Three youths attacked a 15-year-old schoolboy after watching Mel Gibson's Braveheart because the youngster had an English accent, a court was told yesterday.
Paul Rennie and David Gordon, both 16, set upon the boy shouting ''Freedom'', then Rennie and Alastair Macdonald, 18, pushed him into the Bannock Burn, Stirling Sheriff Court was told.
However, Sheriff Kevin Breslin told the teenagers: ''There isn't a brave heart among you.''
He said the only resemblance they bore to Sir William Wallace's warriors was that one of them had ginger hair.
The court was told that the boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons and has since left Scotland, was chatting to some girls in Ladywell Park, Bannockburn, when the attack happened.
He was surrounded, then punched and kicked as he lay on the ground, curled in a ball to protect his stomach.
When he tried to run away, the youths chased him, caught him, and threw him in the burn.
A schoolgirl who witnessed the beating told the court: ''I think it was because they had been watching Braveheart during the day and because he was English.
''They were shouting Freedom! and hitting him.''
The girl, also 15, said she had been one of those talking to the English boy, whom they all knew. She said that although the English boy was looking after a knife for someone, he had not taken it out or brandished it.
Rennie, of Parker Street, Stirling, and Gordon, of Balfour Street, Bannockburn, pled guilty to attacking the boy and punching and kicking him about the head and body to his injury.
Rennie and Macdonald, who gave his address as the YMCA in St Ninians, Stirling, admitted assaulting the boy and chasing him and pushing him in the burn.
Sheriff Breslin told them: ''This reference to Braveheart. Braveheart? There's not a brave heart between the three of you.
''All of you got on to one boy for the disgusting reason that he spoke with an English accent.''
Turning to Rennie, the sheriff added: ''The only resemblance between the three of you and any of the Scots warriors portrayed in the picture is you with your ginger hair.''
He deferred sentence for social inquiry reports and an assessment of the accused for community service orders.
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