A few seconds of graphic footage captured on a mobile phone today brought into bloody reality the brutality of an attack carried out on two defenceless children by a pair of young brothers as Gordon Brown clashed angrily with David Cameron over the case.
Relatives of the children, who were aged nine and 11 when they were savagely set upon last year in a mining village near Doncaster, wept openly as the 10-second film was played at Sheffield Crown Court this afternoon.
It was filmed by one of the two attackers, then aged 11, as his young brother, 10, danced around the elder of their two victims, who is shown lying on his back in a secluded area of wasteland near the village of Edlington.
The boy lies helplessly, his arms crossed in front his chest in a defensive posture. His face is drenched in blood.
Nicholas Campbell QC, outlining the case for the prosecution, described how the 10-year-old “taunts and jabs at him with what appears to be an object held in his left hand”. The brothers laughed as they told their victims they were about to die.
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As he is filming the incident, which came at an early stage of a pre-planned assault, the older brother is heard to say: “Hell of a picture.”
By the time they ended with their sport, the two brothers had attacked the young friends with wooden sticks and branches, lit cigarettes, a heavy brick, a boulder, stones and broken bottles of glass.
In the Commons there were tense exchanges between the party leaders after Mr Cameron demanded that a serious case review (SCR) into the brutal attack of two young boys be published in full.
The case had “profoundly shocked the whole country”, Mr Cameron said but the publication of summaries of SCRs into other cases had not led to action on the ground.
Seven children known to Doncaster Council have died in the borough since 2004, prompting SCRs, Ofsted inspections and a Government investigation.
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Mr Cameron said: “In the case of Baby Peter (in Haringey), the summary was found to be completely inadequate; it was not worth the paper it was written on.”
But the Prime Minister insisted lessons would be learned from the summary of the report into the Edlington attack, which will be published later this week.
Everyone was agreed about the “seriousness of this case”, Gordon Brown told MPs.
“For two boys to be assaulted in this way by two other children who were at that time in the care of foster parents but who had a history where there had been social services and other intervention(s) to try to deal with their problems is one of the most tragic cases we could see,” he said.
“I do not want Britain to be defined by the appalling violence and irresponsibility that’s been shown to the youngsters by two other youngsters.”
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Every children’s organisation has recommended that only the executive summary of the SCR should be released to the public, he added.
The pair traded blows as the facts of the case were being outlined at the start of a three-day sentencing hearing.
The two brothers have pleaded guilty to robbery, grievous bodily harm with intent and sexual offences.