Judge lets three boy rapist go free with no jail time

[ThreadGuardDog]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/may/24/uk-judge-decision-rape-girls-hampshire

The judge said he wanted to avoid the boys attracting a criminal record so early in life. Is it so unreasonable to think that they should have thought of that before they committed the crime ? Rape/sexual assault, is up 10% according to national statistics. With sentences like these, reflecting the clear misogyny within the judiciary , is it any wonder ?

Thoughts ?

I think r**ists should be jailed for life. They unalive a persons spirit.

Agree. Not a chance. In an era where people are taking to the streets more and more often, that’s really depressing.

What would a blanket system look like? A fixed sentence for every offence?

For every one of us women daughters, niece's ,mothers, granddaughters, friends this is fucking disgraceful and disgusting and two fingers in the faces of those young girls ..imagine if this was our daughter or sister or friend etc fucking judge is saying it’s ok lads you go and have your life imagine how those girls and their families felt
They will never go over this and I would seriously worry about their mental health

Agreed. Also arguably in terms of semantics it's their raping that has criminalised them, not the sentencing.

I get the letter of the law is that it's the process that would deem them criminal/not criminal but they were guilty of a crime, so they are criminals by their actions not just the application (or not!) of the "justice" (ha!) system

What is with these asterisks asterisks? Can’t you bring yourself to type ‘rapists’? And what on earth does ‘inalive’ mean?

The judge is probably ab aging misogynistic prick that thinks it was a bit of horse play that got out of hand. Why are these people allowed to be in these positions???

Welcome to the patriarchy

The judge can't impose his own sentence.

They have to sentence within the proscribed guidelines for the conviction, bearing in mind both aggravating and mitigating factors.

They cannot conjure up a sentence based on their own particular mores.

I don’t necessarily think that’s the answer either. If the judge was free to decide that these three should be allowed to walk away with no consequences after what they did to those two girls, then it’s the law itself that’s the problem. It shouldn’t be open to individual interpretation. It was a disgusting, degrading, vicious and prolonged attack which will change these girls’ lives for ever. That the law itself should allow the possibility that the perpetrators of these acts can walk free is insanity and needs urgent review.

Yes or at least a mandatory minimum custodial sentence
eg 40 years to WLT for r
It’s getting ridiculously out of hand that a single mother parent can go to jail for benefit fraud (often for survival rather than greed) and her kids be traumatized and put in care yet a disgusting violater can waltz round free.

We’re not allowed to write those words are we.

What are you talking about? Of course you are allowed to write rape/rapist. I still don’t know what unalive means though.

They’ve been written dozens of times in this thread and in the other threads about the case.

Killed or murdered

But the very fact that it’s within the scope of the law to allow the judge to make this decision is the problem. To my mind there were huge aggravating factors and there were no mitigating circumstances - beyond what the judge invented to support his decision. In what world does ‘good behaviour’ during the proceedings and not wanting three young rapists to have a criminal conviction so young mitigate anything ? If they didn’t want criminal records they shouldn’t have broken the law. They’re now free to live their lives regardless of the two lives they’ve ruined and will probably continue to be a danger to women for a long time to come. What kind of message is that sending ?

It's Orwellian webspeak for "dead"/"kill" other similar words.

The problem with a mandatory 40 year starting point for rape is you will get a lot of juries acquitting, even more so than do at the moment.

It means dead.

Teenage boys get let off in the US too, in case it harms their ‘promising future’. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Ah I suppose I should have been able to work that one out. Not sure why @Awwlookatmybabyspider used it in this context though.

Yes. Unalived and rape are words not permitted in the wonderful world of YouTube. The words are killed, murdered, raped. Censoring free speech in this way is adding to the problem.

There are lots of aggravating factors. The group element, the recording, the posting to social media, the pre-meditated nature.

There are also mitigating factors that were taken into account in sentencing. There are at least two (that we know of, there may be more) - their young ages at the time of the offences, and that at least two of them have some form of learning disability or special needs.

I don't disagree that the sentencing guidelines need to be reviewed, personally I think they do. Even if they are though, the new rules will not be retrospectively applied to this case.

Yeah especially if they’re high school football ‘stars’

There needs to be consequences for a judge clearly displaying bias like this.

Exactly why a judge would have a bias for raping bastards also needs looking into.