The mother’s daughter was hauled before the courts and has a criminal record for life (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster/ Express )
The mother of a 13-year-old girl sentenced for ‘kicking a door’ during the summer riots has backed calls for youngsters involved to have their criminal records wiped.
Her comments come as said this week young people sentenced after the disorder should be allowed to “move on with their lives”, adding that offences committed should not be held against them forever.
Children as young as 11 were arrested after disorder across the country, which was mostly sparked by disinformation spread after the horrific murders of three little girls in Southport, Merseyside, on July 29.
As the in October, the parents of one girl involved in the riots spoke of their devastation at how she had been treated by the courts.
The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced for violent disorder and given a 12-month referral order after being charged and hauled before a court in just 24 hours.
In England and Wales, the sentence means the child would have a criminal record for life.
Speaking exclusively to this paper, her parents previously revealed officers had told them their daughter would likely be given a caution for her part in what police called a “mostly peaceful protest” outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers.
But after being advised to plead guilty to the offence, her mother and step-father told of their horror when it was revealed their child would have a criminal record.
Now in the wake of Dame de Souza’s comments, the mother of the little girl has told this newspaper the authorities were already seeking to have her daughter’s sentence reduced, but she is still worried about her child’s record.
She said: “The youth offending team love her, she’s been decorating the walls with pictures, and they’ve said they don’t need to see her every week, just every other week is fine.
“They said they want to take her back to court and put her before a judge to have her sentence reduced, they said the judge will listen to what they have got to say if they think someone doesn’t need to be there, and they don’t think she needs to be.
“But this is a weird situation because my daughter was sentenced in a way no one had ever known or experienced before, so to hear what Dame de Souza now has said is really encouraging.
“Now I reflect on how we were treated, I think you just go into survival mode, it’s massively affected us as a family.
“On a personal level I’ve had spates of being really low, it’s hit me, thinking, ‘oh God, this is my daughter and she’s got a criminal record’.
“She’s got to go to meetings every week with youth offending teams and reparations officers and things like that, it’s a lot for a little girl and I don’t know how that might affect her years later.
“When she’s 20 years old and she looks back, it’s a big deal, and in her case, I don’t think she should have been treated so harshly by the courts.”
Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, has called for records to be wiped (Image: PA )
The mum, who travelled to Auschwitz recently with her husband to pay their respects to those who died in the Holocaust, said she had also volunteered to attend a parenting course.
She added: “I wasn’t court ordered to go on a parenting course, they asked me whether I would be willing to do it on a voluntary basis, and I said I would do anything for my daughter, so of course I said I would do it.
“But the lady closed the case last week because we’d met four or five times and she said there was no work to be done. She told me, ‘you’re not our typical family’.”
It’s clear there is a sense that the mother believes both the authorities and the public are more willing to challenge and speak out against how some sentences were handed out last year.
She said: “My daughter is still home-schooled, she does art classes, does swimming and pottery every week, she’s just a lovely kid.
“She never causes me any trouble, she’s at home when she needs to be, she goes and visits her nan and helps her, she’s just a really nice kid.
“It’s not what they want to portray, this hooligan child, she’s not that at all.
“My daughter did very little, I’m not condoning it, she was wrong, but I think her sentence, as the police themselves told us before the CPS got involved, should have been a caution at most. It should not be a criminal record an employer will look at in years to come and have no context as to what that means.
“I think people are getting a bit angry about how some people, especially children, were dealt with by the courts.
“I think there was a huge sheep mentality in the reaction to the riots from the CPS and the Government, in that they wanted to treat every case the same and everyone the same.
“I’m finding people are talking to me now, those that were saying how disgraceful the protest was and that everyone involved must have been a yob and a hooligan, who are now saying, ‘oh it’s terrible that these men are in prison, and these young children’.”
In some parts of the UK protests turned into violent riots (Image: Getty )
By no means does the mum think all the crackdown on the summer riots was wrong, and she says she understands Sir wanted to stop the chaos.
She said: “The ones who broke into shops, attacked the police and smashed windows and set fires, they were vile.
“But I think the authorities tried to make every protest the same, where our daughter was it was nowhere near the scale of anywhere else in the country, but the police and CPS seemed to want to make it like that.
“For the children involved I feel that there has been a travesty of justice, especially for them, they got caught up in the moment and they don’t really understand or grasp what they are doing, and yet the courts seem to have treated them like adults pretty much.
“In some cases, the sentences have ruined people’s lives, and for our daughter, it’s ruined her future potentially.
“I think it was handled terribly by the CPS in our case, I understand where was coming from, I understand he wanted to stop the riots and the violence, I get that.
“But it should have been treated case-by-case and the courts did not treat the individual cases with proportionate sentences at all, especially for the children.”
The mum said she understood Sir Keir wanted to stop the riots, but children had been treated badly (Image: PA)
After this newspaper highlighted the case this of this young girl, Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza told the Daily Express: “My report into last summer’s riots highlighted some major concerns about a postcode lottery across England when it comes to the youth justice system.
“That lack of consistency was evident from beginning to end from children’s engagement with the police through to solicitors and then judges.
“I found that the charges and sentences passed down to some of the children caught up in the riots have been, in comparison to other young offenders facing similar circumstances, unusually severe and swift.
“As Children’s Commissioner I regularly speak to young people and their parents about youth justice and what it’s like to for children to have a criminal record or to be in a Young Offenders institution.
“I have long called for all YOI’s to be closed and would like to see a more child-centred approach to the criminal justice system which must focus on rehabilitation not just punishment according to the circumstances.
“My office is available to offer help and support for all children in care, children who have a social worker or are working with social services, children living away from home and care leavers through our Help at Hand Helpline.”