Two teenage boys detained for rape as court of appeal overrules ‘lenient’ sentences | UK criminal justice
Two 15-year-old boys who escaped custody for raping two girls were sentenced to four years in prison after an appeals court ruled their sentences were “unduly lenient”.
Following national outcry, attorney general Richard Hermer referred the case to the court to consider whether the sentences given to the three boys, identified only as X, Y and Z, were too lenient.
The convictions related to the rape of two girls in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in November 2024 and again in January last year.
In the first attack, a 15-year-old girl was raped by X and Y, who were 14 years old at the time. In the second attack, in which Z was also present, X and Y took turns raping a 14-year-old girl, while others encouraged and filmed this attack.
On Thursday, chief justice Sue Carr, sitting with two other judges at the high court in London, said the trial judge had made a mistake by ordering rehabilitation for all the teenagers.
Addressing the boys, who attended the hearing via video link from Southampton crown court, Carr told X and Y: “We have decided that we need to vary your sentence and you should both be remanded into custody.
“We made this decision because we think what you both did was so bad that we had no choice. You both raped two girls on two separate occasions… You made it worse by filming what you were doing, which was terrible.”
He said their sentences would be reduced by the amount of time each spent in custody before trial and by half the time they spent under curfew. But he said restrictive orders on contacting the victims would be extended from 10 years to life, and they would also be subject to a lifetime police notification requirement.
Carr told Z that although he had not physically raped a girl, what he had done by encouraging Y to rape the second victim was also “very bad”. He said: “We decided that because you were so young and had a really hard time understanding things, and because you were only involved once, we didn’t need to change your sentence.”
At Southampton Crown Court on 21 May, X and Y were each given a three-year youth rehabilitation order and intensive supervision and supervision (ISS). Z was given an 18-month youth rehabilitation decision.
