A TEENAGE girl who started a fire which destroyed her family home after being told to wash up has been placed under a supervision order.
The 15-year-old - who cannot be named because of her age - caused damage put at £63,500 to the property in Stroud by setting fire to a sofa.
During a hearing on Thursday at Gloucester Crown Court, Judge Martin Picton told her she be jailed.
But after reading reports he imposed a two year supervision order which requires her to attend courses for arson, therapy and carry out work for the public.
For the time being she must also live with her grandparents rather than her father.
At an earlier hearing the girl admitting starting the blaze on the evening of August 30 because she was angry at being told to do chores, including washing-up.
Nadeem Aullybocus, prosecuting, explained how she started the fire after her father and partner went out leaving her to do the washing up.
Smoke began filling a house next door where two young children were upstairs.
They were rescued unharmed.
Meanwhile, the girl phoned a friend telling her she had started the fire. Simon Dent, defending, said her behaviour was out of character.
She was a bright girl, he said, and had never been in trouble with the police before.
"The offence appears to arise from a long standing anger over the breakdown of her parents' relationship and then being treated unfairly, as she saw it, by her father and her father's new partner," he said.
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