SENTENCING STATEMENTS

Upon sentencing, Lord Arthurson made the following remarks:

"Jordan Frankland, on 21 April 2026 at a continued preliminary hearing at Glasgow High Court you tendered a plea of guilty to a single charge of rape to injury and danger of life contrary to section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, all while you were the subject of no less than six bail orders. The charge was additionally libelled as aggravated by the involvement in the offending of the abuse by you of your then partner. By way of relevant procedural background, a trial had been scheduled to proceed on the present indictment this month, the complainer having given her evidence by way of commission in October 2025.

"Between 1 October 2020 and 4 December 2023, when you were aged 16 to 20 and your victim was aged 13 to 16, you repeatedly raped her orally, anally and vaginally, and used a sex toy to penetrate her sexually. The complainer was a highly vulnerable young girl.

"You raped the complainer in private and public places, including on the urine soaked flooring of train toilets, both while she was extremely intoxicated and by way of the use by you of violence towards her. Your assaults upon her included seizing her by the throat while penetrating her, while telling her as she wept to 'cry harder'. You would strike her on the head and body, force her mouth open, restrain her, seize and pull her by the hair, place your hands over her mouth, and seize her by the neck and compress her neck thereby restricting her breathing. On one occasion you told the complainer that you were going to rape her, before forcibly pulling her into an alleyway and raping her. When she then told you that she was scared you replied 'good, you should be'. On her 15^th birthday you penetrated your victim with a sex toy and raped her anally, holding her down, slapping her and pulling her hair throughout. On some occasions you filmed the rapes. In footage recovered by police your victim is seen to be highly intoxicated and drifting in and out of sleep. You can be seen penetrating her sexually stating 'you’re drunk you little slut', and repeatedly slapping her calling her a 'slut' and a 'whore'. Your victim is seen to be crying throughout the footage, while you tell her to 'keep crying'. The final rape perpetrated by you against her occurred in a wooded area in early December 2023. You pushed her to the ground and continued to rape her, even as she was screaming and telling you that she thought that she was going to pass out.

"You are now aged 22. You have accrued to date some eight groups of previous convictions and served three custodial sentences. In addition you are currently serving a 19 month in cumulo custodial sentence for offences committed by you after the service of the present indictment.

"A lengthy background report and risk assessment is now available. You have a history of alcohol and controlled drug misuse which developed at a young age. At the age of 13 education staff noted your inappropriate use of sexualised language towards female teachers. At the age of 15 social work records disclose the inappropriate sharing by you of sexualised images of others without consent. A risk assessment tool focussed upon intimate partner violence assesses such violence in this case to be chronic, with indicators of severe/high risk behaviours. Another assessment tool identifies a very high risk/needs profile in respect of your risk of general offending. No protective factors have been identified which might mitigate your risk of future serious harm, save your current placement in custody. Certain adverse childhood experiences are also referred to in the report, as are a suite of proposed desistance measures.

"I have listened with care to the submissions advanced on your behalf this morning by your senior counsel, and note in particular what has been said regarding your personal circumstances and upbringing; your multiple adverse childhood experiences; your ongoing mental health issues; your young age at the time of the offending and indeed today, and thereby the undoubted engagement of the young persons sentencing guideline; your acceptance of responsibility for your offending by way of your, albeit belated, plea of guilty; and your expressed remorse by way of your own description of your crimes as 'horrific'.

"Turning now to disposal, the sustained nature and sheer gravity of your offending set out in the agreed facts of this case, taken together with the available risk assessment material, has led me to consider the making by the court today of a risk assessment order. Your lack of directly analogous offending, lack of prior convictions on indictment and your age at the time of the offending have, however, all in combination caused me, albeit with some reluctance, to hold back from embarking on that course. It is of course nevertheless plain that only a very high tariff custodial sentence can be considered appropriate in this case. The risk assessment material available to the court additionally makes it clear that the normal period of licence would not here be adequate to protect the public from serious harm from you when you are in due course released.

"Today I therefore propose to impose upon you an extended sentence. This disposal will be in two parts. The first part will be custodial. The second part will take the form of an extension period, when you will be under supervision while on licence in the community. The conditions of your licence will be fixed by Scottish Ministers. If you fail to comply with these licence conditions during the extension period, your licence will be revoked and you may be returned to custody for a further period in respect of this indictment. The court also has the power to deal with you if you commit a further offence after your release from the custodial part of this sentence, while you are on licence and under supervision.

"The offending which you have pled guilty to as that is encompassed in this charge represents one of the very worst cases of rape that I have ever required to consider. For over 3 years you repeatedly raped your vulnerable child victim in the most degrading and sordid of circumstances, using significant levels of violence which you have accepted by your plea was all to her injury and to the danger of her life, and on occasion while she was intoxicated to the point of stupor. You were some four years older than the complainer and to that extent in a position of some trust in respect of her. Your use of language towards your victim during these rapes was callous and sadistic. You even filmed your crimes. Your plea of guilty has emerged only after your victim had given her evidence. The complainer has and will on any view continue to suffer lifelong trauma as a direct result of your crimes against her.

"In these circumstances I now sentence you on charge 20 on this indictment as follows. You will serve an extended sentence of 18 years duration. This comprises a custodial part of 10 years, reduced due to the timing and utility of your guilty plea from a period of 12 years, followed by an extension period of 8 years. I have reached the view without difficulty in this case that as well as the serving by you of a high tariff custodial term, you will thereafter require rigorous and extended monitoring by those charged with your supervision on release, such is your level of risk. The lengthy extension period selected will, it is very much to be hoped, facilitate your rehabilitation into the community in due course. It will of course be a future question for the Parole Board to ask and seek to answer, but from my perspective as the sentencing judge in this case I anticipate that you will in all likelihood require to be the subject of particularly stringent monitoring. You should understand that but for in particular the relevant engagement of the young persons guideline the notional headline custodial period component of this disposal would have been set at a significantly higher level.

"I am not making any additional apportionment of sentence in respect of the multiple bail aggravations. Equally, I am not discounting the custodial period selected in respect of the curfew condition which you were subject to for an extended period, all on the basis that your compliance with that curfew was a superficial and very limited one. I also make no attribution in respect of the aggravation libelled under section 1 of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016. Your victim is libelled in the charge as your partner, but of course she was in fact a highly vulnerable child, and that is the prism through which your appalling criminal conduct should rightly be viewed.

"The sentence imposed by the court this morning will be backdated to the date of your plea of guilty on 21 April 2026, being the date upon which you were remanded by this court into custody in these proceedings.

"Standing the terms of this disposal, I confirm that you will henceforth be subject to the notification requirements expressed in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 Part 2 for an indefinite period.

"Finally, the court pronounces a non-harassment order in respect of you. You will not approach or contact, directly or indirectly, in any way whatsoever, or attempt so to do, the complainer named in this case. That order will run from today for an indefinite period."

 17 June 2026