Starmer backs urgent review of teenage boys’ rape sentences

Two teenage boys who raped girls in separate attacks in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, avoided prison after a judge imposed youth rehabilitation orders, a ruling now under urgent review because critics say it fell far short of the harm done to the victims.

Sir Keir Starmer called the case “appalling” and said it was right that law officers were urgently reviewing the sentences. The prime minister also said the girls at the centre of the case showed “extraordinary bravery and strength” in “heinous circumstances”, after two attacks on 26 November 2024 and 17 January 2025 were heard at Southampton Crown Court. The defendants were 15 and 14 at the time. All three received youth rehabilitation orders, while the two older boys were also placed under intensive supervision and surveillance.

The sentencing decision has cut to the heart of a justice-system accountability question that extends beyond one case: how far should courts prioritise rehabilitation when the offending involves rape, filming, and circulation of footage. Judge Nicholas Rowland said he wanted to avoid “criminalising these children unnecessarily” and said peer pressure played a large part in what happened. But prosecutors told the court the rapes were filmed, some footage was shared, and jokes were made about one victim afterwards, facts that sharpened public anger at a punishment that kept the boys out of custody.

One victim told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the sentence felt like “a rock straight in my face”, and said the judge’s comments made it seem as if what the boys did was not wrong in the eyes of the law because they were children. That reaction has echoed far beyond Hampshire. Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Jess Phillips all criticised the outcome, while Donna Jones, the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner, said the sentences were far too lenient and offered little comfort to the victims.

The attorney general, Lord Richard Hermer, is now reviewing the case under the unduly lenient sentence scheme after receiving multiple requests to examine it. He has 28 days from sentencing, until 18 June 2026, to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. That court will then decide whether the punishment was so far outside the proper range that it should be increased, a test that reflects whether the original sentence was one a reasonable judge could properly have imposed.

For the girls, the question is not abstract. It is whether the law can properly respond when sexual violence is treated as a youth justice problem rather than a serious crime demanding custody, accountability and recognition of the trauma that followed.