Taking turns, the two 14-year-old boys raped their schoolgirl victim in an underpass, asking her why she looked so sad as they did so.
Laughing and joking, they only stopped after an hour and a half when they finally got bored, walking her to a bus stop and telling her to ‘cheer up’.
The 15-year-old’s terrifying ordeal was not only filmed – but footage was shared around on social media, where she was accused of being a ‘slag’ and blamed for what had happened.
Eight weeks later the same two boys, who cannot be identified but who we shall refer to as Boy A and Boy B, would also be accused of raping a second, younger girl, who painted a terrifying picture of her ordeal at the hands of her teenage assailants.
Claiming to have been forced into a park at knifepoint, the 14-year-old was raped first by Boy A and then by his friend. A third boy, only 13 years old, filmed and encouraged them, with footage later shared on Snapchat and TikTok.
‘I thought I was about to get murdered,’ she later told police. ‘I thought I was going to die and never see any of my family again.’
Talk of the two incidents shook Fordingbridge, a well-to-do town located on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire.
And following a five-week trial at Southampton Crown Court, Boy A and Boy B were yesterday convicted of raping both girls.
The third boy was found guilty of two counts of rape in relation to the second girl.
All three boys, who are understood to come from the traveller community, had pleaded guilty to separate charges of taking indecent videos in relation to the incidents.
During the trial, the jury was told that the case raised worrying questions about teenagers and their use of social media and phones.
Graphic footage was filmed, shared and commented upon.
Jodie Mittell KC, prosecuting, told the court that both girls were then ‘blamed and told that it was their fault on social media’.
She said that as well as being called a ‘slag’, the older girl was told ‘how disgusting’ she was and accused of ‘moaning and enjoying it’.
The first of the rapes was said to have taken place in November 2024.
The court heard that the girl, who was 15 at the time, had first come into contact with Boy A when he sent her a ‘friend’ invite on Snapchat.
After a week of speaking to one another, she assumed they were ‘dating’, later telling police: ‘I was in a really bad place mentally at that time and he was really helping with that.’
The girl then travelled from her home to visit him to ‘hang out’ in the park. But she claimed that almost immediately Boy A asked her to perform a sex act on him.
She said she was ‘taken aback’ but that she had agreed, adding: ‘It was a tough decision, I didn’t want to lose someone to love.’
The two went to an underpass where sexual activity took place. She said that when they got back to the park, two other boys turned up.
She said her ‘heart dropped’ when she saw one of them, Boy B, adding: ‘There was something about him that just really felt off.’
The court heard how the three boys then started recording her on their phones asking her for a threesome.
‘They kept moving closer to me, I didn’t know what they would have done if I didn’t say yes,’ she recalled.
The girl agreed, explaining that it was ‘quite dark’ and she felt ‘petrified’.
‘They were all taller than me, it was three boys against me,’ she said, claiming that she was taken back to the underpass where the boys ordered her to strip.
‘I was thinking what I could do to try and get myself out of it, but there was nothing,’ she added. ‘I was basically cornered, I was trapped in this underpass with these three boys.’
She said Boy A and Boy B forced her to perform sex acts on them and took turns to rape her.
She said all three boys had recorded her on their mobile phones while it was going on. The third boy faced no charges.
The girl said she had ‘sat in silence, trying my best not to cry’ adding: ‘I felt sick, I felt myself feeling like I was going to pass out.’
She said the boys only stopped after an hour and half when they got ‘bored’, asking her: ‘Why do you look so sad?’
All three then walked her to a bus stop telling her to ‘cheer up’ and offering to buy her a drink.
Soon after she started getting phone calls from people who had seen the videos of what happened in the underpass. Messages were sent calling her a ‘slag’.
The girl said she did not tell her mother what had happened because she ‘didn’t want to stress her out’, adding: ‘I thought it was not that important because it was me being stupid.’
The girl later posted a statement on social media after becoming upset the footage was being shared.
In it she had referred to having sexual activity with the two teens, who are now aged 15, as ‘the most horrible decision I’ve made in my life and I regret it to this day’. She only spoke to police after news spread about the boys being arrested over a second alleged rape in January 2025.
But giving evidence, Boy A insisted the girl had made the first move telling him ‘we’re boyfriend and girlfriend’.
