Teen boys rape sentences to be reviewed by government

The government is to review the sentencing of three teenage boys who raped two girls in separate attacks, after receiving multiple requests to appeal the decision.

Prosecutors said the assaults in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in 2024 and 2025, were "brazenly filmed" on phones and showed the boys laughing and encouraging each other. They later shared some of the footage online.

The boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, were given youth rehabilitation orders (YRO) and the two older ones were also made subject to intensive supervision and surveillance (ISS).

A government spokesperson said it shared the public's shock at the details of this "horrific case" and its thoughts were with the young victims, adding "the Law Officers are urgently reviewing the case with the utmost care and attention".

Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing

The Attorney General and Solicitor General, the government's primary law officers, will now have up to 28 days to make a decision on the case and could then refer it to the Court of Appeal for a hearing.

Former Home Office minister Jess Phillips condemned the sentences as "unduly lenient".

Phillips, who served as minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls until her resignation earlier this month, said: "For those young women going through a rape trial like this will not have been a simple thing to do, it will have been many, many months if not years to achieve any sort of justice and I am afraid to say it sends a bad message."

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the Labour MP suggested social media had negatively influenced young boys.

"These young people it seems were essentially raping for content in order to put it on social media and share it to their friends gloating about raping these poor young women," she said.

"It seems unduly lenient to me and has wider public interest beyond just the case itself in the message that it sends."

Conservative shadow Justice Minister Dr Kieran Mullan MP said: "It cannot be right that teenage boys can commit brutal crimes of rape like this and avoid prison entirely. We have appealed these sentences to the Attorney General.

"The excuses of ADHD for a crime like this are an offence to justice."

The boys, who cannot be named because they are children, had denied the charges but were found guilty in March after a trial at Southampton Crown Court.

Explaining his sentencing decision on Thursday, Judge Nicholas Rowland said he would avoid "criminalising" the "very young" boys.

The judge stressed the "seriousness" of the crimes and said the filming of the assaults made them even "more serious".

The first girl was 15 when she was raped three times in an underpass by the River Avon in Fordingbridge.

She had travelled to meet one of the boys for the first time after he had begun a "relationship" with her on social media platform Snapchat - but then two other boys appeared.

The second girl was 14 when she met the boys at Fordingbridge Recreation Ground and was raped repeatedly in a nearby field.

Video footage previously seen in court showed her lying motionless on the ground with "her face buried in her hands", while another boy was heard shouting words of encouragement.

Prosecutor Jodie Mittel KC said videos of the first incident were shared online leading to people to make jokes about the girl. She also received messages calling her a "slag".

Speaking in court on Thursday, screened from the view of the boys, she read a poem she had written which included the line: "All I want to do is die, I no longer have fear for when that comes."

In a statement read on behalf of the second victim, she described suffering nightmares and struggling to sleep, saying: "I feel ashamed, insecure and uncomfortable in my own body."

Phillips said that while rehabilitation of offenders was "vital", perpetrators should be able to be rehabilitated "within our youth estate".

The MP for Birmingham Yardley accused social media of playing a role in the rise of misogyny amongst young men.

"The truth is for about 10 years we have allowed young people, especially young boys, to be experimented on by social media companies..."

She said "very little" had been done in the last decade to see what effect violent pornography has had on young people and the victims in this case have "paid the price".

The BBC's home and legal correspondent correspondent Dominic Casciani explained that anyone who thinks that a sentence for a serious offence is too short can ask for it to be reviewed.

Under the unduly lenient sentence scheme a member of the public can go to a government webpage and ask the Attorney General (AG) to look at the outcome.

If the AG and expert lawyers agree that the sentence is out of line with normal expectations for such a crime, they send the case to the Court of Appeal.

Casciani added: "There, three of the most senior judges in England and Wales will hear arguments about whether the sentence was too short or appropriate, taking into account detailed guidelines to trial judges and the specific circumstances of the case."

Phillips meanwhile has invited the girls' families to contact her if they wanted help in challenging the sentences.

Det Sgt Naomi Stocker from Hampshire Police said on Thursday that the force was "liaising with our partners at the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to the sentence passed".