The lenient sentencing of two teenage boys who filmed the rape of young girls in separate attacks has been slammed by French rape survivor Gisele Pelicot.
The boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, were given youth rehabilitation orders and made subject to intensive supervision and surveillance.
Judge Nicholas Rowland told the two boys: ‘I should avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily and understand the effects of their behaviour and support their reintegration into society.’
But the lack of prison time for the heinous crimes has sparked outcry from across the UK – including from Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said the sentences were ‘appalling’.
Gisele, 73, has now spoken out about the shocking sentences after she found herself at the centre of the biggest rape trial in French history.
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‘I was deeply shocked that these individuals were in fact able to gain their freedom again, when in fact the victims are suffering so hard they will never be able to heal,’ she told BBC Breakfast.
One of the young victims told BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that the decision to spare her attackers from prison was a ‘rock straight in her face’.
Pelicot said she hoped her own story had helped the 16-year-old girl come forward to press charges, adding: ‘I really salute her strength and the decision she made, because I know that it’s an incredibly difficult decision.’
The Attorney General is reviewing the judge’s decision.
The trial at Southampton Crown Court heard the victims were raped in two separate incidents in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, with the first attack taking place on November 26, 2024 and the second on January 17, 2025.
Jodie Mittel KC, prosecuting, told the trial the girl had visited one of the defendants in November 2024 after meeting him on Snapchat.
The prosecutor said that after performing sex acts on the boy, who was then 14, she became ‘scared and anxious’ when the second defendant arrived, and the pair raped her while the incident was filmed.
Ms Mittel said that afterwards, videos of the incident had been sent around and other people made jokes about her, and she received messages calling her a ‘sl*g.’
The complainant in the January incident, who was 14 at the time, was raped in a field near Fordingbridge recreation ground, also while being filmed.
In the sentencing hearing on Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was handed a three-year YRO with 180 days of ISS for the rape of each of the two girls and two indecent images charges.
The court heard he had been diagnosed with ADHD as well as ‘long-standing anxiety.’
A second 15-year-old was given the same sentence for three charges of rape against each of the two victims and four counts of taking indecent images in relation to filming of the incidents.
A third boy, 14, was given a YRO for 18 months for two charges of rape in the January incident by encouraging the second defendant and an offence of indecent images.
A government spokesman said the attorney general’s office had received multiple requests for the sentences to be reviewed under the Unduly Lenient Scheme.