logo
Girl, 13, charged with rioting over Ballymena disorder

Girl, 13, charged with rioting over Ballymena disorder

Yahoo16-06-2025
A 13-year-old girl has been charged with rioting over disorder that broke out in Northern Ireland last week.
Ballymena and other nearby areas saw five consecutive nights of violence after an alleged sexual assault of a girl in the County Antrim town.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said five more people have been arrested in connection with the disorder - bringing the total number to 29.
The latest arrests include the 13-year-old girl who has been charged with rioting over the third night of disorder in Ballymena last Wednesday.
A 33-year-old woman has also been charged with child cruelty relating to the disorder.
A 25-year-old man has been detained in connection with an arson attack on Larne Leisure Centre, which was significantly damaged.
He was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.
A 40-year-old man has been charged with rioting on 9 June - the first night of disorder.
Meanwhile, a 32-year-old man has been charged with sending menacing messages through a public electronic communications network, and with encouraging or assisting offences, believing one or more will be committed.
He was further charged with possession of a Class B controlled drug.
The violent disorder following a peaceful protest supporting the family of a girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted in the area.
Two 14-year-old boys, who spoke to a court through a Romanian interpreter, have been charged with attempted rape.
Read more:Why Ballymena became site of anti-immigration riotsMan describes having brick smashed through window during riots
The disturbances continued for several nights and spread to other areas of Northern Ireland including Portadown, Larne, Belfast, Carrickfergus, Londonderry and Coleraine.
Assistant Chief Constable Melanie Jones said "thankfully, similar to Saturday, the situation was much calmer" in Northern Ireland on Sunday night.
She added that 64 officers injured throughout last week are recovering.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Pensioner faces court after extradition from Bulgaria on sex abuse charges
Pensioner faces court after extradition from Bulgaria on sex abuse charges

Yahoo

time3 days ago

  • Yahoo

Pensioner faces court after extradition from Bulgaria on sex abuse charges

A pensioner extradited to Northern Ireland from Bulgaria on sex abuse charges has been remanded into custody. David Wilson, 77, with an address given as Slane Road, Carnlough, appeared before Antrim Magistrates' Court on Thursday afternoon. He is facing 18 charges, including of indecent assault and rape in the County Antrim area in the 1970s and 1980s. Earlier, police said the man was arrested in Bulgaria on June 10 2025 before being returned to Northern Ireland on Thursday. At court, a police officer said they were opposing bail. 'Mr Wilson was conveyed from London last night into the custody of the PSNI, and then brought before the court today on foot of that warrant,' they said. A defence lawyer said there would not be an application for bail. 'Obviously he has been arrested in Bulgaria and brought here, he has no access to any family, he has been there for 19 years, no access to any money or anything of that nature,' he said. Wilson was remanded to custody. He is next to appear before the court on August 14.

YouTuber Lauren Southern accuses Andrew Tate of sexually assaulting her and choking her unconscious
YouTuber Lauren Southern accuses Andrew Tate of sexually assaulting her and choking her unconscious

New York Post

time4 days ago

  • New York Post

YouTuber Lauren Southern accuses Andrew Tate of sexually assaulting her and choking her unconscious

YouTuber Lauren Southern has accused controversial influencer Andrew Tate of sexually assaulting her and choking her unconscious. Southern, now 30, alleges in an upcoming memoir that Tate — who has been accused of numerous sex crimes — attacked her when she flew to discuss a business proposal with him in the Romanian capital Bucharest in 2018, when she was 22. Tate's attorney said Wednesday that the influencer 'unequivocally repudiates the pathetic filth peddled' by his latest accuser. Southern said she had a dinner with Tate that was 'flirtatious' and 'charming' — but then changed and seemed 'off,' in excerpts of her memoir, 'This Is Not Real Life,' shared Tuesday on her Substack. 4 Andrew Tate has been accused of sexual assault by an alt-right YouTuber. AP Andrew and his brother, Tristan, later invited the Canadian YouTuber back to their compound, but instead took her to a nightclub — where she ended up vomiting after just one cocktail and a shot, she wrote. She alleges that Andrew Tate then picked her up, put her in a car, took her back to her hotel room and forced himself on her. 'He kissed me. I wasn't expecting it, and I wasn't looking for it, but I kissed him back briefly and then told him I wanted to sleep,' she wrote. 4 Lauren Southern, 30, accused Tate of assaulting her in 2018. @laurencheriie/Instagram 'I was extraordinarily tired. He wanted to go further. I said no, very clearly, multiple times, and tried to pull his hands off me.' As she tried to fight back, Tate 'put his arm around my neck and began strangling me unconscious,' Southern wrote, alleging that he kept strangling her every time she 'regained enough consciousness' to push him off. 'I'd prefer not to share the rest. It's pretty obvious,' she wrote. Southern described how reading news articles about other alleged assaults by Tate that matched her experiences led to her leaving far-right politics. Her decision to publish the chapters detailing the alleged incident for free was because she didn't want to 'profit off this incident,' she wrote. 4 Tate faces many charges in the UK and Romania, including rape and sex trafficking. Andrew Tate/ Instagram Tate's representatives did not respond immediately to requests for comment Wednesday, but his attorney, Joseph D. McBride, released a furious denial on X early Wednesday. 'Andrew Tate unequivocally repudiates the pathetic filth peddled by Lauren Southern in her pitiable tome,' he said, calling it 'nothing but an evil marketing ploy.' Tate will 'pursue Southern relentlessly for defamation,' the attorney said — suggesting it was part of a broader attack against all men. 4 Southern detailed the attack in her newly-released memoir. @laurencheriie/Instagram 'They targeted Trump, then Tate; mark my words, you are in the crosshairs next,' McBride wrote. In a separate video Tate shared on X, controversial far-right UK activist Tommy Robinson claimed he was at the hotel the morning after Southern alleges she was attacked. 'I was in the hotel room next door, when I walked out of the room the next morning when we were leaving, Lauren Southern's at the door kissing [Tate],' he said — calling it proof Southern's allegations are 'insanity' and 'bullshit.' Tate, the notorious 'manosphere' influencer, faces many criminal charges in the UK and Romania, including rape and human trafficking. He is also accused of threatening a woman with a gun and violently sexually assaulting another ex-girlfriend, charges which he has denied. Southern announced her retirement from political activism in 2019, but in 2020 she declared her return in a YouTube video in which she expressed some remorse for her previous hardline stances.

