Brianna Ghey

Case background and investigation

Brianna Ghey was a 16-year-old transgender girl from the Warrington area of Cheshire, England. According to the Court of Appeal's 2024 judgment, on the afternoon of February 11, 2023, she met two 15-year-old schoolmates, Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, in the village of Culcheth, and the three walked together into Linear Park. There she was stabbed 28 times to the head, neck, chest and back with a hunting knife that Ratcliffe had bought weeks earlier, and she died of her injuries.

Both teenagers were arrested the following day and charged with murder, according to Wikipedia's summary of police statements. Their trial at Manchester Crown Court began in late November 2023. On December 20, 2023, the jury convicted both of murder.

At sentencing on February 2, 2024, Mrs Justice Amanda Yip described the killing as brutal, planned and sadistic in nature, and found that hostility to Brianna because of her transgender identity was a secondary motivation, as reported by NBC News and CBS News. Prosecutors had relied on handwritten plans and phone messages showing weeks of premeditation; according to NBC News, the pair had also discussed killing other people and shared an interest in violence, torture and serial killers. The judge lifted the reporting restrictions that had protected the defendants' identities during the trial, citing the strong public interest in the case.

Both were sentenced to detention at His Majesty's pleasure, the life sentence for murderers under 18, with a minimum term of 22 years for Jenkinson and 20 years for Ratcliffe. The judge treated Jenkinson as the leading figure in the plan. On December 5, 2024, the Court of Appeal, led by the Lady Chief Justice, refused Ratcliffe permission to appeal, finding his minimum term neither manifestly excessive nor wrong in principle. CBS News reported that neither had previously come to police attention and that both would move to adult prisons on turning 18.

Brianna's mother, Esther Ghey, has since campaigned for a ban on smartphones for children under 16 and for mindfulness teaching in schools, according to Wikipedia, which reports that her petition had passed 90,000 signatures by February 2024.