To think that there should be some consequences for Judge Nicholas Rowland

I don't believe these boys are monsters. I know they are rapists.

I've no doubt there are reasons for their behaviour.

I don't think rape is an accident, or something that happens to any lad who is confused or stupid or has a bad day. It's likely going to be the outcome of longstanding trauma and abuse and bad circumstances and treatment. Especially in a case like this - I have to admit I couldn't stomach reading all of the details but what I read suggested they were organised, had intent, recorded it, menaced the victims, and knew enough to know what they were doing.

Unfortunately that isn't considered bad enough to jail them.

Jail is necessary for their safety as well as that of the girls, if you want to consider that.

When a community feels that justice hasn't been done, it puts people in a dangerous situation. It inflames tension. It can lead to far worse outcomes than a loss of liberty for a few years.

I suggest jail is going to be more likely to 1. remove these boys from their contextual situation that has caused the behaviour, 2. protect the girls, 3. show that justice has been done, 4. offer more opportunities for treatment of the offenders.

Yes, rehabilitate and treat them when they're in there. But get them off the streets and out of the situations where they have offended.

Other things that need considered are : the effect on the community, on girls and women in the local area and beyond. The cost of treating the victims for possibly a long time. The trauma of a trial that has come to nothing may worsen that.
Trauma from abuse like this can be life shattering. They may not recover. The effect on other boys who see them getting away with it and may feel that maybe rape isn't such a big deal after all, maybe it even has cachet.

Given that young males have the highest offending rate of any group, it's mindblowing to me that there are assumptions of leniency.

@WrongKindOfFeminist Do not be so ridiculous. The idea is to avoid repeat offending by making some effort with them.

And this 'bouncing in and out of prison' - every bounce a woman harmed?

Best keep them in, in that case.

highly intellectually demanding.

My arse.

Rapists walk free.

If they want people to respect the rule of law they'd better start acting respectably.

Yes I wondered the same and if the lack of education in an organised setting meant warning signs and opportunities were missed.

Yes, I like to think I would, because of the experiences I have had throughout my life in working with people in the justice system. I think before I started working in prisons, I would have struggled, though, for sure.

The reality is these boys are 14 years old. Their sentence is 4 years.

So, once they have served that sentence, if they live to the average lifespan of an adult male, that's over 60 years of them walking the earth.

If these boys are not given supportive rehabilitation, if the circumstances of their lives and how they came to commit this crime are not dealt with appropriately, the statistics tell us that in all probability, they'll spend those 60 years bouncing in and out of prison (at the cost of £50k + of tax payers' money per year) and doing all sorts of harm to many more people in the process.

In my view, regardless of how awful I feel for the girls involved, that is not a desirable outcome for anyone involved.

There's a lot of emotion on this thread for understandable reasons. Emotion is not always a good basis for decision making.

A number of well informed posters have tried to explain what the law is and how it works. I don't think it's helpful to ascribe dubious motives to them for do doing.

Many on here might like the law changed. 200 years ago and less these boys would have been hanged. Maybe we should go back to capital punishment. That could be a valid debate.

Certainly many on here are advocating locking up for life. But that costs us all £70k a year each. So locking these boys up for life might cost around £12m in current prices if they are in jail for the next 60 years. Do you want to pay that?

So sentencing policy is not just about retribution it's about practical issues too.

This thread would be improved by some practical suggestions. By all means argue to change the law on sentencing if you don't like it but maybe think through the implications too!

You do have a lot of compassion for these young men @EnidSpyton, would you have the same if they raped you, a colleague or your child?
would you be as concerned about the impact of facing the consequences on the rapists future and their “whole lot of life to live”?
what about the victim and their life to live? My friend at school was raped at 15 and her whole family ended up moving hundreds of miles away so they didn’t have to run the risk of seeing her rapist again, but you’ll be happy to know he’s living a wonderful fulfilling life, while the impact on her has been horrendous.

@WrongKindOfFeminist @OtterlyAstounding

I totally get your anger. I am furious at the leniency of rape sentences too.

But in this case, I am approaching it from the perspective of someone who works with teenagers, and with prisoners.

I have worked in a school with boys like this. Low intelligence. SEN. Poor impulse control. Usually chaotic home lives and poor parenting in the mix - often parents with low intelligence and SEN too, and drug/alcohol abuse, domestic violence, emotional/physical abuse, poverty, neglect, etc. A lot of them wound up in trouble with the police but they were not evil or monsters. They were children who had been horrifically let down by the adults around them, and hadn't been given the tools to function normally in society.

When it comes to the boys in this case, the reality is we can't lock them up for life for what they have done. The law doesn't allow us to.

So we have to think about - when their sentence ends, what do we want the outcome to be? That they are back out on the streets raping more girls? Or that they are able to reintegrate into society successfully without reoffending?

Statistically, the latter option is much more attainable if they don't go to prison. That will have partly been why the original judge went down that sentencing route. Young people are statistically proven to be less likely to reoffend if they don't go to prison but instead serve a community sentence (up to 50% less likely), and that is the result that is better ultimately for society as a whole, even if it's not immediately better for the victim.

This is the challenging and difficult nature of discussing sentencing and punishment and so on. It's not just about the victim and what's best for them. Of course it should be, but it can't be, because if, as in the majority of cases of crime, there is a reality that the perpetrator will not be in prison forever, there has to also be thought to what the outcome of that will be, and how to reduce the chances of there being future victims of that perpetrator.

