‘I think of you as very young’, said Judge Nicholas Rowland to a trio of Traveller teenage boys in Southampton Crown Court yesterday. ‘None of you have been in any big trouble before… You have all done very well with the restrictions put in place throughout the trial.’ He assured the minors – the youngest of whom was just 14 years old – that ‘none of you need to go to prison today’.
How can gang-raping schoolgirls at knifepoint not lead to a prison sentence?
