Jess Phillips says sex offence victims by children told to ‘suck it up’ for benefit of attackers - amid Fordingbridge rape fury
Sentencing guidelines do not take children sexually abusing other children into account, says Jess Phillips
Victims of sexual offences committed by children are being asked to “suck it up” for the sake of their attackers’ rehabilitation, the former safeguarding minister has said in the wake of the Fordingbridge rapes.
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Jess Phillips, who resigned as minister for safeguarding and violence against women earlier this month, has said that sentencing guidelines did not take into account a “growing trend” of children sexually abusing other children.
Ms Phillips also warned that crime may have become “content for an eyeball economy”, with serious offences being filmed “in order to make content”.
Her comments come after three teenagers, who cannot be named as they are under 18, were spared jail over the rape of two girls in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, provoking outcry.
Read more: Victim of teenage rapists spared jail says she feels 'too scared' to leave her home
Two 15-year-olds were given non-custodial sentences after raping the two girls, with a judge at Southampton Crown Court saying he wanted to “avoid criminalising these children unnecessarily”.
A third boy, now aged 14, was also convicted of his involvement in the second attack and an indecent images offence, and received another non-custodial sentence.
The Attorney General has since referred their sentences to the Court of Appeal for review as “unduly lenient”.
In her interview, Ms Phillips called for sentencing guidelines for children to be reviewed, suggesting they placed too much emphasis on the perpetrator and not enough on the victims.
She described a “growing trend of children sexually abusing other children”, saying: “I don’t think that the sentencing guidelines have been updated with that in mind.”
Ms Phillips added: “If we look at the findings in the Southport Inquiry, obviously a terrible and heinous crime committed by a child, one of the main findings of the first bit of the inquiry is that where we focus too heavily on the perpetrator and their vulnerabilities, and don’t think about the public safety element.
“We are essentially asking the girls in Fordingbridge, and now these new cases that have been reported in The Guardian, to essentially suck it up for the sake of the perception of what is best for the perpetrators.
“I think absolutely this all needs looking at.”
She also called for more preventative measures to be put in place, including “early intervention” at school or through the justice system.
Asked what was driving the rise in sexual offences committed by children, Ms Phillips said: “I cannot ignore the growth in online pornography, access to the most heinous things online for this generation that just simply didn’t exist in prior generations.“
And so looking at what young people look at online, what they have available to them, and actually whether crime has become content for an eyeball economy.“
Because in some of these cases they were being filmed in order to make content.”