11-year-old Britons found guilty of attempt to rape

LONDON - Two 11-year-old boys from a London suburb were Thursday sentenced to a three-year supervision for attempting to rape an eight-year-old girl.

The boys were aged 10 in October 2009, when they assaulted the girl in Hayes area in west London, Sky News reported.

The Old Bailey court found the pair guilty of an attempt to rape but cleared them of rape.

Sentencing them, Justice Saunders, however, said that to impose any sort of custodial sentence would be “counter-productive” and not in the boys’ best interests.

The judge told the boys: “The jury decided that you did something very wrong which if you had been older would have very serious consequences for you.”

“Because you are so young, the court is mainly concerned with doing what is best for you with the aim of ensuring that you do not do anything like it again.”

The case has already caused “immense disruption” to the boys’ lives and those of their families, and “great unhappiness”, he said.