Abuser has sentence cut for 1970s offences

A man convicted of sexually abusing a child in County Mayo during the summer of 1978 has had his prison sentence reduced on appeal. The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge erred in principle by failing to apply any mitigating factors when sentencing. The man was found guilty by majority verdict in October 2018 of five counts of indecent assault and was initially sentenced to eight years and nine months, with one year and nine months suspended. The appellate court determined that the defendant's age at the time of the offences, his clean record over the subsequent forty years, and the significant delay before prosecution constituted relevant mitigating circumstances that should have been considered. Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, sitting with the Court of Appeal President and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, re-sentenced the appellant to eight years and nine months with the final two years and nine months suspended, increasing the non-custodial portion of the original sentence.