SARAH VINE: Three teenage travellers gang-raped two schoolgirls - and their sentences are a JOKE. It's time to tell the truth about what's really behind Britain's epidemic of mass rape…

Published: 00:31, 24 May 2026 | Updated: 00:31, 24 May 2026 Three teenage travellers gang-raped two schoolgirls on two separate occasions, in pre-meditated attacks, recording the assaults on their smartphones and sharing the footage widely. Their victims described being humiliated and ‘laughed at’ as the boys took turns filming each other abusing them. Afterwards, they asked one girl why she ‘looked so sad’ and bought her a soft drink ‘to cheer her up’. Their punishment? The first 14-year-old assailant, who is now 15, was given a three-year non-custodial youth rehabilitation order after being convicted of three counts of rape and one count of taking indecent images of a child. The second 14-year-old attacker, now also 15, received the same for six counts of rape, while the youngest, now 14, was handed 18-months rehabilitation for two counts of rape. In other words, meh. A bit of litter-picking, maybe, some warm words from a social worker and a few counselling sessions. The only lesson these troglodytes will learn from this outcome is that they can rape again. Their victims, meanwhile, have suffered a double humiliation: those boys made them feel worthless; now a judge has done the same. It’s like some kind of sick joke. Britain’s justice system has long been in decline, but it takes a special kind of stupid to reward such criminal behaviour. Not only did the judge – one Judge Nicholas Rowland – spare them jail, he also praised them during sentencing. ‘You have all done very well with the restrictions put in place throughout the trial,’ he told the boys. He added that he ‘should avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily,’ citing ‘peer pressure’ and ‘low intelligence’ as reasons why they didn’t ‘need’ to go to prison. One wonders whether Mr Rowland himself is not suffering from ‘low intelligence’. The victims have suffered a double humiliation, writes Sarah Vine. Those boys made them feel worthless; now a judge has done the same Thankfully, the judgment has now been referred for a sentencing review after several high-profile figures, including Kemi Badenoch, expressed disgust and consternation. But the fact remains: the welfare of these boys was prioritised ahead of their victims’, and that sends a clear signal: girls’ lives don’t matter. We’ve seen this in the starkest of terms in the scandal of the grooming gangs, of course. There, ‘cultural sensitivities’ were cited as an obstacle to justice, here it’s the extreme youth of the perpetrators. Neither should be an excuse to allow the worst kind of toxic masculinity to go unpunished. If you are old enough to rape someone, you are old enough to go to jail. But there’s a deeper question here, which is why children this young are even contemplating, let alone planning and executing, such extreme acts of sexual violence? The answer is simple and glaringly obvious: online porn. I’ve been saying this for years: if you allow generations of children unrestricted access to highly explicit, extreme, violent and deeply misogynistic pornography, is it any surprise that some of them will inevitably act out what they see on screen? Gang rape, violent humiliation, sexual mockery, choking, gagging, the treatment of women’s bodies as little more than dustbins for men’s desires – this is all perfectly normal stuff in pornland. In particular, hardcore porn legitimises sexual violence and thrives on rape fantasies, blurring the lines of consent and perpetuating a myth that all girls and women are secretly ‘gagging’ for it, even if they say no. Consent? That’s just another sex game. Most adults understand the boundaries between porn and real life, between fantasy and reality. But a child doesn’t. A child can’t. The mind of a child is simply not able to make the distinction. But a child’s mind is also a sponge; it’s constantly learning, absorbing information that will then inform what kind of adult he or she becomes. Drench a child in filth and misogyny, expose it to the insanity of social media and the darkest corners of the internet, and is it any wonder it goes out and commits acts of brutal depravity? Add to that low intelligence, poor family environment and a fixation with a ‘gangsta’ lifestyle, which reinforces all these misogynistic tropes, and you have a recipe for the kind of violent thuggery that makes Alex and his Droogs (‘time for a bit of the old ultraviolence’) in A Clockwork Orange seem like Beatrix Potter. And yet, for some unfathomable reason, no one seems to want to do anything about it. Repeated attempts to address the problem are met with furious opposition from so-called ‘free speech’ advocates. Even the most basic proposals to restrict children’s access to smartphones and social media are constantly being challenged. Fact: if your child has access to the internet, sooner or later they’ll be seeing hardcore porn. The average age at which boys are first exposed to this is 10 or 11, girls slightly older. A quarter of young adults aged 16-24 first experienced online porn at primary school. By the age of 16, 70 per cent of boys are watching porn four to five times a week. And trust me, this is not some soft-focus Seventies housewife fantasy with a wobbly soundtrack. Instead of reading a book or playing sport or doing what kids ought to be doing, they are staring at videos of girls and women being violated in a variety of painful and humiliating ways – and growing up believing that such behaviour is perfectly normal. Is it any wonder we’re raising a generation of child misogynists? Pictures of Brad Pitt, 62, with his age-inappropriate girlfriend Ines de Ramon, 33, last week show him looking tanned and youthful. Maybe a touch too tanned and youthful. Shades of Cliff Richard? My daughter and I happened to be in London’s King’s Road the other day – at the same time as the Chelsea Flower Show. The pavements were so crowded you could barely move, people spilling out into the road, traffic gridlocked, music blaring. ‘Mum, it’s like the Notting Hill Carnival for menopausal women,’ she quipped. Ouch. I’m not enjoying this posthum-ous character assassination of the late Queen. So what if she was ‘very keen’ for Andrew to take on a role as trade envoy back in 2000? No one had the slightest inkling of any alleged misdemeanours on the part of her second son back then. It wasn’t until 2014 that his name was mentioned in connection with Virginia Giuffre. If having an idiot son of which one is rather too fond were a crime, half the female population of Britain would be guilty.  The protesters aboard the Gaza flotilla held by Israel claim they were ‘kidnapped’. No. Shani Louk was kidnapped; Naama Levy was kidnapped; Ariel and Kfir Bibas were kidnapped with their mother, Shiri. This lot were detained then released, not raped, tortured and killed. So no, not the same at all.  Poor Katie Price. This Lee Andrews bloke she married – who’s just been arrested in Dubai – is clearly not what he seemed. I know people ridicule her car-crash life, but I feel sorry for her. She will never find love until she learns to love herself, and it’s painfully obvious she does not. Why else undergo all those extreme surgeries if not to turn herself into someone else?  No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 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