TWO teenagers who tied up and “tortured” a friend with a home-made flame-thrower are starting three-year youth custody sentences this week.

The victim’s ordeal at a drink and drugs party in Hereford was filmed on a mobile phone by another party-goer and he only found out what happened to him through Facebook.

At Worcester Crown Court, Jack Rouse, 19, and Jordan Powell, 18, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm and robbery.

Judge Robert Juckes QC likened the “serious violence”

inflicted on the victim to torture.

Speaking after the sentencing, Det Sgt Tim Powell, of Herefordshire CID, said the pair had carried out a “despicable”

assault on a bound and defenceless victim purely for their own amusement.

The victim, said DS Powell, only found out what had happened to him through Facebook messages read the next day.

One witness, he said, told police the attack occurred out of “boredom”.

The court heard how Rouse, of Laburnam Grove, Hinton, Hereford, and Powell, of Whitecross Road, Hereford, tied the victim’s hands at the party in April this year after cutting off his eyebrows and part of his hair.

Michael Aspinall, prosecuting, said they then lit the spray from an aerosol can “like a mini- flamethrower”

and burnt off the victim’s genital hair before using the flame on his buttocks.

The pair then put the victim to bed and later took him home along the Great Western Way.

While doing so they attacked and robbed another teenager they came across.

Daniel Oscroft, for Rouse, said the conduct amounted to bullying and degradation with Rouse realising too late that it had gone too far.

Alexander Small, for Powell, said he had walked the victim home the next day and made an early guilty plea.