Detention was the “only appropriate sentence” for three teenage boys who were spared custody over the rape of two girls, the Court of Appeal has been told.
Two boys aged 15, known as X and Y, and another aged 14, known as Z, were given non-custodial sentences in May for a combined 10 counts of rape and seven indecent image offences related to two victims, who were separately attacked in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in November 2024 and January 2025.
The two older boys were involved in both attacks, while the 14-year-old encouraged the rape of the second victim.
Sentencing them at Southampton Crown Court, Judge Nicholas Rowland said the offences of the two 15-year-olds “crossed the custody threshold”, but he should “avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily” and added that detention was a “last resort”.
The sentences were referred to the Court of Appeal as “unduly lenient” by Attorney General Lord Hermer days later, following public outcry, with barristers telling a hearing on Wednesday that parts of Judge Rowland’s approach to sentencing were “fundamentally flawed”.
The boys, who have not attended the hearing in London, are opposing the bids to have their sentences increased.
Tom Little KC, for the Attorney General, said: “We accept… that the judge did try to apply the relevant principles, but our submission is he misapplied them along the way, the cumulative effect of which was to lead to unduly lenient sentences.”
He continued: “It is difficult to understand how the judge could properly have come to the conclusion that he did, given the sheer number of rape offences, which the judge does not properly address in any way in… his sentencing remarks, the underlying seriousness of the offending and the harm sustained.”
X was given a three-year youth rehabilitation order (YRO) with 180 days of intensive supervision and surveillance for raping and taking indecent images of both victims.
Y received the same sentence for three charges of rape against each of the two victims and four counts of taking indecent images by filming the incidents.
Z was given an 18-month YRO for two charges of rape related to the latter victim after encouraging the second defendant, and for an offence of indecent images.
Judge Rowland said at sentencing that although X and Y were assessed by Youth Justice Services as “medium risk” of reoffending but “high risk of serious harm” to young females, he had to consider their backgrounds.
He said X had been diagnosed with ADHD and “long-standing anxiety” while Y had an IQ in the bottom 1%, had ADHD with “extreme neurodevelopmental impairment” and presented “more like an eight-year-old”.
Mr Little acknowledged in court that Z was “plainly in a different position” from X and Y due to his younger age and only being involved with one of the rapes, but that his offending was “sustained”.
But in written submissions, he continued: “In summary it is submitted that the extent and nature of the offending was so serious such that the only appropriate sentence for X, Y and Z was detention.”
The barrister also said that the restraining order imposed on the three boys, preventing them from contacting either victim for 10 years, should have been indefinite, adding that this had caused the victims “very significant concern”.
Clare Wade KC, for X, said that Judge Rowland “approached the sentencing exercise correctly”.
She said: “The sentences imposed broadly provide the best opportunity for the child offenders to learn and develop and provide the most effective way of protecting women and girls in future by preventing future offending.”
Edward Henry KC, for Y, told the court that his client “behaved deplorably and disgracefully and deserves to be punished”, but had been made a “pariah” in the wake of public outcry following his sentencing, which caused the boy “substantial additional punishment that he is ill-equipped to bear”.
Mr Henry said that in referring Y’s sentence as “unduly lenient”, the Attorney General “has not engaged with the compelling evidence that the child whom I represent has a constellation of comorbid conditions that dramatically reduced his culpability”.
He said: “The sole question is whether the sentence was outside the range of sentences reasonably open to a judge, who presided over the 29-day trial, heard all of the evidence, and applied the correct legal framework with conspicuous care. In our submission, it was not.”
In a statement to the Press Association ahead of the hearing, one of the victims said the attack on her “has left me harmed so severely that I do not think I will ever be the same” and that the trial of her attackers “broke something inside me”.
She said: “I feel like I am carrying what happened every day. I wake up with it, I go to school with it, I try to sit exams with it, and I go to sleep with it. It is always there. I cannot just switch it off. I cannot just move on.”
The hearing, before the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Edis and Ms Justice Norton, is set to conclude on Thursday.
