Brutal truth about cleared brothers

Even by the villainous standards of their criminal heroes, the boys from Peckham were savages. Led by the brothers identified as Boy A and Boy B in the Damilola Taylor trial, youths from this gang of school dropouts roamed south-east London like a pack of predators and children were favourite prey.

On a day like many others, bored and looking for thrills, the two boys and three gang followers spotted two girls aged 10 and 12 in a park near their homes. What followed left the girls with psychological damage that haunts them to this day.

The boys threw them to the ground, tearing at their clothes. The girls screamed, believing they were about to be raped as the boys grabbed at their underwear and private parts. The mother of the older girl was on the other side of the park and raced to the scene, forcing the boys to scatter. As they ran away laughing, one turned and shouted: "You'll never get us!"

This jeering prediction proved accurate. If there is one defining element in the shocking criminal history of Boys A and B it is their ability to cause immense suffering and escape with impunity.

The sex attack took place in November 1999. The brothers were 14 and were already known for their violence, barbarity and utter disregard for the law on the North Peckham estate where Damilola was murdered.

Conventional wisdom has it that the decaying tower blocks with their 16 miles of walkways and alleys are a breeding ground for social exclusion and crime. But they played no part in shaping the criminal lives of the two brothers.

They did not live on the North Peckham estate but with their mother in a large flat with its own garden on another Peckham estate, built in the late Seventies with special regard to architecture and the environment. The buildings are set among landscaped spaces with grass and trees. There is little sense of inner-city shabbiness here. Around the corner, a developer is converting an old building into what are advertised as "lifestyle apartments".

The boys were born in this not unpleasant area. Their father worked and they had two sisters and a brother. But unlike them, their siblings have progressed into further education or moved away to start their own families. When Boys A and B were two, their father abandoned the family. It was the point of departure for everything that was to follow. Their mother took cleaning jobs, worked in a shop and, in the evenings, at a restaurant. A neighbour recalled: "She's the most hardworking person you're likely to meet. She used to leave at six every morning and get back late.

"She did everything for her children. She came to my flat one day and I was shocked to see her hands were red-raw. I asked if she was all right and she just laughed and said she'd been working too hard."

Boys A and B were enrolled at a local school and misbehaved from the start. Even when small, they would throw stones at passers-by. By the time they were 12 they were virtually excluded from education and spent their days hanging around the alleys and shops on the North Peckham Estate.

"They would come up to you and ask for money," a resident said. "They would say, 'Give me 50p. Give it to me!' They were quite threatening, even at that age." The brothers began terrorising neighbours and friends of their family around their own estate. A caretaker there said: "All the burglaries, vandalism and thieving around here are down to them. They have ripped out all the security cameras, smashed up empty flats and wrecked loads of cars. They rob other kids of their pocket money and mobile phones. They are out-and-out criminals with no respect."

This was not entirely accurate. The two brothers were immensely influenced by hardened professional criminals who used them as errand boys. These criminals became role models for the teenagers' gang.

At one point the criminals gave the brothers a consignment of stolen TV satellite dishes which the boys tried to hawk around. They were also given stolen mobile phones which they pressed estate residents to buy. And there were drugs. Boys were favoured couriers of crack cocaine, the lucrative stock-in-trade of the south-east London drug dealer.

Teenage pack followers were useful in recruiting younger boys - for whom severe criminal penalties would not apply - and there was suspicion that efforts had been made, unsuccessfully, to draw Damilola into the role of drugs messenger. Boy B looked to his brother as a protector in the absence of a father figure. He remarked once: "What's the point of walking around with a knife when I have got two fists and my brother?" In two years, Boys A and B totted up convictions for police assault, cannabis possession, theft and driving without insurance and spent time in detention centres.

Involvement in drugs was suspected as the background to an episode that threw the boys' utter selfishness into sharp focus.

Shortly before Christmas 2000 their mother answered the door. A stranger, described as African-looking, hit her in the face knocking her unconscious. She spent days in hospital. No one doubted that the attack had been inspired by revenge against the brothers. Their mother, however, would hear no criticism of them. A family friend said: "We all knew what they were doing and we told her, but she wouldn?t believe her boys were really bad.?

The doorstep attack made her feel a target and she desperately sought an escape from her home. But she had been bled dry by the demands of her youngest sons; her resources could not run to the £60 it would have cost to hire a removal van.

The brothers, by contrast, appeared to enjoy an affluent lifestyle. They wore designer clothes, the best trainers and always seemed to have money. Det Ch Insp Trevor Shepherd described how the brothers possessed what he described as a ?dynamism? when they were together. He explained: ?They acted as one. They always looked after each other. It was only when you interviewed them separately that, occasionally, you got an inkling there was a child in there.?

The power of the pair was demonstrated in Feltham when they were being held on remand. At one point they began developing a following and the authorities considered splitting them up.

Spells inside youth offender institutions seemed merely to confirm them as outlaws. Supervision orders were flouted. Even the Old Bailey held no fear for them, as the local police were to discover after the sex attack on the two schoolgirls.

It was a case they hoped would finally see the boys taken off the streets. The mother who had chased them from the scene of the assault was able to identify them and the brothers and their three pack followers were brought before the youth court at Camberwell accused of indecent assault and intimidating witnesses.

It was felt the case was too serious to be dealt with by the youth court and it was referred to the Old Bailey. After hearing submissions that two of the defendants were too immature and ill-educated to follow a trial properly, Judge Neil Denison said the case should have been dealt with by the youth court and threw it out. The mothers of the victims protested to their local MP. They appealed to Tony Blair. Nothing was done. The mother of the older girl watched as her child became withdrawn and frightened, refusing to leave home for three months.

?I pleaded with the council to be moved so my daughter would not have to face those animals every day,? said the mother. ?She is traumatised. She is bitter towards the police and has turned against God.?

The younger girl, now 13, still lives in Peckham but was moved from the area where the brothers lived and was treated by a child psychologist. At her new home, her mother says the girl is still dismayed the boys were set free.

After the case, the mother said: ?It took a lot for my daughter to go to the police. Now she feels as if she is a criminal.?

The child won?t go back to the park and her friend and fellow victim has left London. The older girl?s mother finally despaired of a council home far from the outlaw brothers and moved to a remote part of Ireland where, she said, her daughter at last felt safe. The memory of what happened never leaves the child, however, and for her mother there is always that unforgettable taunt, those few flung words that have proved so true: ?You?ll never get us!?

? Additional reporting: Laura Smith and Hugh Muir