A teenage mum and two younger girls who tortured a 13-year-old has been sent to a young offender institution for close to three years.

Lauren Barrington-Brown, 19, of Livingstone Road, Thornton Heath, who became a mum just before the New Year, wept as she was sentenced to 33 months detention at Croydon Crown Court on Friday January 6 alongside 16 and 15 year old girls who cannot be named.

The three were charged with false imprisonment, actual bodily harm and administering poison, namely fire, with intent to injure after carrying out a brutal attack on the 13-year-old girl in Grangewood Park, Thornton Heath on June 9, 2010.

Her hair was cut and burned, blistering her head, her arm was cut with a tile, she was trapped in a bush barefoot and told to crawl out, spat upon and hit with a brick before being freed.

They then threatened her family would be attacked if she reported them.

Barrington-Brown filmed the action as the other girls, then both 14, carried out the attack.

Judge Simon Pratt, delivering the sentence, described the incident as “effectively torture.”

He said: “You three launched a serious savage and sustained joint attack.”

He described how the victim was tricked into joining the girls in the park by the 15-year-old.

The attack was launched because they believed the victim was spreading rumours about the 16-year-old described by Judge Pratt as “the prime mover.”

In mitigation the lawyers defending both Barrington-Brown and the 15-year-old argued they were afraid of this girl, who pleaded not guilty to the charges but was convicted at a trial in November 2011.

Judge Pratt said: “There are no guidelines for the most serious of these offences, false imprisonment, which embraces the entirety of the attack from first to last.

“In my judgement if you were adults and all before me for the same offences the starting point for sentencing would be close to double figures.”

The 15-year-old, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 27 months in a young offender institution, the 16-year-old received the longest sentence of three years in a young offender institution.