Appeals court orders detention for teen rape offenders after lenient sentence backlash

Two 15-year-old boys were sent to detention for four years on Thursday after the Court of Appeal ruled that youth rehabilitation orders handed down in May were too lenient in a rape case involving two girls in Hampshire. The third defendant, who was 14 at the time of the offences, had his sentence left unchanged.

Baroness Carr sat with Lord Justice Edis and Ms Justice Norton as the court considered convictions for a combined 10 counts of rape and seven indecent image offences. The offences took place in Fordingbridge in November 2024 and January 2025, when the victims were 14 and 15. The two older boys were involved in both attacks, while the younger boy encouraged the rape of the second victim.

Southampton Crown Court had originally imposed non-custodial youth rehabilitation orders on 21 May, with the judge saying detention should be a last resort and that he wanted to avoid criminalising the children unnecessarily. That sentence triggered a sharp public response, and the Attorney General referred the case under the unduly lenient sentence scheme after multiple requests for review. Lawyers for the Attorney General argued custody was the only appropriate punishment.

Youth Justice Services assessed the boys as medium risk of reoffending but high risk of serious harm to young females.

The family of one of the girls welcomed the ruling in a statement read by Dr Charlotte Proudman, but said it could not erase what their daughter had suffered and called for a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system. Prime Minister Keir Starmer described it as distressing, and MPs and campaigners attacked the decision to spare the boys detention.

The judiciary later released the sentencing transcript, which showed that some of the earliest public claims were wrong, including a knife-point allegation repeated in an earlier Crown Prosecution Service press release.