The final man still imprisoned over the fatal attack on Sophie Lancaster has been approved for release, despite continuing to deny that he personally assaulted her because she was dressed as a goth.
Sophie, 20, was cradling her boyfriend’s head in her lap when teenagers Ryan Herbert and Brendan Harris kicked and stamped on her, leaving her unconscious.
Witnesses said the attackers later celebrated, reportedly boasting: “There’s two moshers nearly dead up there – you wanna see them – they’re a right mess.”
The 2007 attack in a park in Bacup, Lancashire, prompted widespread outrage. Sophie’s mother, Sylvia, was later awarded an OBE after campaigning for attacks against members of alternative subcultures to be recognised as hate crimes.
Herbert was approved for release on licence in 2022 after the Parole Board concluded that he had made “significant changes to his life which reflected his remorse, his insight and increased maturity”.
Harris, now 35, also broke a nurse’s nose while in custody. Despite that incident, the Parole Board ruled in May that he no longer represented a danger to the public.
It has since emerged that David Lammy made a final attempt to stop Harris’s release before he was removed as Justice Secretary, arguing that Harris had never accepted responsibility for killing Sophie.
That challenge has now been dismissed. Harris, who denies “personal involvement in the violence” against Sophie, can therefore be released.
Brendan Harris (pictured) was convicted of Sophie’s murder in 2008 and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 18 years.
Sophie Lancaster (pictured), 20, spent her final moments cradling her partner’s head as attackers kicked and beat her unconscious. She died in hospital two weeks later.
Harris now says he assaulted only Sophie’s 21-year-old boyfriend, Robert Maltby, according to the Mirror.
In rejecting Mr Lammy’s appeal, Parole Board officials said Harris had “accepted that he had attacked the male victim [Mr Maltby] but said that when the female victim [Sophie] came to comfort the male victim he had not struck her”.
However, the board said Harris accepted that he had been involved in a “group attack” and was “therefore responsible, as were others, for the death of the female victim”.
Stephen Dawson, dismissing the appeal, said Harris was not “denying the nature and seriousness of the offending”.
“His denial was of the issue of factual detail as to whether he physically assaulted the female victim,” Mr Dawson said. Harris had, he added, “accepted that his behaviour led to the death and serious injury of two victims”.
Herbert, who was 16 at the time, admitted murdering Sophie. Harris, then 15, was convicted of the same offence following a trial.
Harris told the court he had been drinking cider, Stella Artois lager and peach schnapps before launching the attack, describing himself as “drunk and showing off”.
During the trial, prosecutors said he delivered a series of kicks to Sophie’s face.
Sophie’s boyfriend Robert Maltby, pictured before her funeral in 2007.
Sophie’s mother, Dr Sylvia Lancaster OBE, who died in 2022, previously said she was “very disappointed” by Ryan Herbert’s release for murdering her daughter.
A judge imposed life sentences on both teenagers for what he branded their ‘feral thuggery’.
Both were also convicted of grievous bodily harm (GBH) against Mr Maltby along with three other teenagers.
When Herbert was cleared for release in 2022, Sophie’s mother said she was ‘very disappointed’, saying: ‘Once again we have a justice system that fails to deliver justice.
‘However much progress people make in prison, they have been given their sentence in recognition of the extent of their crime,’ she added.
‘Her attackers may not have been given a life sentence, but I have.’
Tragically Dr Lancaster died suddenly in hospital just a month later.
After Harris was also cleared for release in May 2026, the Sophie Lancaster Foundation – which was set up in her name to tackle prejudice – responded by saying its focus was on ‘all victims of hate crime’ as well as ‘those whose lives have been irrevocably changed by hatred and violence’.
While serving his sentence, Harris was transferred to a psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Ryan Herbert (pictured) was 16 when he and a group of friends viciously beat Robert Maltby in a park in Bacup, Lancashire, in 2007, before turning on his girlfriend Sophie Lancaster, who was fatally attacked while trying to defend him
(Left to right) Daniel Mallett, Danny Hulme and Joseph Hulme who were also convicted for their part in the assault on Robert Maltby and Sophie Lancaster
But in 2013 he broke the nose of a male nurse with what a court heard was a single ‘substantial’ blow.
He was convicted of causing GBH and four months was added to his life sentence, returning to prison in 2014.
Harris reached the end of his minimum term in August 2025, meaning he became eligible for parole.
In its original decision, a Parole Board panel recommended that he should be released on licence, subject to strict conditions, with a panel saying he had ‘not displayed any violence for over 13 years’.
Following the attack on the nurse he went on to complete a programme to address his use of violence, a public summary revealed.
His ‘behaviour in the prison had been good,’ it stated.
Proposed terms of his release included being of good behaviour, disclosing developing relationships with his probation officer, adhering to a curfew and submitting to alcohol monitoring and drug testing.
He must also abide by an exclusion zone to avoid contact with victims and continue work to address his risk factors.
The Parole Board was approached for comment.
In 2021 Sophie’s mother worked with Coronation Street producers on a hard-hitting storyline about hate crime.
In the show, characters Nina Lucas and Seb Franklin were violently attacked because of the former’s appearance by a gang of drunken youths.
The storyline had many similarities to what happened to Sophie.
Sophie Lancaster: The girl murdered for looking like a Goth
Pictured in hospital after she was attacked, Sophie Lancaster died 13 days later
Sophie Lancaster was murdered aged 20 in 2007 by a number of teenage boys who attacked her and her boyfriend Robert Maltby, then 21, while they walked through Stubbylee Park, Lancashire, on August 11.
Police believe the attack was linked to the couple wearing gothic clothes.
A 15-year-old witness told police: ‘They were running over and just kicking her in the head, and jumping up and down on her head.’
Police said it was ‘a sustained attack during the course of which the pair received serious head injuries and their faces were so swollen we could not ascertain which one was female and which one was male’. Robert also fell into a coma before gradually recovering. He has no memory of the attack.
Witnesses claimed the attackers celebrated afterwards, boasting: ‘There’s two moshers nearly dead up – you wanna see them – they’re a right mess.’
Sophie went into a coma and died 13 days after the attack due to severe head injuries. She was placed on life support, which hospital staff terminated after determining she would never regain consciousness.
At the trial in 2008, the prosecution told the hearing: ‘Sophie and Robert were singled out not for anything they had said or done, but because they looked and dressed differently.’
Sophie’s mother Sylvia, who later founded the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, said: ‘The thing that makes me most angry is that it is seen as an isolated incident, maybe the seriousness of what happened to Sophie is isolated, but attacks are far from isolated. Just because you follow a different culture you are targeted; you are seen as easy pickings.’
The Sophie Lancaster Foundation was set up to challenge prejudice towards people from alternative subcultures and to campaign for hate crime legislation to be extended to include such individuals.
