The Court of Appeal reduced W.L.’s aggregate sentence from nine years to seven and ordered two years of post-release supervision, following an appeal against the severity of sentence. The court delivered its judgment on 24 April 2017.
W.L. had been convicted on all counts after a trial held between 4 and 17 February 2015. In an earlier appeal judgment on 13 October 2016, the Court of Appeal upheld convictions on 15 of 18 counts but allowed the appeal on three counts concerning complainant K.W. The sentence appeal concerned the remaining convictions involving three complainants, identified in the judgment as K.W., C.W. and M.L.
The appellant argued that the nine-year sentence was excessive, including because the sentencing judge had not sufficiently differentiated the offending against each complainant, and because fewer counts remained concerning K.W. The appeal also challenged the sentencing judge’s reference to digital penetration of all three complainants. The Director of Public Prosecutions acknowledged that there was no evidence of digital penetration concerning C.W., while submitting that the offending against C.W. was particularly serious because C.W. was very young.
The court said the offences were very serious, citing the duration of the offending, multiple very young complainants and the nature of the conduct. It agreed that consecutive sentences between complainants were appropriate. For K.W., it reduced the sentence from three years to two, saying the offending period had narrowed, although the remaining offence did not represent an isolated incident and serious conduct remained in issue. For C.W., it reduced each count’s sentence from three years to two because of the factual error about digital penetration.
The court left the sentence for the third complainant unchanged. The resulting sentences were three, two and two years, to be served consecutively, giving an aggregate of seven years. It declined to partly suspend the sentence for rehabilitation, despite noting some encouraging signs in custody, and referred to the Better Lives programme as something W.L. might benefit from.
The Court of Appeal also replaced the open-ended position on post-release supervision with a direction that W.L. be supervised by the Probation Service for two years after release.