Bullies caused death of vicar's daughter

Wed Nov 18 2009 21:03:49

Two teenage girls have been found guilty of the manslaughter of a vicar's daughter who jumped from a window after being bullied.

Kemi Ajose, 19, of Charlton, southeast London, and Hatice Can, 15, of Belvedere, subjected Rosie Boxall to a campaign of abuse for two years before she leapt to her death from the window of the older girl's flat in Blackheath, southeast London.

Miss Boxall, also 19, was punched, slapped, pulled by her hair, sprayed in the eyes with deodorant and branded a "whore" and a "slag" by her former friends.

In the minutes before her death she was filmed on a mobile phone as the "controlling and violent" younger girl, then just 13, ordered Ajose to slap her around the head and pull her from a chair by the hair.

Rosie leapt 30ft to her death to escape her tormentors. As she lay dying on the concrete the younger girl told her: "Serves you right, bitch." An Old Bailey jury convicted both girls of manslaughter after a three-week trial.

Roger Smart, prosecuting, had told them: "Rosie leapt to her death from the kitchen window of Kemi's flat to escape from a prolonged period of physical and verbal abuse. Immediately before Rosie fell, she was clearly in fear of being hurt physically. This fear caused her to leap out of the window, as a result of which she met her death."

Miss Boxall, whose adopted father, the Rev Simon Boxall, ran a community church in Thamesmead, southeast London, had left home the previous year. In March 2007 she dropped out of college and two months later ran away from home to live with Ajose.

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