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Nick Ansell/PA Wire
# Court
Primark kidnapping: 'They offered her sweets... there was a level of planning'
Two teenage girls were detained for three years and three months at a sentencing hearing yesterday.
A KIDNAPPING PLOT by two teenage girls, detained yesterday for more than three years each, displayed a significant level of planning, a court in the UK heard yesterday.
The girls, aged 13 and 14, had on 13 April this year lured a young girl away from her mother with sweets while at a Primark shop in Newcastle.
Sentencing the girls – whose identities are to be protected – the judge said that the two-year-old child was at risk of both physical and sexual harm, The Guardian reports.
Justice Globe noted that one of the girl’s internet search produced evidence of pornographic topics, including information about children having sex, rape and slavery, according to BBC News.
“They offered her sweets. That’s indicative of the level of planning: they had taken with them things likely to attract a child to them,” said prosecutor Sarah Barlow.
They were playing with her… Her mother was not suspicious, she simply thought the girls were playing with her daughter and were being quite sweet.
The child was rescued shortly after the girls took her on the Metro system to the suburb of Gosforth, about three miles away.
She came to no physical harm but her mother has suffered psychological harm since, the court was told.
The judge also noted that the girls’ testimony was inconsistent, saying that more questions were raised by their evidence, some of which was found to be untruthful.
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