Content warning - Teenage boys escape prison for rape

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clypg68e2neo

These poor girls. An absolutely sickening article.

'Two 15-year-old boys and a boy, 14, were previously convicted of rape following a trial at Southampton Crown Court.
The 15-year-olds were given three-year Youth Rehabilitation Orders with intensive surveillance and supervision. The younger boy's probation supervision will be for one and half years.
Two of the boys' mothers burst into tears as Judge Nicholas Rowland told the attackers "none of you need to go to prison today".
The judge praised the bravery of the two girls for giving evidence.'

How is surveillance/supervision going to make the slightest bit of difference? These boys should have gone to prison or a YOI.

Judge praises girls for their bravery while failing to dish out any consequences whatsoever.

The words sound hopeful, but as the saying goes - words are cheap. It is an absolutely disgraceful situation, the judge should be removed.

Mumsnetters should be proud of the part they have played in getting this case to the court of appeal!

Racism is a highly relevant aspect of abusing women and girls who are not themselves part of a segregated racial group. Muslims and gypsies are two such groups. It does not seem that police and prosecutors and courts grasp the simple facts (usefully spelled out by Sir Trevor Phillips): Assume for example A is Catholic and B is Jewish. It is unlawful for one to throw stones at the other, and the offence is aggravated if the motive is partially or wholly because of religious antagonism. The only way this stone-throwing would not attract an additional punishment, at sentencing, is if the assailant was unaware the victim was from the different group.

The 'Northern grooming gangs' clearly selected victims according to race/religion. So did the gypsy boys: As other Mumsetters have observed, young gypsy girls are fiercely protected to be 'pure' before marriage. The boys, and their families, would have met with harsh 'justice' from inside the gypsy community, if they r . ped 'one of their own'. They planned ahead for their attacks, and selected the girls to ensure they were not fellow gysies.

I think thousands of others also contacted the Attorney General.

Unless we know for certain that these boys are gypsies, it should not be assumed that they are from media reports that they are "travellers". Gypsies are an entirely different group from the type of travellers who are super hostile to non-travellers, and who have very strict "no sex before marriage" rules for their girls. I wanted to point this out, as have a lot of time for the traditional gypsies and their way of life, but have seen some real horrors from intimidating "travellers".

Romani, Gypsies and Irish travellers have some cultural mores in common though.
This is is from Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy,_Roma_and_Traveller

“Gypsy, Roma and Traveller.

“All British GRT groups have a strong preference for early marriage.”

Agree, they have some cultural stuff in common. But there is still a huge difference between gypsies and the newer groups of "travellers". I live in a rural area which for many generations has gypsy families moving around the countryside, and they are part of traditional rural life. They are nice people on the whole, and approachable.

By contrast, "traveller" communities that sometimes descend in a fleet of huge expensive motor homes, take over public green space, destroying gates and hedges, and intimidate anyone going near them, even on public footpaths, are very anti-social and hostile. Unfortunately, they teach their young people to have the same them-and-us negative attitudes. Nobody seems willing to address this.

How the hell are they going to monitor and supervise them? They are travellers! They’ll be in the wind by now! No chance of seeing them again!

Yes but most people in custody under 18 are in for very serious crimes. I work with people who’ve worked with young offenders and some of the people in there had committed crimes to sickening to post on here.

It's an awful lot worse than we have realised, apparently, if they go to youth courts, they get let off regularly. Here's an archive link to a Guardian article, reporting on my area. Apparently, it's a £26 fee for teenaged boys to rape girls:

https://archive.is/rbEIj

These cases will count toward the woeful number of cases where a rapist is successfully prosecuted. I had to pay more when I forgot to display my parking permit.

Are you saying that this crime is not up there with those serious crimes? Or that it is? It's not clear to me.

That's sickening. The whole thing needs a total overhaul.

My point is that there was a push to stop sending people under 18 into custody. Some young offender institutions were re- categorised , so they no longer held young people.
The do - gooders think all these are innocent children.
People under 18 in custody are generally in there for very good reason. No minor offences. The idea of keeping people in custody is to protect the public.

Of course these boys should have gone into custody and be on the sex offender register for life .

I found this article that gives insight into some advice the judge was given on sentencing

Judge told Fordingbridge boy rapists ‘akin’ to previous case where teenager jailed for eight years | ITV News Meridian https://share.google/VEwHdyP9dVMPHD08G

Unless I've completely misread it I'm even more at a loss as to why the judge handed down the sentences that he did.

Also there's this article in the Times

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-missed-opportunities-stop-fordingbridge-teen-rapist-jqp9mnrfw

Which I assume is about one of the rapists. I've not been able to archive it. The article headline actually read, Fordingbridge rapist had ‘history’ of sex offences