In late 2024 and two months later in January 2025, two different girls were raped by the same teenage boys. The rape trials were widely covered in the local press in February 2026, however the story only reached the national press in May this year, when the three teenage boys were convicted of knife-point rape and other serious sexual offences but were not given custodial sentences because the judge Nicholas Rowland said that he “should avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily”.
The first rape of a 15-year-old girl was committed 200 yards upriver from Fordingbridge’s medieval bridge, which crosses the River Avon in the centre of the Hampshire town, in an underpass of the A388 between Salisbury and Ringwood. Two months later and 200 yards downriver, a 14-year-old girl was raped in a riverside park by the same boys along with a 13-year-old accomplice who did not touch the victim but filmed the attack.
It has since emerged that the boys convicted of the rape had a history of sexual assault and controlling behaviour going back two years. One of the boys was reported to the police in May 2022 when he was ten. Using his bike, he cornered a girl and asked her to take her clothes off. The police interviewed the teenagers and their parents, but no further action was taken.
Two years later, both boys were reported to the police for getting children to steal alcohol from convenience stores for them. More than once. They were also reported for using a catapult to kill a duck and to damage property. In November 2024, ten days before the first rape, one of the boys was reported to police by the mother of a 14-year-old girl who alleged she was grabbed by the neck. The other boy allegedly put his hand up another girl’s skirt at the same time.
So, we are seeing a series of incidents which would seem to imply that the behaviour of the boys is escalating up to the first rape in November 2024. Had these reports to the police been taken more seriously and a warning or caution given, these would have been recorded.
Perhaps this would have allowed social services to intervene. Certainly, had the judge had this history before him, he might have been more inclined to give a custodial sentence. I am not seeking to defend the judge, but it seems that he wasn’t the only one to have seriously let these vulnerable young girls down.
Nicholas Rowland said that he did not want to “criminalise” the boys responsible for these rapes. His aim was to rehabilitate rather than allow them to endure custodial sentences. On the other hand, the girls who have been raped are now living in fear.
“All I want to do is die, I no longer have fear for when that comes,” said the first rape victim in her impact statement to the court. “Sometimes I can still feel their hands on me,” the second rape victim told police. These girls are affected for life. The three boys are going to be ‘rehabilitated’. It seems to me that the future lives of the girls are not being considered as being as valuable as the future lives of the boys.
As the partner of the first victim’s mother said: “The judge sees the story. What he doesn’t base his decision on is the day-to-day life that the family has at home, the families that have to cope with the victims. The victims have been given a life sentence. The boys have been given a community order.”
The victim of the second attack said: “I just wanted to be able to go out without the fear of seeing [the boys] or being around them. I want to be able to go out and see my friends.” The first victim had this to say to The Times about some boys of her age. “It is disgusting the way they behave and we need to change the behaviour towards young women, it’s vile,” she said.
Giving these boys a custodial sentence would send a clear message that their actions are unacceptable and that their removal from society is necessary for the safety of girls and women until such time as they are no longer deemed a threat. This case should be viewed in the context of what the National Police Chiefs Council described in 2024 as a “national emergency” of violence against women and girls. The number of recorded incidents of violence against women, including cases of psychological abuse such as stalking and harassment, increased by 37% between 2019-24. At least one in 12 women annually are believed to be victims.
At the same time, a report led by journalist Luba Kassova concluded that media coverage of violence against women and girls has declined over the past decade. One of its most arresting observations was that violence against women was mentioned in 0.1% of articles about the Epstein case, whereas a quarter of articles refers to victims and highlights issues like power and corruption. Kassova lamented how “news coverage does not get to the root causes of the problem”. The outrage against the lenient sentencing of the Fordingbridge boys has been largely restricted to themes of law and order.
Many other researchers have observed how misogynist content has become a significant factor within the ecosystem of far-right discourse. As recently as 2024, Nigel Farage spoke approvingly of arch-misogynist Andrew Tate. Journalist Maya Oppenheimer has likened misogyny to a ‘gateway drug’ that is used to introduce young men to other types of virulent discrimination expressed on the far right. Raising a challenge to that narrative is essential.
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