He said that she had willingly agreed to the request for a ‘threesome’ and shown no sign of being uncomfortable.
His barrister, Clare Wade KC, claimed that she had ‘consented’ to the sexual activity.
She told the jury: ‘She regretted it. But regret should not be confused with not consenting.’
Having deliberated for almost 20 hours, Boy A was found guilty of one count of rape relating to the incident, and not guilty on two counts of rape.
Boy B was found guilty of three counts of rape in relation to it.
Eight weeks later, the second girl, who was 14 at the time, told police that she too had been raped by Boy A and Boy B.
The prosecution case was that Boy A threatened her with a knife, ordered her to dump her phone and then made her walk to the Fordingbridge recreation ground accompanied by Boy B and a third boy.
There it was claimed that video footage recorded on Boy B’s phone showed the girl being raped by him and Boy A.
The third boy was filming the incident and had his penis out at the time.
The girl claimed she tried to run away but they said they would ‘kill her’ if she did so again.
Boy A – the only one of the three defendants to give evidence – claimed the girl had been flirting with him and all the sexual activity was consensual.
His barrister, Clare Wade KC, accused the girl of repeatedly lying, saying that contrary to her evidence, CCTV footage did not show Boy A with a knife.
And far from being forced, as she claimed, to dump her mobile phone and an AirTag to prevent anyone tracking her as the alleged attack took place, she was caught on a Ring doorbell discussing getting rid of the devices herself.
In the recording she was heard saying to a group of girls that she was not “f*****g going home’, adding: ‘I can’t be anywhere near my AirTag or my mum will find me.’
Meanwhile Tracy Ayling KC, the third boy’s barrister, said the girl had claimed he and his friends ‘had frogmarched her down the road’ at knifepoint – which the CCTV had shown to be a ‘complete and utter fabrication’.
Ms Ayling said he had pleaded guilty to filming Boy B with the girl but added: ‘Absence of consent to filming is not the same as absence of consent to sex.’
She said the boy had filmed it because it was ‘normal’ for teenagers to video everything on their phones.
‘They are never off them, they film everything, and everything is shared with their friends, and that is normal for them,’ she said. ‘This is their lifeblood, and you need to take that into account in this case.’
Boy A was found guilty of one count of rape for the second incident and not guilty on one count of rape. The teenager was also found guilty of one count of making indecent photographs of a child in relation to the second incident.
Boy B was found guilty of three counts of rape relating to the second incident, and not guilty of one.
The third boy, who is now 14 years old, was found guilty of two counts of rape by encouraging Boy B in the January incident.
Little has been revealed about the background of the boys who took part in the two very similar attacks.
The youngest of the three rapists posted a photograph on his TikTok account just two weeks prior to the rape which showed him out late at night hunting rabbits and hares with his lurcher dog. The picture is thought to have been taken close to the traveller camp where he lived in Hampshire.
Three days prior to that, the baby-faced teenager shared an ‘inspirational’ meme New Year’s Day post, which read: ‘What boys always want’ before listing five goals.
It was a particularly grim irony that one of his supposed goals was ‘make mom proud’ just behind ’money’ and above ‘loyal girl’.
Both the older boys are understood to come from Traveller communities further away: one has links to East Anglia while the other has ties to Somerset.
Boy A posed for a picture posted on Facebook which showed him standing outside a travellers’ camp next to a sign that reads ‘Gypsy Lives Matter’.
Another photo is captioned with the word ‘#Gangsters’.
Judge Nicholas Rowland adjourned the case until a date to be set for sentencing reports to be prepared on the three defendants, and released them on conditional bail.
Afterwards, Lucy Paddick, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: ‘This is a deeply concerning case which involved a disturbing level of encouragement between young boys, who acted together to rape two young girls in separate incidents.
‘These girls were forced into sexual activity by boys who brazenly filmed the deeply distressing incidents.
‘After speaking with the victims in this case and reviewing an extensive file of evidence, it was the Crown Prosecution Service’s case that these girls were violated and could not have consented to these terrifying encounters.
‘Our lawyers will work tirelessly to pursue justice for victims, and we will continue to hold those responsible for crimes of this devastating nature to account, regardless of their age.’
