The teenager will be sentenced at the Old Bailey next month (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
A 17-year-old boy who defaced a freshly painted Windrush mural with Nazi symbols should be considered for a tough jail sentence, a court has ruled.
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted to racially aggravated criminal damage for graffiti he daubed on the memorial in Port Talbot, Wales, last year.
Several swastikas, the phrase ‘Nazi zone’ and the number ‘1488’ – a code used by white supremacists to support segregation and Adolf Hitler’s legacy – appeared on the mural hours after it was completed in October.
Over the following week, the boy also damaged a floor at The Queer Emporium in Cardiff and returned to the memorial to add more symbols.
The mural depicted Donna Campbell, a nurse who died during the Covid pandemic, and her mum Lydia, who moved to Wales from Jamaica in the 1960s.
He has also pleaded guilty to five terror offences for possessing extremist publications and disseminating them to another teenager.
They included a manual with instructions on gun-making and a document championing ‘pro-violence, pro-antisemitism, misogynist, homophobic ideologies’, Cardiff Youth Court heard.
At a hearing of the court, the boy’s barrister, David Elias KC, asked for him to be spared prison and given a youth referral order.
The order would set out a list of required actions tailored to the boy’s case – such as rehabilitation activities and meetings with people affected by his offending – with youth workers monitoring his progress.
He said his client is ‘vulnerable’ has autism and a personality disorder, and was radicalised by ‘increasingly long hours online’ during the pandemic.
‘He often feels he doesn’t fit in with his peers, which has a huge impact on his self-esteem, and very much wants to have friends and positive aspirations for the future,’ Mr Elias added.
Asked about the content he’d been consuming online, the teenager told the court: ‘You can see in the videos the arguments are not very deep. They are very banal.
‘They are not what I truly believe, they are not what I believe now.’