Girl, 19, was nearly beaten to death by 17-year-old who broke a baseball bat on her soon after they first met following a month of online chat on dating app Badoo – yet judge STILL won’t let him be named

  • Emily Harvey had been speaking to boy on Badoo and agreed took taxi to house
  • Attacked Ms Harvey at his house and took photos of her body to send to friends
  • Admitted attack and was given nine-year sentence with five years behind bars 
  • Application to lift reporting restrictions so he could be named rejected by judge

A teenager was nearly beaten to death by a 17-year-old boy, who broke a baseball bat on her soon after they first met after a month chatting on dating app Badoo, but a judge is still refusing to release his name to warn other women. 

Emily Harvey, 19, was beaten and then strangled by the thug while lying on his bedroom floor in Loughborough, and has told how she closed her eyes and prepared to die during the horrific attack. 

At one point, he even took pictures of her blood-stained body and sent it to his half-brother and a friend. Ms Harvey lost consciousness at one point during the six-hour ordeal but eventually came to and managed to run away. 

Emily Harvey, 19, was beaten and then strangled by the thug while lying on his bedroom floor in Loughborough, and has told how she closed her eyes and prepared to die during the horrific attack. She is pictured afterwards in hospital 

The youth was given a nine-year extended sentence, with five years of detention and four years on licence, at Leicester Crown Court last month, after pleading guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

But an application to lift reporting restrictions so he could be publicly named was rejected by Judge Nicholas Dean QC, who said it was not in the interests of justice to lift the ban. 

Ms Harvey said: ‘I don’t think that is justice after what he did to me. They should lock him away and never let him out.

‘One minute he was OK with me, then he just flipped. He attacked me for no reason. I really thought he was going to kill me there in his flat.’

Ms Harvey has bravely decided to relieve the ordeal on August 25. 

She met the boy on the dating app Badoo where he initially seemed ‘really nice’ and ‘funny’. 

‘We chatted for about a month. We sent messages on Snapchat too,’ she said. ‘He asked me to go over to meet him and said he would pay for the taxi.

‘I felt like I sort of knew him, so I agreed to go. At first he was lovely. It was fun. Then he just changed.

‘He damaged my phone so I couldn’t contact anyone. Then he attacked me.’

Ms Harvey, from Peterborough, said she was attacked with a baseball bat and a frying pan and ended up bloodied on the floor. 

‘At that moment, I thought: “This is it. He’s going to kill me.” Then it all went black,’ she said. 

Thankfully, Ms Harvey regained consciousness on the bedroom floor. She had no idea how long she had been out cold, but knew she needed to get out of the flat or she might be killed.

As she came round, Ms Harvey’s attacker – with whom she had earlier laughed and joked on a fun-filled date – accused her of stabbing him.

She said: ‘He had beaten me with a baseball bat, and when he broke that on me, he got a frying pan and hit me on the back of the head with it, then picked up a Hoover pipe and started to rain blows on me with that.

‘Now, bizarrely, he was accusing me of stabbing him. He screamed at me for attacking him and told me to get out.

Ms Harvey has bravely decided to relieve the ordeal on August 25

‘I managed to get to my feet and I ran as fast as I could out of the door.

‘As I tried to get out of the building I bumped into one of his neighbours. She took me in and called the police.’  

Ms Harvey is slowly trying to find some normality in her life in the wake of the attack.

She said: ‘The biggest problem I’ve got physically is the ligament in my right hand.

‘It got badly damaged as I tried to fend off the blows as he hit me, and kept on hitting me, with the baseball bat until it broke on me. I can’t do much for another couple of months.

‘I hope that it will heal and then I can start to look for a job.’

Ms Harvey has been offered counselling, but said she felt she did not need it.

‘I want to just get on with things,’ she said. I haven’t had any nightmares about this, which is good.

‘I’ve been out a couple of times with friends and that helps. I don’t feel like I can trust anyone I don’t know properly now.’

