11:22am Wednesday 25th November 2009
By Michael Purton
A TEENAGE boy will miss out on Christmas presents after being caught stealing a Royal British Legion collection box on Remembrance Day.
The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, stole a collection box containing £5 belonging to the Greenhithe and Swanscombe branch of the Legion on November 11.
He took it from from the Co-op store in Station Road, Longfield, just eight days after he had stolen another Legion collection box containing £100 from the Longfield Fish Bar in the same road.
The boy pleaded guilty to two counts of theft when he appeared at Dartford Youth Court yesterday.
District Judge Michael Kelly ordered him to pay £75 compensation to the Royal British Legion branch.
The boy was accompanied in court by his mother, who told the district judge the £75 would be deducted from the money she would have spent on Christmas presents for her son.
Mr Kelly also ordered the boy to do eight educational sessions lasting three hours each on Saturday mornings at an attendance centre in Chatham run by Kent police.
He said: “The idea is to punish you by taking away your free time. Hopefully you will learn something useful as well as learning some respect for authority.”
Adrian Rohard, mitigating, told the court the boy has Asperger’s syndrome and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
He said the boy did not understand the significance of stealing a Royal British Legion collection box on and near Remembrance Day, and had taken the money to buy food because he was hungry.
Mr Rohard added the boy’s family was ashamed of his actions.
Sentencing the boy, the judge said: “I think you know now what people think of you for doing this. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
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