Two teenage girls avoid custodial sentences for series of antisemitic attacks
Two teenage girls avoided custodial sentences after they were convicted of a series of antisemitic attacks in London.
The two girls, whose identities remain anonymous due to their young age, carried out four attacks in Stamford Hill in under 30 minutes in December 2023.
In the first incident, the pair confronted a woman on St. Ann’s Road, where they attempted to take money from her. One of them attempted to strike her but missed, allowing the woman to escape.
Ten minutes after the first incident, the girls then demanded money from a twelve-year-old girl near Holmdale Terrace. They only released her and walked off after realising she had no money.
In a matter of minutes, the teenagers had accosted four eleven-year-old girls, hurling antisemitic insults and demanding money. Frightened, the girls ran off, using a pedestrian crossing on the High Road to get away. The pair pursued one of the girls into Norfolk Avenue, where one grabbed her arm, intimidating her and stealing her lunch bag.
Moments later, in an incident captured on video, a woman in Rostrevor Avenue was viciously assaulted by the girls after the pair demanded money from her. The girls struck the woman’s back, took her phone from her hand and ripped off her wig, which she wore for religious reasons. The woman was thrown to the ground where she was then kicked into unconsciousness.
The two girls were both found guilty yesterday at Stratford Magistrates’ Court of attempted robbery, religiously-aggravated harassment and ABH, with one of the defendants also found guilty of attempted theft.
Both defendants were handed a Rehabilitation Order, in addition to an order to undertake a rehabilitation activity requirement for 30 and 45 hours. They were also placed under curfew with an electronic tag for three months.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of just under nine hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews more than twelve times likelier to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.