The Court of Appeal has quashed a sentence imposed on a man identified as DL after finding it unduly lenient, and resentenced him to concurrent prison terms of four years, six years and two and a half years on three counts.
The judgment, delivered on 6 March 2025, concerned an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 to review the sentence for undue leniency. DL had pleaded guilty to two counts of using information and communication technology to facilitate a child’s sexual exploitation and one count of meeting a child for that purpose. The original sentence, imposed in March 2024, was two and a half years on each count, with the final 18 months suspended on conditions.
The court said the offences differed in seriousness. One count concerned messages to a 15-year-old on Grindr and a meeting arranged near a playground in a rural location. DL took the child on a 30-kilometre car journey to the provincial city where he lived. The child became concerned, got out of the car at traffic lights and sought help from another vehicle.
A separate count concerned Grindr messages seeking sexual contact with a 15-year-old child, said to be the cousin of a person called “Young”. The judgment said DL offered to pay both “Young” and the child, requested naked photographs, and sought arrangements for sexual engagement. The communications were found during an analysis of DL’s seized phone.
The Court of Appeal held that equal four-year headline sentences for the three offences failed to reflect the greater seriousness of the meeting and the communications involving the second child. It also found that the involvement of two children was an aggravating feature that had not been properly reflected. The court concluded that these were errors in principle and that the original sentence was unduly lenient. It quashed that sentence and resentenced DL.
The court set headline sentences of six years for the communications count, four years for the other communications count, and nine years for the meeting count. It then reduced those terms to four years, two and a half years, and six years respectively, citing the guilty plea notified in advance, lack of previous convictions, employment history, cooperation, remorse and insight. It imposed all three terms concurrently, saying the aggravating factor of two children had been accounted for in assessing the headline sentence for the meeting count.