The teenager said she should have told her parents where she was going, ‘but I just didn’t’.

She added: ‘I’m not sure how I might feel about meeting another man and going on a date – that’s so far off in the future I can’t even think about it.’

Her father, lorry driver Richard Harvey, revealed how he didn’t even recognise his daughter when he first arrived at hospital because of the severity of her injuries.

He discovered what had happened when police rang him at 3am and said: ‘Your daughter has been injured in an incident. I think you should come to hospital.’

Mr Harvey quickly dressed and drove the 60 miles to Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre.

When he arrived at 5am, medics ushered him into a bay in the accident and emergency department’s resuscitation unit.

He said: ‘I looked and saw a person I did not recognise covered in blood lying on a bed.

‘I walked out, wondering why they had directed me there.

‘A doctor asked me to go back and look again. “It’s your daughter,” they said.

‘I looked closely. The young woman lying there had been so badly beaten that her body and face were very swollen and she was covered from head to toe in blood. It was my Emily.’

The father-of-five said his daughter was so traumatised, and so full of medication, that she could not speak to him.

He said: ‘When Emily was able to speak, the first thing she said was “sorry”. She cried and cried.

‘I held her hand and told her she had nothing to be sorry about.’

After a few days, Ms Harvey was discharged, which allowed her family to care for her at home.

Ms Harvey lost consciousness at one point during the six-hour ordeal but eventually came back to and managed to run away. Pictured is her injured arm 

Mr Harvey said his daughter had been changed, possibly forever, by her experience.

He said: ‘She used to be so outgoing, so full of life. She was just a normal 19-year-old.

‘Going out with her friends, having fun. So bright, so lovely.

‘Now she spend so much time in her bedroom. She rarely goes out. The physical scars will heal, but I’m not so sure that the mental ones will.

‘I think she may be forever looking over her shoulder, worrying that something like this might happen again.’

Mr Harvey said he still felt anger towards the youth responsible for the savagery.

‘It was a shocking attack and he could have easily killed her,’ he said. ‘I am angry at him for what he has done to my girl. It is clear that he is a dangerous individual.

‘He clearly needs psychiatric help, but, at the same time, the public needs protecting from him.

‘I don’t think the sentence he has been given is long enough. He will be out soon, and what then?

‘He could easily do the same again but this time with a more serious outcome. The court heard that he had a lot of previous convictions for violence.’

He also wanted to warn teenagers to be careful about who they meet after chatting online.

‘Emily’s horrific experience shows just how important it is for parents children to talk honestly about what is going on in their lives,’ he said. 

‘What it also illustrates is everyone, particularly teenage girls, should perhaps talk to family or friends before meeting someone they only know over the internet.

‘Anyone can pretend to be anyone in a chat room. This shows that a dangerous person can be sweetness and light online, then show a different side in person.

‘All we can do is be there for her and support her and love her as much as we can.’ 

At the trial last month, prosecutor Jonathan Dunne told the court that the boy had 10 previous convictions for 20 offences.

His first recorded conviction was for battery in 2014 when he was 14.

Other convictions included racially aggravated assaults, theft, and criminal damage. He had also pushed a five-year-old child into a canal.

The court heard that a pre-sentence report by the probation service had classified the boy as a dangerous individual.

Mr Dunne said: ‘The report states that he poses a high risk of harm to the public, to males or females, if he feels they have wronged him in some way.

‘It says he presents a very high risk of harm to females if he has some intimate involvement with them.’

Gary Short, defending, said his client had mental health issues.

Mr Short said: ‘He has his own particular difficulties. Clearly, immaturity is one of them. He is not your average type of 17-year-old.

‘He’s totally disgusted with himself. He knows full well that this young woman will carry the effects of this terrible offence with her for some time.’

Sentencing, Judge Dean told the boy: ‘I hope after this that you will no longer be a danger to the public when you are released.’

He made an indeterminate order banning the boy from contacting his victim. 

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