Teenage Gang Who Lured Schoolgirl, 15, to Underpass and Laughed as They Filmed Themselves Raping Avoid Jail

A teenage traveller gang who filmed themselves raping lone schoolgirls in two separate sex attacks have avoided jail.

Two 14-year-old boys targeted one of their victims, 15, on Snapchat before luring her to an underpass where they laughed and filmed themselves as they raped her.

Two months later the pair, this time joined by a third boy aged just 13, gang-raped a second schoolgirl at knifepoint while again recording the attack on their phones as they goaded each other to degrade her further.

The trio – all from the traveller community – were convicted of rape in March following a five-week trial, with the two older boys also found guilty of taking indecent images of a child, relating to the recordings they made of their attacks.

But all three defendants were today handed youth rehabilitation orders instead of jail sentences during a hearing at Southampton Crown Court – as a judge told them ‘none of you need to go to prison’.

The soft-touch sentence quickly provoked a furious backlash, with a senior Tory MP telling the Daily Mail it was ‘a sickening case of soft justice’.

The first 14-year-old assailant, who is now 15, was given a three-year youth rehabilitation order with requirements of ‘intensive surveillance and supervision’ for 180 days, after being convicted of two counts of rape and one count of taking indecent images of a child.

The second 14-year-old attacker, also now 15, was likewise given a three-year youth rehabilitation order with the same requirements for six counts of rape, while the 13-year-old attacker, now 14, was handed an 18-month rehabilitation order after being convicted of two counts of rape.

Youth rehabilitation orders are a community sentence for under-18s which can carry a range of different requirements such as unpaid work.

Judge Nicholas Rowland told the boys: ‘None of you need to go to prison today.’

He said the boys are ‘very young’, had low intelligence, a ‘limited understanding of consent’ and were susceptible to ‘peer pressure’.

The judge also praised the boys for their conduct during the trial, saying ‘I think of you as very young and none of you have been in any big trouble before.

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All three boys have been made subject to a 10-year restraining order against their victims.

The victim of the first incident came to the court for the sentencing hearing and, screened from the view of the boys, 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 since the incident leading her to isolate herself from her friends.

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Footage of the attack was later found by the police on one of the boy’s phones, which, over six separate videos and pictures, showed her being forced to perform sexual acts on the boys.

In the videos, the boys can be heard ‘laughing’ and one of the boys saying ‘don’t film it mush’.

The girl said later that at this moment she had been trying not to cry.

The two defendants would go on to rape another girl in the same area some two months later, this time with their younger friend also taking part.

The second victim, who was 14, was targeted on a Friday afternoon in January 2025.

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It transpired that videos of her terrifying abusive encounter with the three boys in that bleak field had been widely shared on social media and were being commented on by others who apparently believed the incident had taken place with consent.

Little has been revealed about the official background of the boys who took part in the two very similar attacks.

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