The Court of Appeal has dismissed a Director of Public Prosecutions application to review as unduly lenient a fully suspended sentence imposed on a grandfather who pleaded guilty to 17 sexual assaults on his granddaughter when she was aged between six and nine.
The court said the sentence was “very lenient” but did not represent a clear divergence from the norm caused by an obvious error of principle. It therefore dismissed the application under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993. The court did not resentence the respondent or alter the sentence.
The respondent pleaded guilty in July 2016 to 17 counts of sexual assault committed between April 1998 and April 2002. The sentencing court imposed two years’ imprisonment on one count, with 13 counts taken into consideration, and a concurrent two-year term on another count, with two further counts taken into consideration. Both terms were suspended for six years, subject to conditions including therapy.
The DPP argued that the sentencing judge had not given sufficient weight to the seriousness of the offending and had suspended too much of the sentence. The prosecution pointed to the child’s age, the breach of trust, the repeated nature of the abuse and its effects. It accepted that the respondent’s age, poor health and role caring for his seriously ill wife were significant mitigating circumstances, but argued that they should not have removed custody altogether.
The respondent’s counsel relied on his guilty plea, previous good character, health, age, caring responsibilities, low assessed risk of reoffending and cooperation with therapy. The judgment records that he initially denied the allegations in Garda interviews before pleading guilty when the case returned for trial.
The appeal court said great weight had to be given to the sentencing judge’s reasons. It held that the judge was entitled to regard the respondent’s personal and family circumstances as significant, including the burden of caring for his wife and the potential effect of imprisonment on both of them. The court said a sentence had to be proportionate to both the gravity of the offences and the offender’s circumstances, and that the judge was required to consider the Article 8 rights of the respondent and his wife.
The judgment records that the granddaughter described lasting effects, including drinking from a young age, difficulties with relationships and depression. It also records that an investigating Garda told the sentencing court there was no reason to believe the respondent had abused anyone else. The Court of Appeal’s decision was confined to whether the sentence met the legal threshold for undue leniency; it concluded that it did not.