Hey,

In a UK rape case, the judge said he wanted to avoid “unnecessarily criminalizing” the boys. And that word, “unnecessarily” – is where all are aching right now. When girls are harmed, they are asked to be brave. But, when boys harm, the world suddenly becomes thoughtful and worried about their futures. 

In #Edition65, we are talking about rape sentencing, selective empathy, and why mercy should never mean asking girls to carry what boys are protected from.

Inside this edition:
👉 The Mercy We Save For Boys
🥗 What she’s watching, reading, listening
📰 5 headlines worth her time
✨ Her Spotlight
🤍 Note to Her

The word that stayed with people was “unnecessarily.”

This UK judge said he wanted to avoid “unnecessarily criminalizing” three teenage boys convicted in connection with the rape of two girls in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.

One girl was 15. She thought she was meeting someone she had spoken to on Snapchat. Another was 14. She was threatened, separated from her phone and AirTag, and taken to a field.

Both attacks were filmed. Both girls were children.

After a five-week trial, the boys were convicted on multiple rape charges. Two were also convicted of taking indecent images of a child. And still, they walked out of court with youth rehabilitation orders instead of custodial sentences.

The court considered their age, cognitive difficulties, ADHD, anxiety, and futures.

And yes, a justice system should be able to hold context. It should understand age, disability, rehabilitation, and the fact that punishment alone does not repair harm.

But this is where the ache begins.

The girls had futures too. Their childhoods were also interrupted. Their bodies became evidence. Their worst moments were recorded, shared, discussed, defended against, and then weighed in a room where mercy seemed to move more easily toward the boys who harmed them.

One survivor said the sentence hit her “like a rock straight in my face.”
That line should have changed the room.

And, this is the thing about selective mercy:
it always sounds reasonable until you ask who is being asked to pay for it.

Bravery is not compensation.
Survival is not closure.
And calling a girl courageous does not return the version of her life that existed before.

When boys harm, the world often becomes fluent in nuance. Their childhoods, futures, psychology, potential, and second chances are carefully discussed. When girls are harmed, the language changes to resilience. Be brave, strong, heal well and the best… Move on.

But… if the boys’ childhood mattered to mercy, the girls’ childhood should have mattered to justice.

After public outrage, the sentences are now being reviewed. But the cultural question remains larger than this case: Why are we so careful when boys might lose parts of their future, and so vague when girls already have? Why is accountability treated as a tragedy for boys, while lifelong trauma is treated as something girls must simply carry? 

Mercy that only protects one side is not mercy.
It is protection dressed as balance. 💔

💬 Ideas to tune into when the world’s too loud.

📕 Read: Know My Name by Chanel Miller
A memoir that turns a courtroom case back into a person’s life. Read it for the reminder that survivor impact is not a side note to a boy’s future, rather it is the center of the story.

🎧 Listen: Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky — Jameela Jamil
Jameela names this crisis sharply: boys are often raised not to be girls, instead of being taught how to become whole, accountable humans. This episode’s on patriarchy, fear, loneliness, and why masculinity built on rejecting the feminine harms everyone.

🎬 Watch: Adolescence — Netflix
3 single shot episodes, impossible-to-look-away series about boyhood, violence, online radicalization, and the adults who realise too late what their children have been absorbing. Watch it for the uncomfortable questions it asks about parenting, masculinity, mercy, and harm.

🌍 5 stories shaping the week for women everywhere.

🤖 Grok’s Deepfake Problem Isn’t Fixed: WIRED found sexualized AI deepfakes of famous women and at least one U.S. politician still hosted on Grok, raising fresh questions about consent, platform safety, and women’s images online.
🧕 Afghan Women Arrested Over Dress Codes: A protest in Herat after women were arrested for alleged dress-code violations turned violent, with the UN confirming at least one person was killed.
⛪ Women Pastors Face Another Ban: The Southern Baptist Convention advanced a constitutional amendment that would formally ban women from serving as pastors within the denomination.
💉 A Women’s Health Drug Is Disappearing: Zoladex, used for breast cancer, endometriosis, fertility preservation, and ovarian suppression, is being pulled from Australia’s public and private markets from November.
🚨 Deaths At A Women’s Prison Raise Alarm: Lawmakers are calling for urgent action after a third woman in less than a month died at Michigan’s only women’s prison amid concerns over medical care, conditions, and transparency.

Found her voice. Loved her clarity. Needed you to see her.

Soma Sara (@somasara) is the founder of @everyonesinvited, a platform created for survivors to share stories of rape culture, harassment, assault, coercion, and the everyday misogyny that often starts long before adulthood.

The question is not only what happens inside a courtroom. It is also what happens before it ever gets there: the jokes boys hear, the silence girls are taught to carry, the schools that confuse silence with safety and the culture that keeps acting surprised when harm appears.

Everyone’s Invited is a reminder that rape culture does not come from nowhere. It is learned, repeated, ignored, excused – and then finally called a case. What if we stopped waiting until girls had to survive something before we finally listened?

Her Weekly Download has two drops every week, Tuesdays and Fridays – plus a Sunday news special for the women-first stories worth knowing.

✨P.S.  Send this to her who needs this reminder: she was never the problem. The society is. The best kind of wisdom is the one we pass woman to woman 💚