As someone who volunteers in the sector, has interacted with a lot of prisoners and people working in the justice system, and has done a lot of reading around the subject, I am clearly coming at this from a different perspective than the majority of people on this thread, and I don't think that's a problem - it's a discussion forum, and all views should be valid and open to exploring.

I am angry about what happened to the girls. I am so sad for them and the trauma they have experienced, and I have a huge amount of empathy for them and their families.

But having taught hundreds of 14 year olds in my career, I can tell you that something has gone very, very wrong in these boys' home lives for them to have done this. It doesn't excuse what they have done or mean they don't need to be punished - I am just not convinced prison is the right form of punishment if the desired outcome is rehabilitation, which in my view, it should be when we're looking at people who are very young and have a lot of life left to live.

With the greatest respect I do think you should read the thread in this case.

If you’re going to remove Judges every time a decision is appealed successfully or a sentence is increased or decreased, you’re going to run out of Judges very quickly.

Being a Judge is highly intellectually demanding. They don’t always call it right, and that’s why appeal courts and procedures exist. It is not straightforward.

If you start having some sort of sanction all you’re going to achieve is (a) no one wanting to be a Judge, in a system which needs more of them, and (b) overly cautious, play it safe decision making.

And if they do their job so badly they’re effectively incompetent then there is a sanction.

Can we create a petition to get him sacked? How can we, the public, get heard by our own justice system?

Do you mean the woman who was inciting mass murder? That trivial little misdomeaner?

It’ll never happen. If you know what happens with family courts, you’ll never trust any system again.

Shoplifting, maybe.

https://www.hampshire.police.uk/news/hampshire/news/news/2025/september/teenage-boy-from-hythe-sentenced-to-six-month-detention-and-training-order/

Possibly for really serious stuff like tweets?

There are guidelines but he chose to interpret and apply them in the most lenient fashion

One has a question, If there are youth detention centres, what the hell are they for If not for young people raping girls? What do you need to do to end up in a youth detention centre if rape doesn’t automatically lead to a custodial sentence.

Absolutely. The entire framing is horrifically offensive. And frankly, I have doubts as to whether 'restorative justice' has ever been genuinely helpful for victims of sexual violence.

Women are socialised to forgive, to turn our loathing inwards, to be ashamed instead of angry, to smooth things over, to minimise, to make excuses for our abusers, and blame ourselves...we're as good at being self-destructive as men are at being destructive. So I have to doubt whether restorative justice is actually healing and helpful, or just a woman doing what she feels is expected of her, and telling herself it's helped.

Perhaps we should forget trying to deal with men raping.

Maybe we need to start teaching women to get better at dealing with being rapees, instead.

Instead of all that pointless community service, offer victims the opportunity to better themselves through a series of helpful courses:

How to be gracious and not make 'knee jerk' reactions when discussing rape sentencing guidelines.

How to consider the rights of rapists without judging

How to thoughtfully balance the rapist's trauma with his rehabilitation potential

How to not be unpleasant when complaining about rape rates

We could have that woman who got put in jail for her tweets in to advise on how to avoid being offensive and reactionary.

What was it she got for her inflammatory tweet? Two years, was it?

If they can commit gang rapes at the tender age of 13/14, what the fuck are they going to escalate to as adult men? The fact that they're already doing that at such a young age just goes to show how deeply dangerous they are - it's a point against them, not a point in their favour.

Not to mention, their learning disabilities, lack of self control, and (apparent) inability to understand something as simple as 'rape is bad' at an age where they well should, means they're quite unlikely to ever actually understand that rape is bad. They might be driven by their own self interest enough to learn that 'rape could lead to jail, and jail is bad', but I think it's clear they don't give a shit about hurting girls, and never will.

When these sorts of situations come up, I always find myself thinking: Humans aren't an endangered species. There's no burning need to try to preserve the ones that insist on hurting other people.

This, it’s another condescending version of “educate yourself” isn’t it?

Many victims of crimes do want to engage with their perpetrator.

You might find that surprising, but there's a reason why restorative justice exists. Obviously it doesn't work for everyone, but it does for some.

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/the-decriminalisation-of-rape/

https://www.uolprobono.co.uk/post/understanding-britain-s-decriminalisation-of-rape

https://victimscommissioner.org.uk/news/the-distressing-truth-is-that-if-you-are-raped-in-britain-today-your-chances-of-seeing-justice-are-slim/

In the UK, rape is not a crime

FTFY.

It's not about the boys' wellbeing being the priority.

It's thinking realistically about the effectiveness of whatever punishment is given and what will prevent them from committing the same crime again. Punishment is not just about making someone suffer for what they've done - it has to also involve enabling that person to understand what they've done and want to not commit that crime again.

In the UK, rape is not a crime that is legally punishable with life imprisonment. So at some point anyone who is imprisoned for rape (as their sole crime) will be released back into the community.

If proper support and education and rehabilitation has been carried out, that person should ideally be able to reintegrate into society successfully and not reoffend.

The reality is that for most prisoners, this doesn't happen effectively or with any consistency. When you factor in prisoners with learning needs or low intelligence, rehabilitation is even more complex.

So if these boys are not given appropriate support around their sentence, they may well reoffend, and what kind of justice will that be for the victims?