Jess Phillips condemns 'unduly lenient' sentences for teen rapists

Former Home Office minister Jess Phillips has condemned the "unduly lenient" non-custodial sentences of three teenage boys who raped two girls in separate attacks.

Prosecutors said the assaults in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in 2024 and 2025, were "brazenly filmed" on phones and showed the boys laughing and encouraging each other. They later shared some of the footage online.

The boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, were given youth rehabilitation orders (YRO) and the two older ones were also made subject to intensive supervision and surveillance (ISS).

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Labour MP Phillips 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."

Phillips, who served as minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls until her resignation earlier this month, said social media had negatively influenced young boys.

"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," she said.

Explaining his sentencing decision at Southampton Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Nicholas Rowland said he would avoid "criminalising" the boys, telling them: "None of you need to go to prison today."

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

However, he emphasised their "very young" ages.

Warning: This story contains details some may find distressing

The first girl was 15 when she was raped three times in an underpass by the River Avon in Fordingbridge.

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.

The second girl was 14 when she met the boys at Fordingbridge Recreation Ground and was raped repeatedly in a nearby field. The incident was also filmed.

Forensic evidence revealed her leggings had been cut with a "sharp instrument".

Video footage seen in court during the trial 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 her victim impact statement as well as a poem she had written directed towards her attackers.

She described how her mental health had deteriorated leading her to isolate herself from her friends.

The poem 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 said her school attendance had suffered, adding: "I often feel overwhelmed, anxious and emotionally exhausted to the point where sitting in a classroom becomes unbearable."

She described suffering nightmares and struggling to sleep, saying: "I feel ashamed, insecure and uncomfortable in my own body."

Phillips said that while rehabilitation of offenders was "vital", perpetrators should be able to be rehabilitated "within our youth estate".

The MP for Birmingham Yardley accused social media of playing a role in the rise of misogyny amongst young men.

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

She said "very little" had been done in the last decade to see what effect violent pornography has had on young people and the victims in this case have "paid the price".