What the hell are two kids doing in a court room? Its not going to make anything better and theres nothing in the legal system which makes 10 year old kids legally responsible for their actions.

Sadly, but if they want to act like adults they should be punished like adults.

No.

Noone can argue successfully that 10 year old boys are fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Theres nothing to gain from punishing these kids. At this point you can't argue that its to prevent it from happening again, its not going to make the girls life any better and its very doubtful that they will even be able to get a conviction due to diminished legal responsibility. I.E. They aren't expected to know any better.

Pumping more money into the education system wont help. Better parenting would. The education system of the UK is funded well enough, some *looks at SamuelRSmith* would even say it's massively over funded, the problem often lies in their homelife. Parents don't care, they don't see it as a priority to teach their children about sex... Some don't even feed their children correctly (chicken nuggets and chips for every meal).

In fact, I see more funding for education as pretty low on the priorities of fixes for these kinds of social problems.

Of course they weren't fully aware of the consequences (and who is, really?) but they certainly knew they were doing something very wrong.

It's very important to punish them hard.

How do you know that they knew they were doing something wrong? Even if they knew it was wrong they still have greatly diminished responsibility due to their age. By attempting to punish the boys any lessons or understanding about why this happened are lost in a legal process. Its impossible to truely know why it happened because they will be told by lawyers to deny everything so we will probably never understand why this rape happened in the first place.

Further still I dislike this because if it can be argued that a 10 year old can rape then im certain its going to be used by pedophiles to justify that 10 year olds can give consent.

I assume they knew it was wrong, unless they were retards. Greatly diminished responsibility yes, certainly, but that's not the same as zero responsibilty.

U raise good points about a legal process. I can agree it shouldnt be brought into a court room. Kids can't handle emotions like that in relation to defending yourslef in a legal matter etc.  It should be handled differently, by authorities and methods that are suited for children.

Who cares what pedophiles are gonna argue. I know for certain that a 10 year old has morals and understands that it's wrong to violate another person physically.

Actually, in the UK you are criminally respoonsible for your actions when you are 10.

.....I guess that's technically true.....weird thing to say though.....

I blame video games !

Seriously though...this is very hard to believe...