The Court of Appeal reduced the sentence imposed on AD for indecent assaults and sexual assaults against two girls who were in his family’s care. It quashed the original seven-year global sentence and resentenced him to five and a half years’ imprisonment, declining to suspend any part of the revised term.
AD pleaded guilty in Dublin Circuit Court to six sample counts on an 18-count indictment. Three counts concerned indecent assaults against F, whom AD and his wife fostered and raised as their step-daughter. The other three concerned sexual assaults against N, AD’s granddaughter. The pleas were accepted on the basis that the sentencing hearing would proceed on the full facts. The Circuit Court imposed sentences on three counts and took the other three into consideration, combining the sentences consecutively for seven years.
The appeal challenged the severity and structure of that sentence. AD argued that the sentencing judge had worked backwards from a global figure without showing how the individual sentences or discounts for mitigation were reached, and had not adequately considered suspending part of the term. The Director of Public Prosecutions accepted that the sentencing judge had not followed the Court of Appeal’s recommended approach to sentencing, but argued that the overall term was proportionate given the prolonged offending and the use of sample counts.
The Court of Appeal said the original approach was not best practice, though it was not an error of principle in itself. It found errors in setting the maximum available sentence as the starting point for all the indecent assault counts and in failing to give adequate credit for mitigation. The court distinguished count 10, which involved an attempted rape of F and could justifiably attract the maximum starting sentence, from the other indecent assaults, which involved non-penetrative touching. It also found that the three-year sentence on count 11 for sexual assault was within the available range.
The court resentenced AD on all six counts. For counts 1 and 5, it set headline sentences of 16 months each, reduced by 25% to 12 months, to run concurrently. For count 10, it set a two-year headline sentence, reduced by 25% to 18 months, consecutive to counts 1 and 5. It imposed three-year sentences on counts 11, 14 and 18, concurrent with each other but consecutive to count 10. The resulting global sentence was five and a half years. The court considered that term proportionate and said no further reduction was needed under the totality principle.