Europe is covered by a different Human Rights Declaration than folks in the U.S.1-28-2010 United Kingdom:
A judge's decision to name a 13-year-old rapist violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), according to a leading children's rights campaigner.
Balal Khan, now 14, of Cobridge, Stoke-on-Trent, was sentenced to three years in a young offenders' institution after admitting raping a 20-year-old woman when he was 13. He also admitted a further charge of robbery.
During the case at Stoke Crown court Judge Paul Glenn allowed the naming of Khan, to act as a deterrent to others.
However, Katy Swaine, legal director at the Children's Rights Alliance for England, said that naming Khan contravened UNCRC guidelines that say children's privacy should be respected at all stages of criminal proceedings.
She said: "This was clearly a very serious attack. However, he is still a child and this means that he is required under UK and international law to be treated differently from an adult.
"This principle is based on children's vulnerability to outside influence, early developmental stage and capacity for rehabilitation. He has admitted what he has done, which is the first step towards rehabilitation. Custody is a grave sentence for a child and must only be used for the shortest possible period of time."
During his victim's ordeal the court heard that Khan took a phone call from her boyfriend in which he bragged about the attack. The judge said that Khan would have been given an eight-year sentence if he had been an adult. ..Source.. Joe Lepper
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