[Ammi]

Like blood to a shark, Ana Kriegel’s vulnerability was a beacon for bullies and predators.
They circled the 14-year-old at school, followed her home, waited for her to jump online.
And on May 14 last year, armed with a “murder kit” comprising a zombie mask, black gloves, shin guards, knee pads, a long stick with nails protruding from both ends and a concrete block, they killed her.
Police found the teen’s beaten and bloodied body lying among used condoms and broken beer bottles inside a derelict farmhouse days later.
The monsters who brought Ana’s short, difficult life to a painful, lonely and premature end were, like her, just children.
Last week those monsters, a pair of 14-year-old boys, became the youngest people in Ireland’s history to be convicted of murder in a case which may be the worst child-on-child crime since the killing of James Bulger.

A LITTLE GIRL WHO JUST WANTED FRIENDS
Patric and Geraldine Kriegel adopted Ana from Russia when she was just two years old.
The toddler had problems with her vision and hearing following complications from an operation to remove a tumour in her ear.
But in the care of the Kriegels, who adored her from the moment they laid eyes on her, she thrived. By the age of 14, was one of the tallest girls in the school at 175cm.
Instead of giving her confidence, her towering grace made her a target.
In primary school she was mocked for her mild disabilities and found it impossible to make friends, despite her kind, sweet nature.
At the trial, Geraldine recalled a teacher’s aide assigned to help Ana had expressed fears about her transition to secondary school, where the children were likely to be even more cruel.
“She said she was terrified for Ana and that she felt that she was so vulnerable and innocent that many children might make a mockery out of her and tease her,” she told the court.
As predicted, the bullying intensified at high school and the little girl who once found such joy in singing and dancing stopped listening to music altogether.
She was mocked for having “a fake mum and dad”, teased for being hard of hearing and for struggling academically.
No matter how badly she was treated, Ana kept her faith in humanity and was always searching for new friends. Like so many other teens, she turned to social media for company.
But the abuse continued online, sent via Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms Ana had a presence on.
After she was bombarded with “frightening”, “sexually explicit” messages, she agreed to hand over her passwords to her mother.
It didn’t seem to matter what Ana posted, the response would be overwhelmingly awful. She’d put up a selfie and her comments would typically be full of people wishing her dead. Once, somebody written simply: “I’d have you executed.”


NOBODY EVER CALLED FOR ANA’
On Halloween 2017, Ana was assaulted by young boys as she made her way home from an event she’d helped supervise.
Geraldine recalled her daughter coming home “hysterical, banging on the front door”. The teen tearfully told of having been approached by four boys who were older than her and that one of them had said, “You’re going to have sex with me, Ana”.
She’d responded “no” and he had smacked her on her backside as she’d crossed the road to get away from them.
The Kriegels reported the incident to gardaí (Irish police), who issued the boys with a caution.
The abuse led to depression and she was counselled for suicidal thoughts and self-harm.
So when a boy knocked on the door of Ana’s house in the village of Lucan, south Dublin and said he was going to take her to meet another boy, someone she had a crush on, she was beside herself with joy; life was finally looking up.
Ana never came home.

Geraldine, who had not been present when her daughter went out, was immediately worried after hearing Ana had been visited by a boy before she disappeared because “nobody ever called for Ana”.
The family and gardaí searched for the missing girl for three days, focusing on a local park and surrounding properties, many abandoned or occupied by squatters, where Ana had last been sighted.
‘I THOUGHT IT WAS A MANNEQUIN’
Just before 1pm on May 17, 2018, three days after she disappeared, Ana’s naked body was found lying among the grime of a crumbling, long-abandoned farmhouse, surrounded by empty condom wrappers and broken bottles. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted.
“I thought it was a mannequin or something terrible,’ Garda Sean White would later tell the court.

Two 14-year-old boys, known only as Boy A and Boy B because they are too young to be legally identified, were last week convicted of Ana’s murder.
Their tender years make them the youngest in the country to be found guilty of such a crime.
Yet they were only 13 when they colluded to lure Ana to a local park where she was sexually assaulted and murdered. And the horrors they inflicted upon her, the gratuitous violence, has drawn comparisons to the abduction and murder of two-year-old Jamie Bulger.
The supervising officer that day, Detective Sergeant Declan Birchall, described walking into the crime scene after Ana’s body was found.
She was naked apart from her socks, with builders’ tape wound tightly around her neck and something obscuring her face.
“When I got closer I realised it was her hair covering her face...” he told the court. “There was blood at Ana’s nose and her head was tilted back.”
The prosecution said that a post-mortem revealed serious and extensive injuries to Ana’s head and neck. Her legs thighs and torso were covered in bruises.

