Judge Nicholas Rowland

Womrn and girls have received the message loud and clear: we don't matter

@Mischance "The majority of the travelling community will be as appalled as we are."

Oh boy, I wouldn't hold your breath. I live very close to a number of traveller sites. The way they treat their animals alone would make you weep. And no it's not because I think all animals should sleep on four poster beds, it's just blatant bloody vile cruelty for the fun of it. To say nothing of the constant theft from shops, threatening shop staff, riding their pony rigs into cars, their kids throwing lumps of concrete at passing cars and highly aggressive scamming of pensioners and vulnerable people for things like tarmacking. I could go on and on. The behaviour and lack of respect for other people is actually hellish and completely unjustifiable. I know everyone's going to pile in and say they're not all like it, but if that's the case then it's obvious that 99% of them give a mere 1% a bad name.

This judge is just as guilty of misogynistic views as the defendants. He could have sent a clear message that what they did was abhorrent but chose not to . He clearly minimised what they had done and is unfit to practice. He should be sacked .

I meant in terms of the judge considering it reasonable to let these boys off. I probably chose the wrong word. Sorry. It isn't "excusable", but it does seem to me that the notion that there are different degrees of rape is not appropriate.

This case has angered me so much. Limited fucking intellectual capacity! I was just 12 years old when I was sexually assaulted at a fairground by a young man who was out with a group of others, all with differing mental capacities. The one who attacked me should have had 121 supervision as he had previous for inappropriate behaviour.

His carer let him go off on his own and I paid the price. I was in the funhouse with my friends and couldn’t get away from him. Luckily a fairground worker caught on to what was happening and pulled the young man aside to give me time to get out.

My mum called the police who did come out but said there was no way there would be any consequences for him as he had the mental age of a child. Didn’t stop him pressing his erection against me, putting his hands down my trousers repeatedly, grabbing my breasts and telling me I was a little whore though.

This was back in the 70s and it’s maddening to see that very little progress has been made towards protecting women and girls.

I know it's controversial, but I really would make it a legal requirement for the parents (or other responsible adults/carers) of criminals who are under 18 to stand trial along with their children.

I cannot understand how people who have grossly negligently brought up children to think that such serious crimes are acceptable are not brought to account for it. I'm not saying that all of them will be culpable - as sometimes you can do your very, very best as a parent to no avail - but they should at least be charged and the evidence considered.

I do wonder how many fewer youth crimes there might be if their nonchalantly negligent parents knew that they could risk imprisonment for the crimes too.

Having read the Times article, it seems clear that Judge Rowland does have empathy.

He is perfectly able to empathise with male perpetrators of violence and abuse.

Please, do quote where I said any type of rape was "excusable".

I'd like to see the judge and all his previous cases and judgements investigated. While they're at it they should look through his internet history and check his hard drive. They live among us and act with impunity, he probably just wanted to watch the videos and admired their work. The fact he's probably at work today fucking up more lives is disgusting.

I agree. The suggestion that any type of rape might be excusable based on how violent/drugs/assailant known to victim etc is totally unacceptable and sends completely the wrong message.

The AG has apparently referred this to the court of appeal

So interesting
I was trying to get more info on the judge and interestingly while chatgpt will basically try and tell me biological are women and that iabvr when iabu... it wouldn't tell me anything about this guys previous sentencing history.

Its also very hard to remove judges according to the quick Google I did.

I discussed it with my 11 yr old and she got straight the point and said, ‘I’d imagine he’s a rapist too.’

Because what grown adult man would be a rape apologist eh…

Starmer has sent it to appeals thank goodness. Total disgrace, that judge should never be allowed to sit again

It's been referred.

I agree.

I don’t agree that there are degrees of rape. Rape is rape. There are aggravating factors, like whether they are known to the victim, or indeed additional crimes like whether violence was used.
Rape when a woman was drugged, unconscious and received no injuries is not ‘less bad’ than rape when a woman was also beaten up, or rape when the perpetrators are related to the victim, etc.
Rape is rape, imo.

I hope this doesn't mean that those poor girls have to go through the whole experience again?

Their sentence is now being sent to the Court of Appeal according to the BBC.

Either their lack of comprehension of the basic rules that allow people to live in society are so lacking that they need to be held in a secure unit for everyone else's safety OR they're criminal rapists and should be in prison.

There is no middle ground.

We do need a change in law - mandatory prison time for aggravated rape - which this was - should be the very first step.

However, there are also judges that side with the perpetrators, quite clearly, and these judges need to be sacked. There is no balancing at all in terms of the impact on the girls here at all.

And I do think it might focus minds on the victims if judges that give unduly lenient sentences to rapists did have a review. Statistically speaking there's a percentage of men who themselves will be rapists in these positions. When such an obvious failure to consider the victims occurs, as here, I think it is not unreasonable to question why and to perhaps review all the sentencing of that judge and see if they can do the job as required.

It seems that these boys had limited intellectual capacity

I do not believe that anyone, of limited intellectual capacity or otherwise, reaches the teenage years without understanding that rape is wrong and is a crime.
(Unless of course they are so learning-disabled that they are basically unable to function or to leave the house alone, which is obviously not the case here).

They don't, but that's completely irrelevant to the point being made.

Pregnant women dont tend to rape young girls at knife point while recording the offence

The only way I can see that these lenient sentences might be justified is if these boys were under duress or threat in some way from older adults to commit these crimes for their benefit.

This simply does not seem to be the case - these boys acted of their own volition and are old enough to know it was wrong - add in the knife and the filming/posting on SM and there is no way boys of that age would not know they were committing a crime.