A ten year-old boy gets into a quarrel in the playground of his school. They call each other names. One punches another boy on his arm. It happens every day in every school in the land. But this case ended in court. And the reason for that is that one of the boys was white and the other brown.
It was alleged that the white boy called the other one a Paki bastard. So the Crown Prosecution Service spent nearly eight months trying to prosecute him for racially aggravated assault. The family went to the High Court to get the case dropped but the judge said he didn't have that power. Three times the police asked for it to be dropped too.
But it went ahead, cost 拢20,000, and on Friday (11th May) magistrates in Ipswich gave the boy an absolute discharge. He had pleaded guilty to common assault.
Mike Thomson talked to the parents of the boy both before and after the case was heard. Their voices were changed to protect the identity of the boy - who was referred to as child H. After the trial Mike also spoke to the parents of the Asian boy child G, who were also unhappy but for different reasons.
