The crime is certainly shocking, including the fact that children so young would do such a thing. However, the fact that they can't be charged is not especially shocking. If you have an age of criminal responsibility at all - which clearly any sane society should - then you are accepting that occasionally people below that age may commit crimes that would attract a severe punishment if they were adults, but in their case will not attract criminal punishment at all.

Where you have children of 12 committing gang rape, the sane question to ask is not "how should they be punished" but "what on earth kind of society do we live in in the first place".

I to think 14 is rather high though for the age of criminal responsibility as I certainly knew the distinction between legal and illegal before that age.  I think around 10 is probably right.

14 is also (horrifyingly) the age of consent in germany 

14 is certainly on the high side relative to international comparators, but that's the choice Germany has made. I  don't think there is any general case to be made that the age of responsibility should be raised because children are sometimes committing awful violations - firstly, they have always done so, on a sporadic basis, though nowadays it probably receives more attention, faster; secondly, as I say, the question to ask if people of non-responsible age do such things is - why on earth are they doing so? Society should turn its fire on itself here. Anger about the law is just a smokescreen.

The trend if anything, in recent decades, has been for children to be LESS mature at any given age, rather than more.

a perfectly normal human being,

"...the sane question to ask is not "how should they be punished" but "what on earth kind of society do we live in in the first place"..."

Actually I think the sane response it to ask both of those questions, they aren't incompatible.

By the way, don't be too hasty in blaming Germany, as The Sun reports:

"Reports have said the five teenagers are from the southern Bulgarian town of Pazardzhik and are partly related to each other.

"The incident is similar to a case a year ago in Velbert, a town near Mulheim, where a gang of eight Bulgarian teens raped a 13-year-old girl."

"Asking what kind of society prevents the victim of a gang rape from seeking justice against two of the alleged perpetrators because they aren't 14 yet is just as valid a question"

No it isn't

I wouldn't set the age of responsibility as high as 14 but I certainly wouldn't set it as low as 10, which is the UK's. I'd probably go for 12, actually. There is of course a certain arbitrariness to all such matters.

The Germans are their own demos, and make their own democratic decisions.

OK yes I agree it is a valid question. I do not agree that it is terrible that Germany sets the age of responsibility where it has, though, and the corollary of setting any age is that occasionally shocking violations will be committed by people below it.

What apnhb said

"German"

Wot Shooty said