Tuesday 9 October 2007

News Writing Assignment 1

After a brutal murder in Huyton, Merseyside last year left a family lost without their son after a racist attack with an ice axe. In his honour, a friend set up a remembrance website.

In September, Neil Martin was arrested after posting emails up on the website, suggesting that white people should be celebrating Anthony’s murder and that his family should be burned. Police found images of child pornography on Neil Martin’s computer after being arrested.

Later in court the Liverpool Crown Court Judge Henry Globe QC, the recorder of Liverpool, told Martin: “The intention of the website was innocent, honourable and well motivated. You accessed the website and abused its use, posting highly abusive, insulting and racist messages on the site.” Also, the court then finding out Martin had created an internet profile using Anthony's name and photograph, and that he also posed as a schoolgirl on some teenage chatrooms.

Suggesting that Martin was an isolated man and was therefore living in a fantasy world, Heather Lloyd who was defending, said Martin had no history of being a racist, also that he felt “deeply ashamed”. Martin felt it was right to write a letter of apology to the court and also to the Walker family.

After pleading guilty for the earlier hearings in court to publishing a stir up toward racial hatred and the making of indecent photographs of children, like any family in these circumstances, Anthony’s mother, Gee Walker didn’t accept Martin’s letter of apology,

Mrs. Walker still after hearing what he said in Martin’s apology letter doesn’t buy any of it, she said, she doesn’t accept anything he said. After all, he had time to think and he did it six times. Mrs Walker was happy with the sentence he had been given of two years and eight months in jail, for the race hate crime and further six months consecutively for the child pornography offences.