The Children Who Kill: Are They Getting Younger?

When 19-year-old Shawn Seesahai was beaten and hacked to death in a savage machete attack in a Wolverhampton park, detectives were shocked to discover his killers were just 12 years old.

Days earlier, in another part of the country, Alfie Lewis15, was stabbed to death by a 14 year old boy outside an elementary school Leeds.

Later that same month, a girl and a boy were tried Manchester for what was described as the ‘sadistic’ knife murder of a 16-year-old Brianna Ghey when they were both 15 years old.

Murders committed by children have always horrified us as a society – but are they becoming more common or are killers getting younger?

A Sky News analysis of available data from the Office for National Statistics on the number of suspects under the age of 16 convicted of murder – homicide, manslaughter and infanticide – shows a relatively flat trend line from 2006/7 to 2022/3.

However, the murder conviction rate for under-16s has doubled in ten years compared to other ages, from around 1 in 50 in 2012/13 to 1 in 25 in 2022/23.

The 2022/2023 figure is the highest since at least 2008/2009, but because the percentage of under-16s is low overall, the averages may be heavily distorted by relatively few convictions.

‘Much more serious and extreme’

Dr. Simon Harding, a criminology expert, thinks there is “an increase in serious violence among young people” and greater “acceptance of extreme levels of violence between” children.

“Even something that could be handled with fistfights or antisocial behavior can suddenly escalate dramatically into something much more serious and extreme,” he says.

“What might have been a slap in the face ten years ago, perhaps a stab in the arm or leg five years ago, is now a stab in the neck or heart that can lead to death.”

Bardia Shojaeifard was found guilty of murder after a jury heard how he attacked Alfie on his way home on November 7 last year “in revenge” for an altercation a week earlier.

He had posed for pictures with knives and took a 13cm long kitchen knife which he used to kill Alfie from his home to school in the Horsforth area of ​​Leeds.

A judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 13 years in June, describing Shojaeifard as “outwardly normal” but with a “worrying interest in knives”.

Shawn, who had been walking through the playing fields at Stowlawn in Wolverhampton with a friend on November 13 last year, was hit on his back, legs and skull, with the fatal wound measuring more than 8 inches deep and piercing his heart.

Read more:
Children and teenagers convicted of knife murders
Grieving sister shocked by the age of the killers

The boys responsible, Britain’s youngest knife killers – who were imprisoned for at least eight and a half years – are believed to be the youngest children found guilty of murder since Robert Thompson and Jon Venables.

Thompson and Venables were just ten years old when they kidnapped, tortured and murdered a two-year-old child James Bulger in 1993 and 11 when they were found guilty of murder.

A quarter of a century earlier, 11-year-old Mary Bell was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1968 after being found guilty of manslaughter for fatally strangling two boys aged four and three.

She was also only 10 years old when she killed her first victim.

But Sharon Carr is believed to be the youngest girl in the country to commit murder.

Carr was 12 when she fatally stabbed and mutilated 18-year-old stranger Katie Rackliff after leaving a nightclub in Camberley, Surrey, in 1992, but she was not sentenced for another five years.

In another crime that shocked the nation, Ricky Preddie was 13 and his brother Danny 12 when they murdered 10-year-old schoolboy Damilola Taylor in 2000, although they did not go to jail for his manslaughter until 2006.

Is there now a greater ‘willingness to cause pain’?

So there have always been cases of children committing murders and other shocking crimes, but Dr. Harding says, “We tend to forget.”

However, from his experience of preparing expert reports on court cases involving gang crime, exploitation and modern slavery, he says he has noticed a greater “willingness to inflict pain and suffering”.

Earlier this year, so were Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe life in prison with minimum sentences of 22 and 20 years respectively after being found guilty of Brianna’s murder when they were both just 15 years old.

Jenkinson enticed the vulnerable teenwho was transgender, to Linear Park in the village of Culcheth, near Warrington, where she was stabbed 28 times in the head, neck, chest and back with a hunting knife on February 11 last year.

The pair were fascinated by violence and torture, drew up a ‘death list’ and spent weeks meticulously planning Brianna’s ‘frenzied and brutal’ murder, their trial heard.

Jurors were told it was “difficult to fathom” how they could share such “dark thoughts” and commit such a “disturbing” crime.

Besides the high-profile cases that attract a lot of media attention, much of the country’s gang violence, including children killing other children, remains largely hidden from the public, Dr. Harding says.

He sees “pretty extreme things that wouldn’t happen a few years ago,” such as people with disabilities being subjected to atrocities bordering on torture, and young women being raped and waterboarded by the people who force them to sell drugs .

Another Dr. Harding, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Duncan Harding, works with adults and children who commit serious crimes. He says we really don’t know if killers are getting younger or if violent crime among young people is increasing because the evidence just isn’t there.

But the reporting of crimes and the expansion of social media use means that cases that may not have crossed the threshold for widespread reporting in the past are receiving more attention, contributing to the perception that they have.

‘Dehumanization is spreading’

Even if youth violence does not increase, the “heinous” crimes we see reported are not acceptable and as a society we must try to understand what is going on and try to make things better, adds Dr Duncan Harding.

The psychiatrist, who has provided expert evidence in trials involving murder, serious violence and terrorism, and recently released his memoir The Criminal Mind, says the “dehumanization” seen in gang violence appears to be spreading beyond gangs.

Our divided society has been suffering an existential crisis since the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated by social media, he says, also pointing to cuts to youth services due to austerity as a potential factor.

But “removing youth clubs is not in itself going to cause someone to stab or kill someone,” he says, and children don’t always commit violent crimes because of mental illness or difficulties in their lives.

“They’re obviously not normal, well-adjusted people, but in my experience it’s not that simple either,” he says. “I don’t think all perpetrators are victims.”

‘You should get a decent sentence for knife crime’

The possible solutions are equally complex: the psychiatrist proposes a public health approach that recognizes the ‘epidemic’ of knife crime among vulnerable young children, with schools, health workers and police working together to spot the early warning signs.

But he also supports the broader use of stop-and-search and government ban on so-called zombie knives to try to keep guns out of the hands of children, and says there should be consequences for young people carrying knives.

Shawn’s parents urge children to “think about what they’re doing” and not carry a gun, but want to see harsher punishments for youth like the boys who killed their son.

“You should get a proper punishment for knife crime,” says his father Suresh Seesahai.

“Murder is murder. Murder is not coming back. If you kill someone, they can’t come back… Life in prison is the best thing for you.”