State Pathologist Marie Cassidy’s report would also find injuries suggesting attempted penetration, the court heard.
Like James Bulger’s killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who were just 10 when they abducted, tortured and killed the toddler in 1993, Boy A and Boy B had an obsession with violent pornography.
While the jury heard that Boy A had searched for abandoned places in Lucan and the most gruesome torture methods in history, it had not heard the extent of his searches for pornography.
A total of 12,000 pornographic images were found on Boy A’s devices. Aside from those images, Boy A’s devices had internet searches for “child porn”. This term was searched for on two separate devices found in his room.
Photographs of a man wearing a mask were discovered on a phone found in his room.
Separately, another 5000 images were found stored on an Alcatel phone found in Boy A’s bedroom, with many depicting scenes of sexual violence.
They included pictures of men dominating young women dressed in school uniform; a woman naked apart from her underpants bound to a wooden post while a man squeezed her throat as another man watched; a woman having sex with a man in a balaclava and videos of men having sex with bound and gagged women
An examination of the defendants’ devices, including computers and mobile phones, found searches for “child porn”, “dark web”, “horse porn” and “animal porn” and “teen sweet Russian” from November 2017 up until the murder.
Boy A and Boy B will be sentenced for Ana’s murder next month.


https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...96a098c181d10f

[Cherie]

That poor girl, what she suffered before she died is unimaginable

[Ammi]

...the bullying through her life as well is just horrendous...

[Strictly Jake]

Oh my goodness I'm sobbing my heart out after reading that. That poor girl. How truly awful

Forget them being called boy a and boy b because they are too young! If they are capable of all those sickening things they should be identified.

Feel so sick now it's truly horrific

I hate bullying so much aswell it makes me fear for my children starting school my oldest starts school in September and she is so so confident so I know she will be ok especially for the first few years of primary school but towards the second half of primary school and high school other children can be so horrible and it would break my heart if my children were bullied as I went through being bullied myself simply for being more feminine than other lads.

So just thinking of these poor parents knowing their child was bullied for all those years is heartbreaking and then to find out their daughter was tortured and killed like that its truly unforgivable that these boys are not being identified. I hope these boys get what they deserve

[Nicky91]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...the bullying through her life as well is just horrendous...

bullying is disgusting anyway

have you heard of that Phoebe Prince story?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Phoebe_Prince

i didn't knew her, but i was shocked how some teens can do something like this to a innocent girl, also made me cry and still does, thinking she could've still had a life if they just had stopped in time with the bullying

[Niamh.]

Yeah it's been all over the news here for the last few months, I'd been trying to avoid listening to too much of the details, it's just so heart breaking. The two boys were so young aswell, it's almost unimaginable to think how they carried out something so horrific. No doubt they will both be out in a few years and go on to live full lives, it's maddening

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...the bullying through her life as well is just horrendous...

A horrendous story Ammi. If either of my children were suffering anything like this, I'd relocate as many times as it took until they found somewhere safe from this sort of treatment. I know that sadly that isn't feasible for everyone but frankly there's literally nothing more important. Sell up, move far away, whatever it takes.

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by ShakeyJake10

Oh my goodness I'm sobbing my heart out after reading that. That poor girl. How truly awful

Forget them being called boy a and boy b because they are too young! If they are capable of all those sickening things they should be identified.

Feel so sick now it's truly horrific

I hate bullying so much aswell it makes me fear for my children starting school my oldest starts school in September and she is so so confident so I know she will be ok especially for the first few years of primary school but towards the second half of primary school and high school other children can be so horrible and it would break my heart if my children were bullied as I went through being bullied myself simply for being more feminine than other lads.

So just thinking of these poor parents knowing their child was bullied for all those years is heartbreaking and then to find out their daughter was tortured and killed like that its truly unforgivable that these boys are not being identified. I hope these boys get what they deserve

One of the boys names was leaked on FB and his parents had to go into hiding but apparently a second boys name was also "leaked" and it wasn't him at all so that's the danger

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

A horrendous story Ammi. If either of my children were suffering anything like this, I'd relocate as many times as it took until they found somewhere safe from this sort of treatment. I know that sadly that isn't feasible for everyone but frankly there's literally nothing more important. Sell up, move far away, whatever it takes.

Yeah, it's terrible that the victim would have to be the one who had to do that but at the end of the day the childs safety and well being comes before anything else aswell

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yeah it's been all over the news here for the last few months, I'd been trying to avoid listening to too much of the details, it's just so heart breaking. The two boys were so young aswell, it's almost unimaginable to think how they carried out something so horrific. No doubt they will both be out in a few years and go on to live full lives, it's maddening

..I have to say I went to make a thread earlier...and then couldn’t...and then ..(posting to Lime in the other thread..)..it didn’t feel right either not giving her, her own thread...just very difficult ...

