"The nine-year-old victim raised the alarm after being found wandering the streets barefoot and dazed and covered in mud and blood. His 11-year-old friend was found a short time later at the foot of a steep ravine. He was unconscious, naked from the waist down and half-submerged in water. He had been left for dead after a sink was smashed down on his head... The court heard that the younger boy had tried to kill himself on the instructions of his attackers by shoving a sharpened stick down his throat after having the same stick driven into his arm and a lit cigarette pushed into the wound."