A group of Melbourne girls invited a sixteen year old intellectually disabled girl to their home, saying they would be her friend. Then they took her to a nearby park where they beat her up so badly she could not stand up after the attack and had to be taken to hospital. Bad enough. A mob of other teenagers stood around shouting encourgement. Even worse.

But what made this story really horrific for me was that the mother of one of the girls videoed the incident on her phone (the video was later posted on MySpace) while shouting “Hit her, hit her harder,” “I taught you better than that” and “Hit her like your dad would”, and giving the girls advice about how do more damage while kicking the victim.