Two teenage boys have been sentenced to four years’ youth detention for raping and filming sex attacks on teenage girls after their punishments were ruled unduly lenient.
Judges ruled the non-custodial sentences handed down for the attacks in Fordingbridge, Hampshire – which sparked a public outcry – were not tough enough.
The boys, both now 15, were sentenced to four years in a young offenders institute after the case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney General Lord Hermer.
A panel of judges led by Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr quashed their previous sentences of a three-year youth rehabilitation order (YRO) with 180 days of intensive supervision for raping and filming the abuse.
Addressing the teenagers on Thursday, Baroness Carr said: “We have decided that we do need to change your sentences and both of you do need to go into detention.”
She added: “What you did was so bad that we have no other choice.”
The judges upheld the sentence for a third boy, aged 14, known as Z, who received an 18-month YRO after he encouraged the rape of the second victim. Addressing Z, Baroness Carr said: “We have decided that because you were very young and find some things really very difficult to understand, and because you were only involved on one occasion, we do not need to change your sentence.”
The boys attended the hearing via videolink from Southampton Crown Court to hear their new sentences handed down.
Baroness Carr said that while the sentencing judge, Judge Nicholas Rowland, faced a “difficult sentencing exercise”, a custodial sentence for X and Y was “unavoidable”. She added the panel found he had “failed to take sufficiently into account the ages and the vulnerabilities of the complainants” which she described as “severe”.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Tom Little KC, for the Attorney General, argued that the “only appropriate sentence” for the three boys – known as X, Y and Z for legal reasons – was detention.
He acknowledged that Judge Nicholas Rowland, who sentenced the boys at Southampton Crown Court in May, oversaw a difficult sentencing exercise for the child offenders. But he argued his assessment of harm and culpability was “fundamentally flawed”.
He continued: “The judge failed to stand back and properly consider and reflect upon the true seriousness of the case because he did not properly regard the case as being as serious as it was.”
Mr Little also accused the judge of adopting a “significantly outdated” approach. The barrister said that the judge correctly said that previous consensual sexual activity with victims was not mitigation, but appeared to wrongly find that the offenders had reduced culpability.
Mr Little continued: “They have still been convicted by a jury of rape offences including the jury being sure that consent was not given and that they did not have a reasonable belief in consent.
“This appears to represent a significantly outdated approach to the sentencing of sexual offences by the judge.”
In his sentencing remarks, Judge Rowland noted that the second defendant, known as Y, had an IQ in the bottom 1 per cent, ADHD and could not cope with ordinary schooling. His mother had described him as being more like an eight-year-old boy.
Judge Rowland said he was “quite sure” that Y’s culpability “was reduced as result of his profound impairments”.
The third and youngest boy, Z, was also found by a psychologist to have “very low intellectual capacity”, the sentencing judge remarked.
However Mr Little said the sentences imposed on X and Y were unduly lenient, adding: “A community sentence could simply not be justified for each of these child offenders despite their ages and any intellectual limitations.”
Clare Wade KC, for X, had argued a youth rehabilitation order provides the “most effective way of protecting women and girls in future by preventing future offending”.
She said he had already served the equivalent of an 18-month sentence under curfew while awaiting trial, adding: “He would be vulnerable in a custodial setting; he would be detained with criminal peers and fall under the influence of far more entrenched offenders.”
Edward Henry KC, for child Y, said the teenager – who was 14 at the time of the attacks – had been made a “pariah” as a result of the media attention on the case and his family have been advised to move.
He told the court the public was “substantially misinformed” by an error included in the Crown Prosecution Service’s press release on the case, which wrongly claimed one of the attacks had taken place at knife point.
“Y behaved deplorably and disgracefully and he of course deserves to be punished,” he said. “But the public outcry and the opprobrium and the sheer force of hatred on social media and the like has gravely exacerbated his punishment since 22 May.”
Tracy Ayling KC, for child Z, who was 13 at the time of the offending, argued custody should be a “last resort”. She said he had been too scared to leave home after the inaccurate CPS press release was issued.
The family of one of the victims, who is using the pseudonym Jazmine to protect her anonymity, said they had “been forced to come before one of the highest courts in the country simply to ask that the seriousness of Jazmine being raped by two teenage boys is properly recognised”.
“Today’s hearing is about far more than Jazmine’s case,” they added in a statement before the hearing. “It is about every survivor watching to see how the criminal justice system responds to the devastating harm caused by rape.”
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