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Statement provided to Rutland Police by Owen Samuels, also known as Gareth Butler.
The first thing I want to be very clear about is that none of this would have happened were it not for my brother’s death. Simon was the best brother anyone could ask for, and I had to watch him shrink and regress more and more every day due to the relentless bullying and torment he was subjected to. The main ringleaders in this were Charlie Ford and Alex Lawson. Thomas Medland joined in from time to time, and towards the end Guy Sherman — who’d been heavily bullied himself before then — decided his own agony wasn’t enough, and that he wanted to pile in on poor Simon too.
The girls were far from blameless. Sophie Matthews, who later became Sophie Lawson, used to stand by and watch. She did nothing at a
