Charlie Johnson and Prince Singh, both now 24, encouraged two vulnerable teenage girls to carve names onto themselves as they wanted them to be ‘scarred for life’
Two men who coerced vulnerable teenage girls to carve names onto themselves causing serious self-harm have had their sentences almost doubled.
Charlie Johnson and Prince Singh, both now 24, encouraged the victims as they wanted them to be “scarred for life”, before sharing images of those acts in an online chatroom.
Johnson was jailed for four years in December, with his case marking the first time a jury convicted a defendant of assisting or encouraging serious self-harm under the 2023 Online Safety Act. Singh, who admitted the offence, was sentenced alongside him to two years and nine months behind bars.
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The Solicitor General referred the sentences to the Court of Appeal in February, with her barristers telling a hearing on Thursday that both were “unduly lenient” and should be increased.
In a ruling, three senior judges agreed and increased Johnson’s sentence to seven years, and Singh’s to five years, with both men watching via video from HMP Belmarsh.
Lord Justice Jeremy Baker, sitting with Mr Justice Linden and Judge Martin Edmunds KC, said the two girls were “egotistically exploited” by the defendants. He said: “Each of the victims were vulnerable and were deliberately targeted because of it.”
Daniel Bishop, for the Solicitor General, said in written submissions that Johnson began a relationship with his first victim in December 2023, when she was aged 16 and he was 22.
She would send Johnson nude photographs at his request, with Johnson also physically assaulting her. Johnson then began a relationship with the second victim, who was then aged 17, in 2024, whom he also physically assaulted and encouraged to self-harm by cutting his name into her leg, which Mr Bishop said left “permanent scarring”.
The first victim then later formed a relationship with Singh, who encouraged her to cut his name and “logo” into her leg and send him indecent images.
Mr Bishop also said that both men “repeatedly sent” a Discord chat group indecent images of the first victim. Johnson was convicted after trial of two counts of encouraging self-harm, two of distributing indecent images of a child and three of assault by beating, having earlier admitted two counts of making an indecent image.
Singh admitted seven counts of making and distributing indecent images of a child and one count of encouraging serious self-harm.
At their sentencing hearing at Woolwich Crown Court, Judge Ruth Downing said the two men were drawn together by their “mutual interest” in encouraging “schoolgirls” to self-harm. She continued that the two took a “deeply unhealthy” interest in encouraging women to self-harm, and that they treated their “deliberate planned acts” as a “game”.
But Mr Bishop said the judge “erred” by making the sentences for distributing indecent image offences concurrent with the sentence for encouraging self-harm, rather than consecutive, meaning the total jail terms were “unduly lenient”.
Kwame Sekyere, for Johnson, said in court that while the “structure” of the sentence was “somewhat unclear”, the “final number that the judge arrived at was not unduly lenient”.
Nicholas Jones, for Singh, said: “While this was a lenient sentence, it was justifiably so.” But the three appeal judges ruled that both Johnson’s and Singh’s sentences for distributing indecent images should be increased and made to run consecutively to their sentences for encouraging self-harm, leading to an increase in both jail terms.
Lord Justice Jeremy Baker said: “It was necessary to reflect the separate and distinct aspect of the offenders’ criminality.” He continued: “The sentence imposed on each of the offenders was outside the range of sentences the judge at first instance might reasonably have considered appropriate and are unduly lenient.”
