Playing roulette, without a ball?

She thinks she’s going to meet friends, she thinks she’s going out to have a good time; she’s young, naïve, innocent, not ready for the world outside. She want’s a friend so much, that when two appear out of thin air, two appear from the shadows, she’s so eager to believe, so desperate for companionship, that she let’s her guard down, she believes that people aren’t only out for themselves, that maybe someone cares.

What she doesn’t know, is that the friends she is going to meet, are luring her into a trap, luring her to humiliation, to degradation, to harm. Over three miles from home, she meets them, but it’s not two, it’s three. As she realises she has been set up, it’s too late, she’s taken by surprise, one of the three jumps on her, and holds her down, another starts to hit and scratch her, not playfully, but with such force that her nose breaks, that her lips splits in half, that her forehead and cheeks start to bleed, while the other, the third, films the act, on a mobile telephone.

What could have got to you, what could have made your blood boil, if you cared, was not the act of violence, of senseless behaviour, but the way in which three girls, of such a young age, of what should be such an innocent time of their lives, could plan an act of betrayal so meticulously, with such precision, vindictiveness and hatred, and then sit in custody and be amused by it.

‘It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.’ Seneca