Boy who raped girl, 3, when he was just 14-years-old learns fate at Sheffield Crown Court
A young teenager who raped a three-year-old girl will now remain in custody until he is an adult.
The boy was found guilty of raping the young girl at the conclusion of a Sheffield Crown Court trial in October 2025.
He was just 14-years-old when he carried out the attack, but is now aged 16.
Automatic reporting restrictions placed on the case mean the complainant cannot be named in her lifetime, whilst the defendant’s identity will be protected until his 18th birthday.
During a sentencing hearing held this morning (Monday, March 23, 2026), Judge Rachael Harrison sent the defendant to custody for three years and 10 months.
She told the boy: “You are still very young, but what you did was very serious.”
“It involved a very young child. She was on her own.”
A statement prepared on the girl’s behalf said both her life, and that of her family’s, have changed “dramatically” since the attack.
The intervening months have been “extremely difficult,” the court was told.
The girl is said to remember some of what happened, and her family member expressed concern that she may remember more as she gets older.
Prosecutor Nicola Quinney made an application for a sexual harm prevention order, which will limit the boy’s use of the internet and contact with children when he is released from custody.
Judge Harrison granted the request.
Defending, Sasha Waxman said the boy, who is from the South Yorkshire area, has not yet been able to “accept” his guilty verdict.
The boy, she said, has a “lower level of cognitive ability” than average, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“The choice is stark: between a period of detention…and a rehabilitation order with intense monitoring,” said Ms Waxman.
She referred Judge Harrison to pre-sentence and psychological reports prepared on the boy’s behalf.
Ms Waxman said the reports suggest the boy would find a period of custody particularly difficult, and she also argued that it may place him in an environment where he is forced to co-exist with “criminal peers.”
Sending the boy to custody, Judge Harrison said it was not only the seriousness of the boy’s offending that meant she felt that was the right course of action.
Judge Harrison said she did not believe the boy could be kept safe or that he would be in a “protective environment” if he received a non-custodial sentence.
She added that the boy is “unlikely to work on his sexual offending” if he were to be placed back into the care of people who were “complicit in his denials.”
Judge Harrison also noted that the boy has been deemed to pose a “high risk of serious” harm, something which is said to be inextricably linked to his “impulsivity.”
In addition to the custodial sentence and his SHPO, Judge Harrison also told the boy he will now be placed on the sex offenders’ register.