Cooper was given 18 months after he was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm

Cooper was given 18 months after he was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. I have many years of experience on the bench and criminal bar and although I have been concerned in more serious cases such as murder, I cannot remember any quite so revolting and degrading as this one,” the judge, 71, said.During the two-hour ordeal in November 2000, the teenagers sprayed pepper, shaving cream and bath cleaner into their victims’ eyes. The father, aged 43, was slashed with a knife and forced to drink urine and eat faeces.Even the dog was sprayed with hairspray with the intention of being set alight, and was repeatedly kicked.Brendan Kelly, acting for the prosecution, said the gang’s motive for the abuse and torment was not clear “but it is suggested it was done either through boredom or sheer amusement”.. Detectives hunting for the Isle of Man’s first double killer arrested a man early yesterday and were still questioning him last night about the deaths of the 16-year-olds Samantha Barton and George Green. Samantha was found strangled in Leece Lodge, a home for troubled young people where she lived, on Friday last week.

The charity, which has worked with children on the Isle of Man for 120 years, made no comment on the contents of its report. Some of its findings are corroborated by a leading academic in the field, Julie Kent of De Montford University’s Centre for Social Care Studies, who conducted an independent appraisal into the system four years ago.Ms Kent was particularly disturbed by evidence that “young people … were not receiving any formal education for the majority of the week.”The childcare specialist who compiled the NCH report, Barry Kushner, the director of a Liverpool management consultancy Public Works, said the impression that the island was well off obscured poverty and childhood misery to which the ultra-conservative authorities were “turning a blind eye”.He said: “Go around the council estates and you will still find coal wagons delivery to the council houses.”Today’s revelations are not the first public exposure of the system’s shortcomings. A 1994 study also identified serious concerns and made a total of 103 recommendations.A Manx civil liberties group, the Celtic League that has campaigned successfully against the use of the birch and the criminalisation of homosexuality in the past 10 years, said it was time for the authorities to “grow up” and begin accepting “international criticism”.. A Jamaican gangster was allowed to stay in Britain illegally for more than a year, during which time he murdered a London woman, because of his value as a police informer, a Court of Appeal judge said yesterday.

The case of Denton, now aged 41, became a scandal for Scotland Yard and resulted in an overhaul in the way the police handle informers.It was disclosed during the murder trial that Denton, who had a long record of violence as a “Yardie” criminal in Jamaica, was a paid informer with SO11, Scotland Yard’s criminal intelligence division. His application for asylum in the UK was turned down in December 1994 but the order was not served on him until the end of December 1995, by which time he was under arrest for murder.”The inference that it was held back deliberately in order to prolong his usefulness as an informer is difficult to resist,” Lord Justice Mantell said.The judge’s comment came in a judgment dismissing Denton’s appeal against his murder conviction. The remarks cast a further shadow over the case, which has been severely criticised by an independent review.The Denton scandal came 10 months after Scotland Yard had to make an apology for endangering public safety after another informer was jailed. Eaton Green was sentenced to six years after being caught robbing 150 people at gunpoint at a party in Nottingham in 1993 with other assailants.During Denton’s trial the prosecution alleged he had broken into Ms Lawes’ flat in Brixton after developing a fixation with the mother of two young children, and then raped her and stabbed her 18 times.At the Court of Appeal, Denton claimed his conviction was “unsafe” because of the failure of Crown lawyers to disclose his informer status to his own defence team at trial. He claimed to have been told by his police handlers not to disclose his status to his own lawyers.His informer status was leaked to the press before his trial and Denton claimed this too should have been revealed by the prosecution to the trial judge, defence lawyers and Denton himself.Lord Justice Mantell said the case had raised “the very strong suspicion that the media had been fed with information by someone closely connected with SO11 at Scotland Yard”.But, dismissing Denton’s appeal, the judge said the evidence against him had been compelling and the guilty verdict “inevitable”. There had been no duty on the part of the Crown to reveal Denton’s informer status to Denton himself, as he was already well aware of the fact.The only disadvantage suffered by Denton at the trial was that his legal team could not use the fact that he had been a police informant in their attempts to undermine one prosecution witness.Denton entered the country illegally in 1993.