The schoolboys in Lord of the Flies reverted to primal savagery after a plane crash left them abandoned on an island with no adult supervision.
Some, though perhaps not those who believe in the concept of pure evil, might argue that the Edlington brothers, both excluded from school, were abandoned in a different way.
Theirs was a tough, abusive childhood in a dysfunctional family, two of seven brothers and stepbrothers aged from 8 to 19. Home was on a former council estate in a north Doncaster suburb.
It was a family whose 36-year-old matriarch, approached after her sons’ arrest for attempted murder, yelled through her letter-box: “It’s got nowt to do with me – they weren’t even in my care.”
The pair had been in her care, for what that was worth, throughout their lives until, 25 days before the attack at Edlington, they were taken by social services and placed with a foster family in the village seven miles away, where their father was living.
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He had a tempestuous relationship with their mother. The couple split up and got back together several times, finally severing all ties last Christmas.
One former neighbour said the mother’s life was dominated by alcohol and cannabis and that she “just doesn’t give a s***” about her children, while her partner was described as “a violent drunk”.
“His life was drink, drink, drink. Go out, come back, kick off, beat the kids, drink, drink, drink,” one local woman said.
The boys of the family were all feared by their neighbours – one is serving 18 months in a young offender institution for mugging an elderly woman – but the two placed in care had long been viewed as the most out of control.
“She never cooked a meal for them. They just scavenged for food or ate fish and chips and stuff,” said one neighbour, while a local teenager recalled: “Every day I saw them they were scruffier. Their fingernails were always black. Their shoes were too big for them. They used to scavenge trainers and tracky bottoms from skips. When it rained they’d go to a sports shop and steal umbrellas.”
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By February this year, the 11-year-old had appeared before the courts four times for acts of violence, common assault and battery, for which he received a 12-month supervision order in January.
In the same month, his younger brother was reprimanded for common assault and assault causing actual bodily harm. When the attack happened in April, he was already on bail for two assaults and a burglary.
Their former neighbours may have heaved a sigh of relief at the brothers’ departure in March but it did not take long before stories began to circulate in Edlington of two young boys running wild.
What sin that once-proud and cohesive pit village had committed to deserve their arrival is a question that Doncaster social services has yet to answer.
Edlington’s reason to exist was the Yorkshire Main colliery, which began producing coal in 1911. Most of the village was built to serve the pit. When it closed in 1985, the village lost its soul.
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Dilapidated shops, boarded-up, vandalised houses, litter-strewn streets and crumbling back alleys serving row upon row of 1920s terraces are the backdrop to a community of 8,000 people.
Residents’ prime concern, according to a consultation exercise carried out a few years ago, was rising levels of crime and anti-social behaviour. They spoke of their “very low self-esteem” and sense of demoralisation.
Could the social services have chosen a worse location in which to place two brothers who were already so damaged that they were ready to explode?
Their new foster carers appeared incapable of exercising any control over the boys, who soon launched their own mini-crime wave.
They bullied and threatened other children, brandished knives, tried to snatch bicycles, threw bricks at parked cars and attempted to break into local business premises.
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One woman described seeing the pair, barefoot, hiding in a neighbour’s yard.
When she asked them what they were doing, they told her to “f*** off” and ran away.
On March 28, an 11-year-old boy was on his way to a friend’s house when the brothers approached him and asked “for a kick of his football” before inviting him to go with them to look at a giant toad.
So began a dry run for what was to unfold a week later. The boy was taken to the wasteground, where the brothers’ violent attack was interrupted by the arrival of an adult.
At that moment, with their terrified victim – who had already been thrown into the water – held against a tree, the older boy had just asked his young brother to fetch a brick “to end it”.
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After his escape, the boy – who sang in the choir at his local Anglican church – ran home bruised and sobbing to his mother, who immediately called the police.
An officer came to see her the next day and took a description of the two brothers, but she felt he “wasn’t very interested”. The police’s response to the incident was characterised by a lack of urgency, she said later.
The boys would eventually be charged with threatening to kill her son and attempting to cause him grievous bodily harm, but it was too late.
By then, they had been left to roam free for another week and to enjoy another Saturday’s entertainment. Their fun, that time, almost cost two children their lives.
Those children, from strong and loving Edlington families, appear to be making a remarkable recovery. They can smile and laugh; they are playing outside again, unlike the boy who was attacked a week before them. He still has nightmares and is said to be afraid to leave his home.
South Yorkshire Police and Doncaster social services owe them, and their traumatised families, an explanation.