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

A horrendous story Ammi. If either of my children were suffering anything like this, I'd relocate as many times as it took until they found somewhere safe from this sort of treatment. I know that sadly that isn't feasible for everyone but frankly there's literally nothing more important. Sell up, move far away, whatever it takes.

...I think a lot of the bullying was online as well though, TS...and we can’t relocate away from online ...and so much of a young person’s social life is social media...

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..I have to say I went to make a thread earlier...and then couldn’t...and then ..(posting to Lime in the other thread..)..it didn’t feel right either not giving her, her own thread...just very difficult ...

Yeah i thought about starting one for the last few weeks but I didn't want to have to do too much reading on it

[Nicky91]

i had seen similar cases like Ana, on investigation discovery, series called Web of Lies

that people can be different from what their profiles online seem to be

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Yeah i thought about starting one for the last few weeks but I didn't want to have to do too much reading on it

..I know..I’m just so surprised that the media coverage hasn’t seemed to be much outside of Ireland with it being the youngest ever convicted murderers in the Country...

[Nicky91]

also who would do something this horrible to such a pretty girl

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...I think a lot of the bullying was online as well though, TS...and we can’t relocate away from online ...and so much of a young person’s social life is social media...

Thankfully it seems like this is starting to move away again from "open" social media (like Facebook) to things like WhatsApp groups, Snapchat, "group based" social media. Which can be just as toxic of course - many examples of it being even worse - but it does mean that if someone moves out of an area and away from a social circle, it's easier to totally leave that behind (change number, make new accounts) and not still be targetted by the same individuals.

Of course it's not the full answer... the boys who did this would almost certainly simply have targetted someone else.

[Strictly Jake]

Originally Posted by Nicky91

also who would do something this horrible to such a pretty girl

That's a bit of an odd comment. It shouldn't ever happen to anyone no matter what they look like

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Thankfully it seems like this is starting to move away again from "open" social media (like Facebook) to things like WhatsApp groups, Snapchat, "group based" social media. Which can be just as toxic of course - many examples of it being even worse - but it does mean that if someone moves out of an area and away from a social circle, it's easier to totally leave that behind (change number, make new accounts) and not still be targetted by the same individuals.

Of course it's not the full answer... the boys who did this would almost certainly simply have targetted someone else.

..yeah I do think they would have found someone else because it was a ‘thought out and prepared’ thing...the only thing to do was to choose the victim..and Ana was obviously vulnerable plus she liked one of the boys and was led to believe he liked her too...the murder obviously is unspeakably horrific but so is the lead up to it as well...their thought processes and ‘planning’...chilling and sickening beyond so much most of us could possible imagine...

[Nicky91]

Originally Posted by ShakeyJake10

That's a bit of an odd comment. It shouldn't ever happen to anyone no matter what they look like

i know, but based on those pictures of her, i found her a very pretty girl

[lime]

Thanks Ammi for a therad for Ana .When she was in 6th class ..maybe abotu 12 ..lads in 3rd year of high school were smacking her bhind and asking for sex..They would have been 16/17.They received a cauton.

She was a stuuning Irish /Siberian child

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Thankfully it seems like this is starting to move away again from "open" social media (like Facebook) to things like WhatsApp groups, Snapchat, "group based" social media. Which can be just as toxic of course - many examples of it being even worse - but it does mean that if someone moves out of an area and away from a social circle, it's easier to totally leave that behind (change number, make new accounts) and not still be targetted by the same individuals.

Of course it's not the full answer... the boys who did this would almost certainly simply have targetted someone else.

Unfortunately agree, what they did wasn't inspired by Ana, it was something they clearly wanted to do to someone and she seemed like the easiest target I assume

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by lime

Thanks Ammi for a therad for Ana .When she was in 6th class ..maybe abotu 12 ..lads in 3rd year of high school were smacking her bhind and asking for sex..They would have been 16/17.They received a cauton.

She was a stuuning Irish /Siberian child

..it’s your thread really, Lime.....

...Ana apparently self-harmed and spoke of suicide...so much unhappiness in her short life...

[bitontheslide]

this is so distressing

[arista]

[Last week those monsters, a pair of 14-year-old boys, became the youngest people in Ireland’s history to be convicted of murder in a case which may be the worst child-on-child crime since the killing of James Bulger.]

Evil.

[Cal.]

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crim...29570?mode=amp

Just read the whole thing for the last hour. I’m heartbroken.