British men who protested outside an Essex asylum hotel have been locked up for far longer than the migrant whose sexual assaults on a 14-year-old girl and a woman triggered the demonstrations.
Charlie Land, 24, and Jonathan Glover, 48, received 32 months and 30 months respectively at Chelmsford Crown Court for violent disorder during the July 2025 clashes at The Bell Hotel in Epping. The Ethiopian national at the centre of it all, Hadush Kebatu, got just 12 months.
This is the latest chapter in a pattern that has already seen multiple local men handed heavier sentences than the man whose crimes set off the backlash.
Epping asylum hotel protesters jailed for longer than migrant occupant who assaulted woman and girlhttps://t.co/lO70iA2I01
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 19, 2026
Kebatu arrived in Britain on a small boat and was housed at the Bell Hotel. Within days he approached a 14-year-old girl on a bench in Epping, tried to kiss her, made sexually explicit comments, placed his hand on her thigh and later assaulted a woman who had offered help.
He was convicted of multiple sexual offences, including two counts of sexual assault, and sentenced to 12 months in September 2025. A judge described him as manipulative with a “poor regard for women” and said he posed a significant risk of reoffending.
He was later mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford due to an administrative blunder, triggering a multi-force manhunt before he was finally deported to Ethiopia.
The protests that followed were initially peaceful. They escalated on 17 July 2025 when counter-demonstrators arrived and disorder broke out.
Hundreds gathered. Police vehicles were attacked. Officers were shoved, punched and kicked. Essex Police said the overall policing operation cost more than £1.5 million.
Land was captured on drone and bodycam footage repeatedly damaging police vehicles, punching windows, kicking off wing mirrors, letting air out of tyres and climbing onto one vehicle to kick the windscreen while wearing a banned face covering. Judge Mills called him a “full and enthusiastic participant in the violent disorder” who showed “no regard” for officers’ safety. The mask, the judge said, “contributed to an atmosphere of intimidation.”
Glover was filmed shouting at officers and impeding police carriers. He claimed to be a journalist. The judge rejected that outright: “Genuine journalists record events – they do not manufacture them. You were not a reporter being picked on by the police; you were not the victim of so-called two-tier justice – you were the antagonist. Far from seeking to calm tensions, you repeatedly inflamed them.”
These are not the first such sentences. In October 2025 Stuart Williams received 28 months, Martin Peagram 26 months and Dean Smith 22 months. In June 2026 Lee Gower, a local father and youth football coach, was jailed for 33 months. Shaun Thompson received 31 months. Phillip Curson later got 27 months. Combined custodial terms for those convicted already exceed 17 years.
Chief Inspector Terry Fisher of Essex Police said the disorder left the community “scared and anxious,” disrupted daily life and damaged local businesses. “Whilst many people who wanted their voices to be heard on an important issue did that safely, a number chose to behave well beyond that and these convictions and sentences show that behaviour is and was entirely unacceptable.”
The contrast is stark. A foreign national who sexually assaulted a schoolgirl days after arriving by small boat served 12 months (and was released early by mistake). British men who turned up to protest the housing of such offenders in their town are serving two to nearly three years. The courts have repeatedly stressed that peaceful protest is not the issue – the violence is. Yet the disparity in outcomes has fuelled widespread anger over two-tier justice.
Meanwhile the Labour government continues to free space in overcrowded prisons by releasing thousands of criminals early. Prisons are operating near capacity. Successive schemes have already seen tens of thousands leave early. Further releases are planned under the Sentencing Act, with adjustments after public backlash to exclude some of the most serious sex offenders, yet thousands of other prisoners will still walk free ahead of schedule to ease the crisis.
British towns are told to accept mass arrivals. When one of those arrivals attacks local children and women, residents who object too vigorously find themselves behind bars for longer than the perpetrator.
The system prioritises capacity management and narrative control over equal application of the law.
Secure borders, swift deportation of foreign offenders and consistent justice for British citizens are not radical demands. They are the baseline of a country that still claims to protect its own people.
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