Teenagers are committing and filming sex attacks for an online ‘eyeball economy’ as child-on-child rape reaches epidemic levels, former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has warned.
Ms Phillips, who resigned from her post earlier this month, said the average offender is now just 14 years old.
She warned that victims were being asked to ‘suck it up’ in favour of their attackers’ rehabilitation, while sentencing guidelines which treat youth custody as a last resort had failed to keep pace with the surge in juvenile sex crime.
The MP spoke out amid outrage that three teenagers who were convicted of raping two girls, then aged 14 and 15, in filmed attacks in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, were given youth rehabilitation orders instead of being jailed.
At least three further cases have also emerged in which teenage boys convicted of rape avoided custody in the North-East, including one who walked free after being found guilty of three attacks.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Tory ministers Nick Timothy and Chris Philp have written to Justice Secretary David Lammy demanding a review of sentencing guidelines for serious, violent and sexual crimes.
They criticised the judge in the Hampshire case for using the boys’ ages and personal circumstances – one had ADHD, another a low IQ and the third ‘limited understanding of consent’ – to justify sparing them custody.
Their letter said he had ‘appealed to the age, developmental stage and mental disabilities of the defendants and his desire not to criminalise them to justify non-custodial sentences, despite the seriousness of the crime and the harm inflicted’.
Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips (pictured) has revealed that the average offender is now just 14 years old
Rape campaigners reacted with anger as it emerged that in at least three cases teenage perpetrators have been spared jail and handed rehabilitation orders with financial penalties that are ‘less than a parking ticket’ (File image)
Under current Sentencing Council guidelines, courts are directed to use custody for young offenders as a last resort.
Yesterday, Attorney General Lord Hermer confirmed he had referred the Hampshire sentences to the Court of Appeal.
He said he had ‘no doubt’ that the youth rehabilitation orders handed to the teenagers needed reviewing.
Ms Phillips told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘What we are seeing over the last five years is a growing trend of children sexually abusing other children.
‘In over 53 per cent of child sexual abuse cases, the perpetrator is aged 10 to 17, with the average age of 14.
‘I don’t think the sentencing guidelines have been updated with that in mind.’
She added: ‘We are essentially asking the girls in Fordingbridge, and now these new cases, to suck it up for the sake of the perception of what is best for the perpetrators.’
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…
‘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.’
