Face of QC’s girl in viola case acid attack on love rival
POSINg innocently, this is the top barrister’s daughter who left a teenage love rival scarred for life after pouring drain cleaner into her viola case.
Emily Bowen, 18, was jailed for attacking Molly Young, then 17, who she played alongside in the school orchestra.
The former friends fell out when Miss Young began dating her attacker’s ex-boyfriend.
Bowen, a talented clarinetist, put One Shot drain cleaner – containing 91 per cent sulphuric acid – into Miss Young’s viola case.
Her victim suffered permanent scars when she took her instrument down from a shelf in the music room of Knox Academy in Haddington, East Lothian.
The corrosive red liquid blistered her legs when it seeped out of the case onto her. Miss Young had to have plastic surgery and laser treatment to reduce the scarring.
Six weeks later, Bowen wrote a fake poison pen letter to herself, purportedly from Miss Young, demanding that she kill herself. Bowen is the daughter of leading barrister Andrew Bowen QC, who has represented the United Nations in the gaza Strip and Kosovo. His daughter had ambitions to follow in her father’s footsteps and had just been accepted to study law at Aberdeen University. Those dreams are now over after Bowen was jailed for 21 months at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. She admitted the ‘ wicked’ attack in September last year. Aidan Higgins, prosecuting, said police had found evidence on Bowen’s phone of her researching acid attacks in the media, and checking how long the culprits were being jailed for.
Sheriff Michael O’grady referred to the fake letter in his sentencing, saying Bowen’s ‘careful and premeditated actions’ combined with the penning of the note ‘casts a very disturbing light on your thinking’. A family friend, who did not want to be named, said: ‘What Emily did to poor Molly was really bad and she deserves everything she gets.
‘But to make it all the worse she wrote that letter saying she could kill herself and then pretended it came from Molly. I mean, how sick is that?
‘Some folk in the town had sympathy for her after the acid incident as they thought it was a spur of the moment thing, but after finding out about the letter they soon changed their minds. It was cold and calculated and not something you would expect from a fresh-faced, well brought up young teenager.’
The friend said Bowen had come from a ‘great family’ and had wanted for nothing in her upbringing, adding: ‘I do feel sorry for her in a way as she had everything in front of her, but you really cannot excuse what she did.’