Happy slapping was a fad originating in the United Kingdom around 2005, in which one or more people attack a victim for the purpose of recording the assault (commonly with a camera phone or a smartphone).
[2] The general availability and affordability of mobile phones with integrated video cameras for the first time in the mid 2000s, in addition to their ease of use, meant that, compared to in previous decades, little if any planning was required to carry out and film such an attack.
The first newspaper article to use the phrase "happy slapping" was "Bullies film fights by phone", published in The Times Educational Supplement on 21 January 2005, in which reporter Michael Shaw described teachers' accounts of the craze in London schools.
Gary Martin, writing on "The Phrase Finder" website described the phenomenon as: "Unprovoked attacks on individuals made in order to record the event, and especially the victim's shock and surprise, on video phones.
"[8] When the international media attention surrounding attacks abroad reached a high point, a girl was sentenced to eight months in prison.
[12] In February 2007, an amendment aimed at criminalising "happy slapping" was added to a law "on the prevention of delinquency" by the Parliament of France based on a proposal from then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Specifically, it was argued that citizens filming incidents of police brutality and publishing such information online could be intimidated by law enforcement into remaining silent, or prosecuted for their actions.
"[20][21] In March 2008, a teenage girl who filmed the fatal beating of a man on her mobile phone was sentenced to two years' detention in the first prosecution of its kind in the United Kingdom.
She had pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court in February 2008 to aiding and abetting the murder of Gavin Waterhouse, 29, from Keighley, West Yorkshire.
The Crown Prosecutor said "this is the first time a suspect in England and Wales has been successfully prosecuted for aiding and abetting murder or manslaughter, for the filming of an inaptly called 'happy slapping' incident".