The High Court of Glasgow, Scotland, on Tuesday found seven of 11 members of a gang guilty of running a “monstrous” child sex abuse network, which the British Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has already identified. was considered a crime. one of the worst cases in Britain in recent decades.
The seven pedophiles, who will learn the sentences they will have to serve on January 4, posed as “witches and wizards” who took primary school children home, where they gave them drugs and alcohol while exposing them to situations of sexual abuse and depravity.
The trial, which lasted more than two months, concluded that the seven people now accused were heroin addicts and regularly organized these meetings in various homes between 2010 and 2020.
The court even called these sessions ‘nights of child rape’, with the children calling the place where they were abused the ‘house of the beast’, where the elderly were forced to abuse the young.
Iain Owens (45), Elaine Lannery (39), Lesley Williams (41), Paul Brannan (41), Scott Forbes (50), Barry Watson (47) and John Clark (46) were found guilty of rape and sexual assault, in which the first four were also found guilty of attempted murder.
In turn, Owens, Williams and Brannan were also found guilty of drug-related crimes and Marianne Gallagher was convicted of assault but acquitted of the other charges. Three other members of this group were eventually acquitted.
During testimony, several children revealed that some victims had been placed in a microwave, an oven, a refrigerator and a freezer, which was interpreted during the trial as an attempted murder.
The children believed that the attackers were witches and wizards who had the ability to turn them into cats and dogs with their “magic wands”.
Speaking to Sky News, the ex-wife of one of the convicts, who preferred to remain anonymous, revealed that she was shocked to discover the atrocities committed by her ex-husband. “I don’t condone violence, but I hope they get the punishment they deserve,” he said.
Defense lawyers argued in court that the children had lied in their testimonies, but the prosecutor responded by saying it was inappropriate for children to make up “such monstrous” crimes.
Matt Forde, chief executive of the NSPCC, told Sky News this was “a truly shocking case”. “Just to think that the children experienced what they described. It’s an unusual case. There have been some terrible cases over the decades, but this one is so shocking that people can’t even imagine that children could have had these kinds of experiences. that they could have been exposed to such terrible situations, to such terrible abuse. We cannot even imagine the terror they have experienced,” he stressed.
Source: DN
