UK court overturns teen boys' 'unduly lenient' sentence in gang rapes
· Toronto Sun
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Judge Nicholas Rowland gushed about the two teen rapists as he let them walk free.
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They handled their trial “well.”
The British jurist triggered an outpouring of rage and condemnation in May when he let the boys skate for a slew of sexual offences.
The big-hearted judge told the boys: “None of you need to go to prison today.”
Boys ‘low intelligence’ factored
In delivering the soft sentences, Rowland noted the boys had low intelligence, were “very young,” were susceptible to peer pressure, and did not understand consent. Rowland even praised the trio of junior rapists for how they handled themselves in court.
His goal was to “avoid criminalizing these children unnecessarily.” But to the victims, their families, prosecutors, and the public at large, the sentences were absurdly lenient.
And on Thursday, the script was flipped and the two ringleaders were sentenced to four years in prison.
As reported by British media, the two teens, now 15, forced one girl into a “threesome” in an underpass in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in November 2024. In January 2025, they struck again, gang-raping a 14-year-old girl in a field. A 13-year-old boy also took part.
U.K. courts have a piece of legislation called the Unduly Lenient Scheme and the case was brought to the Court of Appeal. The original soft sentences were overturned. The youngest boy’s sentence did not change.
Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr on Thursday told the boys: “What you both did was so bad that we decided we had no other choice but to make these sentences.”
Carr said Rowland “wrongly assessed the level of harm” caused to the two girls who were raped and the “humiliation and degradation” they endured, saying the judge “erred.”
Judge’s decision ‘fundamentally flawed’
The victims’ families said they were “deeply grateful” and “relieved” by the harsher sentences.
Tom Little, lawyer for the attorney general, had called Rowland’s reasoning “fundamentally flawed.”
“In summary it is submitted that the extent and nature of the offending was so serious such that the only appropriate sentence for X, Y and Z was detention,” Little told the court.
“Had the judge properly assessed the seriousness of the offences, he could only reasonably have concluded that lengthy sentences of detention were required for both X and Y and that a sentence of detention was required for Z.”
Little added of the number of rape offences: (It was) difficult to understand how the judge could properly have come to the conclusion that he did.”
What the victims said of ordeals
The survivors of the brutal attacks remain traumatized.
Pressuring the terrified girl for a threesome, the boys recorded the rapes. The videos were later distributed on social media and the girl received messages calling her “a slag.”
The second victim was just 14 when she was gang-raped in a field in January 2025. She was threatened with a knife and ordered to leave her phone with a tracking device in a bodega.
The prosecution said video footage recorded showed the girl motionless with “her face buried in her hands” while she was raped by the first two defendants.
“I wake up with it, I go to school with it, I try to sit exams with it, and I go to sleep with it. It is always there. I cannot just switch it off. I cannot just move on,” one victim told the court.
“The trial was horrific. It was not just difficult; it was traumatizing. It made me relive what happened again and again. The trial lasted more than five-and-a-half weeks, and I had to go through giving evidence.
“When I gave evidence, I was questioned in detail about what I apparently did. I was asked about the details of what happened.”
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