The utterly dreadful case of the teenage girl who was abducted by her boyfriend and then doused with petrol and set alight by two other girls revealed a depth of inhumanity that is difficult to grasp. As the Times reports:

'They pulled Debra from the car and dragged her into undergrowth, punching and kicking her. Bauer produced a litre bottle of petrol and doused Debra with the contents. Last later boasted that she had used a lighter to ignite the fluid and sang “burn baby, burn” as Debra was engulfed in a fireball.'

So what explains this barbarism? Mental illness? No. A detail in this account, not reported in other papers, provides the vital clue:

'The court had been told that the three girls had planned revenge on Debra, whom they saw as a love rival, during a weekend of drinking and smoking cannabis.'

Tell me again that cannabis produces only spaced-out hippies waving their hands in the air and going 'chill out, man'.

Posted by melanie at April 22, 2004