A Scottish court has convicted a Bulgarian brother and sister of assaulting teenage girls.
Previously, Nadjedzha Belova, 20, admitted to attacking a 13-year-old girl. The victim was seized by the hair, dragged to the ground, and struck on the head. Ilia Belov, 22, was accused of following this by further assaulting the girls in the group.
The incident began when Belov is alleged to have said to the girls
hello sexy. I’ll show you a good time,
words he denied using. Called a ‘creep’ by one of the youngsters, he made a telephone call to his adult sister who confronted the girls, aged between 12 and 14. As the situation escalated, a 12-year-old girl attacked by Belova pulled a knife and axe from her waistband after Belov had assaulted her.
Smartphone footage of the incident was widely circulated, briefly turning ‘Sophie of Dundee’ into a ‘dual-wielding’ internet icon. As the girl took the law into her own hands, it fuelled the ongoing discussion of the British authorities’ failure to protect girls from sexual harassment, migrant crime, and worse. The teenager was also vilified online for being feral and racist, but on Thursday, June 11th presiding sheriff Tim Niven-Smith rejected Belov’s claims of self-defence. In court the girls’ evidence was described as “eloquent,” with Niven-Smith telling Belov:
I am entirely satisfied by proof beyond reasonable doubt that the trigger for all of this were the comments that you made.
As one girl’s mother welcomed the convictions as a “good thing,” the siblings were scheduled to be sentenced at Dundee Sheriff Court on Wednesday, August 5th.
