UK Government to Review Lenient Sentences for Teen Rapists Who Filmed Attacks

The government is to review the sentencing of three teenage boys who raped two girls in separate attacks, after criticism their sentences were too lenient.

They "brazenly filmed" the rapes on their phones and later shared some of the footage online. The teenagers were given youth rehabilitation orders (YRO) and walked out of court with 11 rape convictions between them.

It said it shared the public's shock at the details of this "horrific case" and its thoughts were with the young victims - and that its law officers, the attorney general and the solicitor general, were "urgently reviewing the case with the utmost care and attention".

They will now have up to 28 days to make a decision on the case and could then refer it to the Court of Appeal for a hearing.

Phillips, who served as minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls until her resignation earlier this month, said: "For those young women going through a rape trial like this will not have been a simple thing to do, it will have been many, many months if not years to achieve any sort of justice and I am afraid to say it sends a bad message."

"These young people it seems were essentially raping for content in order to put it on social media and share it to their friends gloating about raping these poor young women," she said.

"It seems unduly lenient to me and has wider public interest beyond just the case itself in the message that it sends."

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch referred to the sentences as "a disgrace" and shadow Justice Minister Dr Kieran Mullan said: "It cannot be right that teenage boys can commit brutal crimes of rape like this and avoid prison entirely. We have appealed these sentences to the attorney general."

Anyone who thinks that a sentence for a serious offence is too short can ask for it to be reviewed under the ULS scheme.

The boys, who cannot be named because they are children, had denied the charges but were found guilty in March after a trial at Southampton Crown Court.

The judge stressed the "seriousness" of the crimes and said the filming of the assaults made them even "more serious".

She had travelled to meet one of the boys for the first time after he had begun a "relationship" with her on social media platform Snapchat - but then two other boys appeared.

Video footage previously seen in court showed her lying motionless on the ground with "her face buried in her hands", while another boy was heard shouting words of encouragement.

Prosecutor Jodie Mittel KC said videos of the first incident were shared online leading to people to make jokes about the girl. She also received messages calling her a "slag".

Speaking in court on Thursday, screened from the view of the boys, she read a poem she had written which included the line: "All I want to do is die, I no longer have fear for when that comes."

In a statement read on behalf of the second victim, she described suffering nightmares and struggling to sleep, saying: "I feel ashamed, insecure and uncomfortable in my own body."

She said: "The truth is for about 10 years we have allowed young people, especially young boys, to be experimented on by social media companies."

"Very little" had been done in the last decade to see what effect violent pornography was having on young people and the victims in this case had "paid the price", she said.

Det Sgt Naomi Stocker from Hampshire Police said on Thursday that the force was "liaising with our partners at the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to the sentence passed".