cries as she becomes youngest female rioter to be sentenced

A 13-year-old girl sobbed into her mother’s shoulder as she became the youngest female to be sentenced after a summer of widespread rioting.

The teenager left migrants ‘absolutely terrified’ as violence broke out at a hotel housing asylum seekers, in the wake of the killing of three young girls in Southport, a court heard.

The girl, who cannot be named because of her age, sobbed as the court was shown footage of her ‘hitting and kicking’ the doors to the Potters International Hotel in Aldershot, Hampshire.

Accompanied by her mother and stepfather, the girl was warned she would have received a ‘lengthy prison sentence’ if she were aged 18 or over.

Having admitted violent disorder, the nervous looking girl was today made subject of a referral order for the ‘serious and very nasty offence’ in the youth court at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court.

Dressed in a cream jumper, skin tight leggings and trainers she spoke quietly to confirm her name and address, before a timid back and forth with the judge in which she admitted the asylum seekers would have been ‘quite scared’.

The court heard the offence took place during a protest at the hotel on July 31.

Prosecutor David Fosler told the court police were first notified by the manager of the hotel at 5.30pm.

With a small number having first gathered on the hotel grounds, it was heard the crowd then ‘swirled’ to ‘about 200 people’.

‘Police present at the time said majority of the people there were peaceful protesters,’ he added.

However, entry was ‘forced’ to the hotel’s car park.

Mr Fosler continued: ‘About 7.30pm, 35 people approached the hotel and started banging on the door.’

This resulted in seven others being charged with violent disorder, the majority of which have now been sentenced at Winchester Crown Court.

The court was played body worn footage from a police officer at the scene, showing the girl’s involvement in the incident.

In the short six second clip, she was seen to ‘hit and kick’ the doors of the hotel.

Mr Fosler added: ‘As the Crown see it, the incident did demonstrate very purposeful hostility towards a recognised racial group.’

The court heard when identified by police and questioned, she made full admissions to it being her in the clip.

In mitigation, Ruth Cassidy said the teenager recognised she had been ‘completely unjustified’.

She told the court the girl had been attending the protest peacefully with a friend and their parents, when there was ‘encouragement’ to go to the front and ‘see what’s going on’.

‘(Her) involvement in the incident as a whole is very, very brief,’ she said.

‘She peers through the window and strikes the glass with her hands and feet a number of times. There is no damage caused.’

She described her actions as ‘very, very impulsive’ but had initially attended as an ‘observer’.

Addressing the girl, District Judge Tim Pattinson said: ‘You were hitting and kicking a door at the hotel as we have seen.

‘You were with a large number of other people all shouting and making threats of violence.

‘All the people engaged in violent disorder did so in order to cause fear to the people inside the hotel.

‘What you and the other people did must have caused them to be absolutely terrified. He asked her to imagine being on the ‘other side of that door’.

Asked how she thought the asylum seekers would feel, she said ‘quite scared’.

‘There can be no justification for what you did,’ the judge continued.

He told the girl that many people involved in nationwide disorder had been jailed, but said due to her age and her being ‘genuinely sorry’, he imposed a 12 month referral order.

‘I am not going to lock you up,’ he said.

The court was told she would meet with the Youth Offending Panel and could involve ‘doing jobs and putting something back into the community’.

If completed in ‘a satisfactory way’, it was heard that will be the end of the matter, but she was warned if she did not engage she would be hauled back to court and could receive a ‘more severe punishment’.

The girl was also ordered to pay £111 in costs - which her mother must pay within a month.

Rioting erupted nationwide after six-year-old Bebe King, Alice da Silva Aguiar, aged nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, aged seven, were fatally stabbed in a rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 in Southport, Merseyside.

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 18, and from Banks, Lancashire, is charged with three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder after eight other children and two adults were seriously injured in the attack.