Two 15-year-old boys who raped two girls given new sentence after being spared jail
Madison Burgess
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Image
Two 15-year-old boys who were initially spared custody for the rape of two girls in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, have now been sentenced to four years’ detention.
It comes after the Court of Appeal ruled their original sentences were 'unduly lenient,' after a wave of outrage from the public.
The attackers were initially spared jail sentences in May because the judge wanted to ‘avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily'.
The boys, referred to as X and Y, and a third aged 14 known as Z, were initially given non-custodial sentences for a combined 10 counts of rape and seven indecent image offences related to two victims, who were separately attacked in the Hampshire town in November 2024 and January 2025.
The two older boys were involved in both attacks, while the 14-year-old encouraged the rape of the second victim.
Southampton Crown Court heard that the boys recorded the rapes and later shared some of the footage online.
On Thursday (2 July), Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said: “We have decided that we do need to change your sentences and both of you do need to go into detention.
“What you did was so bad that we have no other choice.”
Addressing Z, who also attended Southampton Crown Court, 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.”
During the initial May sentencing, where the boys avoided jail, Judge Nicholas Rowland told the defendants: “I have to remember that you are not small adults.
“I have to think how likely you are to do serious things again, and I need to make sure you do not do serious things again in the future.”
He added: “I should avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily and understand the effects of their behaviour and support their reintegration into society.”
The judge also said that ‘peer pressure played a large part in what went on’.
In May, before the boys' sentence was changed, one of the victims, now 16, who was raped aged 15 in an underpass by the River Avon, spoke out in an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.
Speaking anonymously, she said: “The words hit like a rock, straight in my face. He almost made it seem as if what the boys did was not okay, but it was okay in the eyes of the law, because they were still children.”
When asked what it meant to her, the victim explained: “It meant that, why did I sit and put myself through the pain of going to court, going through a trial, reliving everything because of evidence, and watching it all happen again?
“It sort of gave me a sense of, what’s the point? Like, what was the point in putting me through that?”