Today, we attended an online Violence Reduction meeting in Manchester where the recent Hampshire case was discussed — the case involving three teenage boys convicted after two young girls were raped in separate attacks.

The victims were children.

That should be enough for everyone to stop, listen, and take this seriously.

Children were harmed. Children reported. Children went through the criminal justice process. Children had to carry the fear, the shame, the waiting, the questioning, the retelling, and the trauma that comes with trying to be believed.

And after all of that, the boys responsible did not receive custodial sentences.

Let’s not dress that up in soft language.

For many survivors watching, this feels like yet another example of victims being asked to do the impossible while the system delivers the bare minimum.

Women and girls are constantly told to report sexual violence.

Report it.
Speak up.
Tell someone.
Trust the process.

But what happens when they do?

What happens when victims find the courage to disclose, only to be met with delays, doubt, poor communication, dropped cases, weak outcomes, or sentences that feel completely disconnected from the seriousness of the harm?

What happens when the victims are children, the offences are serious, the case reaches court, convictions happen — and the outcome still leaves people asking, “Where is the justice?”

This is why women and girls are reluctant to report.

Not because they are weak.

Not because they are confused.

Not because they are exaggerating.

Not because they do not want accountability.

They are reluctant because they are paying attention.

They have watched how survivors are treated. They have seen how often the burden falls on the victim to prove, explain, relive and justify. They have seen how systems can become more concerned with the future of the person who caused harm than the future of the person who now has to live with it.

And cases like this reinforce that fear.

There is a dangerous pattern in how society responds to sexual violence. We say we believe victims, but we make them fight to be taken seriously. We say violence against women and girls is a priority, but we tolerate outcomes that leave survivors feeling abandoned. We say trauma matters, but too often the trauma of the victim is pushed aside while the circumstances of the perpetrator take centre stage.

That is not justice.

That is selective compassion.

This case is not about a minor mistake. It is not about poor judgement. It is not about boys needing a talking-to.

This was rape.

This was serious sexual violence.

And when serious sexual violence against children results in no custodial sentence, it is entirely understandable that survivors feel the perpetrators have walked away without meaningful consequence.

That is the bit we need to stop sanitising.

If a justice outcome leaves victims, survivors and the wider public feeling that child rape has not been treated with the gravity it deserves, then we have a serious problem.

And that problem does not sit in isolation.

It sits inside a wider culture where women and girls are told to modify their behaviour, protect themselves, stay alert, speak up, report early, preserve evidence, trust professionals, and then somehow accept outcomes that do not feel like justice.

That is not good enough.

One organisation in attendance at the meeting, Mandem Meetups, brought a perspective that felt genuinely refreshing. They spoke about going out into the community, working with young boys, and showing them real role models. Not empty slogans. Not tick-box awareness. Actual community-based work around what it means to be a good man, how to treat women, how to build respect, and how boys can aspire to something better than the harmful messages they are often surrounded by.

That matters.

Because prevention cannot just mean telling girls how to stay safe.

Prevention has to mean teaching boys not to harm.

It has to mean positive male role models stepping into the spaces where boys are learning about identity, power, masculinity, relationships and respect. It has to mean challenging the attitudes that allow violence against women and girls to grow in the first place.

And yes, that work is desperately needed.

But prevention work does not erase the need for justice when harm has already been done.

We need both.

We need boys being raised with better examples, and we need systems that respond properly when boys cause serious harm.

At BeyondTrauma Academy CIC, we work with women who are not only carrying the trauma of abuse, exploitation and violence, but also the secondary trauma of systems that failed to protect them afterwards.

For many women, the harm did not end when the abuse ended.

It continued when they were not believed.

It continued when police did not act quickly enough.

It continued when professionals minimised the risk.

It continued when agencies passed responsibility from one desk to another.

It continued when they were asked, “Why didn’t you report sooner?”

It continued when the system responded in a way that made them feel like their pain was an inconvenience rather than evidence of harm.

So when cases like this happen, we cannot treat public outrage as emotional overreaction.

It is not overreaction.

It is recognition.

Women and girls recognise the pattern.

They recognise the message.

They recognise the gap between what systems say and what systems do.

This is not just about one sentence. It is about the wider culture of accountability around sexual violence.

If we want women and girls to report, then reporting must mean something.

It must mean they are taken seriously.

It must mean they are protected.

It must mean the process does not retraumatise them.

It must mean the harm done to them is not pushed to the side while everyone debates everything except the lifelong impact on the victim.

It must mean consequences that reflect the seriousness of the offence.

Because right now, too many survivors are being asked to hand their trauma over to systems that have not earned their trust.

We cannot keep telling women and girls to speak up while giving them every reason to stay silent.

We cannot keep building violence reduction strategies that talk about prevention while failing to confront the consequences of weak accountability.

We cannot keep using trauma-informed language if we are not prepared to centre the trauma of victims.

Trauma-informed justice does not mean being gentle with harm.

It means understanding harm properly.

It means understanding that rape does not end in the courtroom. It follows victims into their relationships, their education, their work, their sleep, their parenting, their confidence, their sense of safety and their ability to trust the world around them.

It means understanding that when justice feels absent, the trauma deepens.

And it means understanding that every high-profile case sends a message far beyond the people directly involved.

Survivors are watching.

Children are watching.

Women and girls are watching.

Professionals are watching.

Communities are watching.

And what they see will shape whether the next victim believes reporting is worth the risk.

This case has now been referred to the Court of Appeal. That matters. But the wider issue will not be solved by one review alone.

The wider issue is trust.

The wider issue is whether victims of sexual violence can believe that the justice system will treat what happened to them with the seriousness it deserves.

The wider issue is whether we are prepared to say, without flinching, that rape is rape, harm is harm, and children who are raped deserve more than outcomes that leave the public wondering whether justice has actually been served.

Because when children are raped and the outcome feels like the perpetrators have faced little meaningful consequence, we should not be surprised when women and girls lose faith.

We should be angry.

We should be honest.

And we should be demanding better.

Not performative justice.

Not strategy-document justice.

Not carefully worded concern that changes nothing.

Actual justice.

Justice that protects victims.

Justice that holds harm to account.

Justice that understands trauma beyond buzzwords.

Justice that sends a clear message that sexual violence will never be treated as a youthful mistake, a lapse in judgement, or something that can be quietly managed while victims are left to carry the lifelong impact.

Women and girls are not reluctant to report because they lack courage.

They are reluctant because they have seen what happens when courage is not met with justice.

And cases like this show exactly why.