A few days ago, a judge in Hampshire handed down an astonishing sentence. Three boys convicted between them of 10 counts of rape walked free from court.

The details of the crimes are harrowing. In separate incidents, they lured lone girls aged 14 and 15 to secluded places and then attacked them, filming the rapes and sharing some of the footage on social media. The two older boys, now aged 15, were given three-year Youth Rehabilitation Orders (YROs) instead of custodial sentences and ordered to undergo 180 days of intensive supervision. The younger boy, aged 14, was given an 18-month YRO.

The boys were told “none of you need to go to prison today”. The judge stressed the seriousness of their crimes but also their “very young” ages.

He was doubtless trying to ensure that he reduced the chances of the boys growing up to commit further such acts. Sentencing like this, criminal justice reform campaigners would argue, is about making society safer for women and girls in future.

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But the question that screams out for an answer is: what about these victims, now? Where is the justice for them?

And: what message does it send to others that teenage boys are convicted of such horrific offences and get to go home again afterwards with what one of the victims’ families described as “a slap on the wrist”?

On Sunday, one of the girls told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that the boys’ sentence felt........

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