VAUGHAN:GIRL RECALLS HOW GANG BEAT AND STRIPPED HER NAKED IN PARK
A teenage girl stripped naked in a park by a gang who photographed her and posted an image on Facebook relived her humiliating ordeal today (tues).
The nude photographs were allegedly taken by two women, Victoria Beckford, 27, and Siobhan Vaughan, 29, who added one to the teenager’s profile page on the social networking website.
The girl’s mother later received phone calls from friends and family who said the girl’s Facebook profile picture had been changed to a nude image of her.
The shocking image, taken in Crystal Palace park, was spotted by friends and family who contacted the girl’s mother.
Inner London Crown Court has heard she had been taken hostage by the gang as punishment for an unpaid debt of £100.
The victim is said to have been locked in a cupboard, punched and beaten with a leather belt during the ordeal on August 14 last year, before being stripped.
Jonathan Polnay, prosecuting, said the case concerned ‘a stupid teenage dispute over some money’ that ‘got way out of hand’.
The girl had been lured to Ferndale Road, Brixton, southwest London, believing that a friend, Nyalla Jackson, was going to remove braids from her hair.
Footage from a CCTV camera over the front door of the block of flats showed the girl, now 17, arriving at 2.08pm.
It is said Antonio Williams and Dannielo Johnson, both 18, were waiting for her.
Giving evidence she told the court: ‘She [Nyalla] started taking out my hair.
‘We were playing music and the boys were doing what they were doing – they were in and out.’
She said she overheard Johnson and Williams talking on their phones about ‘taking some stuff and taking me to Birmingham’.
Suddenly the atmosphere changed, the court heard.
‘Dannielo tied me up with the dressing gown thing – he tied up my hands – and after that he took the stuff out of my pockets.
‘There was nothing I could do – I was telling them to stop and they didn’t.
‘I was trying to get out of it, I was trying to bite out of it, but I couldn’t – it was too tight.
‘After that I was in the cupboard.
‘I was angry and upset, and they put something behind it so I couldn’t get out.’
The court has heard Sian Roberts, 24, who the prosecution say was owed the debt, arrived with Beckford later.
Roberts ‘dragged’ the girl to her car and drove her around south London, collecting Vaughan and a 17-year-old boy.
The group is then said to have headed to a ‘poorly lit’ corner of Crystal Palace Park, where Beckford ordered the girl to strip, telling her: ‘This should teach you a lesson.’
She was stripped naked while Beckford and Vaughan took photographs with their mobile phones.
Johnson, of no fixed address; Williams, of London Road, Thornton Heath, south London; Roberts, of Churchdown Road, Bromley, Kent; Beckford, of Hawke Road, Gypsy Hill, south London; Vaughan, of Menlo Gardens, Croydon, and a 17-year-old boy from West Norwood, south London; all deny false imprisonment.
Roberts, Beckford, Vaughan, Williams and the 17-year-old further deny one count of making an indecent image of a child.
Nyalla Jackson is not charged with an offence.
The trial continues.
mfl
ends
