Court of Appeal replaces foster brother rape sentence but rules return to prison unjust

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Court of Appeal quashed a man’s sentence for the repeated oral rape of his foster brother and imposed a four-year term, suspending the remaining time to be served for two and a half years. It found that returning him to prison after his release would be unjust.

The three-judge court’s judgment was delivered by Ms Justice Tara Burns on 10 July 2023. The man, then aged 43, had been released from prison in December 2022.

At the Central Criminal Court, he pleaded not guilty to four counts of oral rape and 12 counts of sexual assault. A jury convicted him of the four rapes and seven sexual assaults of the younger foster brother, and four sexual assaults of that boy’s older brother. It disagreed on one sexual assault count. The man later accepted the verdict.

The offences occurred on dates between May 1995 and December 1998, when the man was aged between 15 and 18. The younger victim was aged between 11 and 14; his brother was aged 12 to 13 when he was assaulted in 1995 and 1996.

Trial judge Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy imposed four years for the rapes and 18 months for the sexual assaults, with the sentences running concurrently and the final two years and six months suspended for the same period. The sentence was backdated to November 2021, when the man entered custody.

The State argued that the sentences were unduly lenient. The appeal court agreed, finding that a six-year headline sentence for the rapes was appropriate, reduced by two years for mitigation. It imposed 18 months for the sexual assaults and four years for the rapes, but said a return to prison would be an additional punishment and unjust.

The appeal court noted that the man had taken courses since his release and was trying to regain employment and reintegrate into society.