Lower The Age Of Being Criminally Aware

So... let me tell you our story and journey so far and why it is that we are petitioning for the law to be changed. Currently the law states that if a child is under the age of 10 they are not Criminally Aware so in other words they know no better and there will be NO punishment.

Now for those of you that are parents and the rest of you try and put yourself in my position as i tell you what happened to my son who was 7 at the time of the incident. My son was raped and assaulted in a toilet at school by a 9 year old boy, when he eventually plucked up the courage to tell us he thought his problems would be solved because the boy would be punished, this was as far from the case as you can imagine.

First i approached the school and was told that "boys will be boys" and that he would call in the parents but not contact social services. As a family we found that response unacceptable. We then went to social services ourselves because let's face it a normal happy 9 year old boy doesn't rape and hurt children younger than himself. Again we hit a dead end, we were told by social services that they had been working with the family but that they felt the child was not a threat to others so no further action would be taken. By this point as parents we were angry and frustrated at the lack of support or help we were being offered for our little boy that had been the victim of a vicious assault.

Social services were unwilling to take it any further so we contacted the police ourselves where we were told "we are very sorry for what has happened but because the child was under 10 at the time of the assault there was nothing at all they could do."

So please sign this petition so that hopefully none of you will ever have to go through this anguish and anger and having nowhere to vent because at every turn you are blocked by a stupid law.