Court of Appeal increases teenage rapists’ sentences after public outcry

The Court of Appeal has increased the sentences of two teenage rapists to four years’ detention after ruling that the original youth rehabilitation orders were unduly lenient. The decision followed a Southampton Crown Court judgment that had let the boys avoid custody after they were convicted of raping two girls in separate attacks in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.

Nicholas Rowland, the judge at Southampton Crown Court, imposed youth rehabilitation orders in May 2026 on two 15-year-old boys and said he wanted to avoid “criminalising these children unnecessarily,” even though he accepted they had crossed the custody threshold. A third boy, aged 14 at the time, also received a youth rehabilitation order for encouraging one of the attacks and for an indecent images offence. The assaults took place in November 2024 and January 2025.

On 2 July 2026, the Court of Appeal said the original punishment was wrong. It found the sentences unduly lenient and ruled that the repeated, extremely serious offending against two separate vulnerable victims made detention unavoidable. The court said the judge had failed to give enough weight to the complainants’ vulnerability and to the humiliation and degradation they suffered. The sentence for the third boy was left unchanged.

One victim described the original outcome as “hit like a rock straight in my face.” The victims’ families said they were relieved and grateful that their voices had been heard.

Sir Keir Starmer said the referral to the appeal court was the right outcome, while Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Jess Phillips all criticised the original non-custodial sentences.

Siobhan Blake, the Crown Prosecution Service’s rape lead, said prosecutors are seeing more serious youth-on-youth sexual offending, including more violent behaviour, and called for earlier education on consent and misogynistic attitudes.