Blazes in Northern Ireland recall an old message: You are not welcome here
Blazes in Northern Ireland recall an old message: You are not welcome here

Boston Globe

time5 days ago

  • Boston Globe

Blazes in Northern Ireland recall an old message: You are not welcome here

Advertisement But the violence shares a common message: You are not welcome here. If you won't leave, we may make you. 'Territorialism in Northern Ireland is still embedded — and not only embedded, it's being patrolled by armed groups,' said Duncan Morrow, a politics professor at Ulster University in Belfast. 'Northern Ireland as a society escalates extremely rapidly, because so much of this is already in the whole way society's organized.' The town of Ballymena, about 30 miles from Belfast, is sometimes called the 'buckle' of Northern Ireland's Protestant Bible Belt. The most recent violence erupted there after two 14-year-old boys were charged with the attempted oral rape of a local girl on June 7. The two boys, who the BBC reported spoke in court through a Romanian translator, denied the charges. Advertisement The night after the boys appeared in court, a peaceful vigil for the girl in Ballymena spiraled into a riot, targeted at members of the Roma community in the Clonavon Terrace area. For six consecutive nights, more violence broke out across the region. Rioters in Ballymena burned several homes, many of them belonging to immigrant families. Masked gangs in Larne, about 20 miles east, set fire to a leisure center that had been temporarily used as a shelter for those who had been displaced. And angry mobs bore down on immigrant housing in Portadown in County Armagh, where landlords urged residents to temporarily relocate until the threat had quieted. Since then, 21 families have been placed in temporary housing for shelter and safety as a result of the attacks, according to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. A vast majority of those who live in Northern Ireland do not endorse violence. Still, last month's harrowing scenes were a reminder that the area's embers of riot and tribalism are still flammable. Not far from the facades of charred homes in Ballymena is the former site of a Catholic primary school, which was set alight in a 2005 attack that police described as sectarian. Nearby, Our Lady of Harryville Catholic Church, since demolished, was a lightning rod for arson attacks both before and after the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 peace deal that largely ended the Troubles. In recent years, a relatively modest trickle of immigrants has become the subject of hostility both in the Irish Republic and in Northern Ireland, which remains the least diverse area of the United Kingdom by a significant margin. On an island that was defined for centuries by outward emigration, the demographic shift has been highly visible, especially in poorer, working-class communities where many immigrant families land. Advertisement 'The geography of it is, if you like, a little bit more like 1969 when you had odd Catholics living on the streets,' said Dominic Bryan, a professor at Queen's University in Belfast who studies conflict. In August 1969, Loyalist mobs attacked and burned Catholic homes in Belfast and Derry, forcing thousands of families to flee. Today, Bryan said, immigrant families are obvious minority targets on the otherwise largely homogeneous streets of the North. 'They've become very exposed,' he said. Further agitating the scene are various criminal and paramilitary elements on its periphery. Ballymena remains a locus for dissident, Loyalist paramilitaries, some of whom have regrouped as criminal syndicates. Court cases indicate the town is also believed by police to have been used as a base for a Romanian organized crime gang, which traffics in drugs and prostitution. Police have long accused Loyalist paramilitary groups of fomenting unrest. Last summer, officials in Northern Ireland and the Republic blamed those actors for facilitating widespread anti-immigrant violence in Dublin, as well as in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland. Officials have not pinned the arson attacks in June on Loyalist gangs, but they said they were probing possible connections. Experts say much of the recent disorder was organized online, where some Loyalist factions have adopted far-right, anti-immigrant language in recent years. Last Thursday, overlapping ideologies were visible in the effigy of the migrant boat set on fire on top of a celebratory bonfire for the Twelfth of July, an annual Unionist commemoration of a Protestant king's military victory over a Catholic king. Banners on the bonfire read 'Stop the boats' and 'Veterans before refugees.' Advertisement This kind of nativist sentiment has historically found fertile ground in Ballymena, the land of Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant preacher who shaped the hard-line politics of contemporary Unionism, the movement to remain part of the United Kingdom. As paramilitary groups have retreated into more entrenched, isolated corners, they have maintained a cultural and social hold, particularly on disenfranchised youth. To walk the streets last month around Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena — an interface between what were the traditionally Protestant and Catholic areas of the town — was to rewind Northern Ireland's clock. Union Jacks and red-and-white Ulster flags were ubiquitous, plastered against doors, flying out of windows or draped as garden ornaments. When a photographer and I stopped outside a home, draped in British and Ulster memorabilia, a young man stuck his head out of a window, demanding to know who we were, what we were doing and why. Farther down the block, I glanced back and saw that the man had stepped outside into his garden and was silently watching us until we turned the corner. This article originally appeared in

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store