The Court of Appeal has replaced a sentence imposed on R.C. for 72 sexual offences against a child, finding that the original sentence was unduly lenient. The court sentenced him to 13 years’ imprisonment, with the final four years suspended for four years after his release, subject to the same conditions as before. The revised sentence runs from 29 June 2021, the date of the original sentence.
R.C. was convicted on 29 June 2021 of 48 sexual assaults and 24 rapes against the complainant, who was aged between eight and 18 during the offending. The offences occurred between May 1991 and May 2001. The Court of Appeal judgment says the abuse took place in three locations, including homes in villages identified only as A, B, C and D, and a mobile home near village B. It records that the complainant’s mother was in a relationship with R.C. during the offending.
At the original sentencing, the Central Criminal Court set headline sentences of 15 years for the rape counts and eight years for the sexual assaults. It imposed concurrent sentences that left an effective seven years in custody: 10 years for the rape counts, with three suspended, and five years for the assaults, with one suspended. The sentencing judge considered R.C.’s age, health, lack of previous convictions and family circumstances.
The Director of Public Prosecutions applied under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 for a review on grounds of undue leniency. The DPP argued that the sentencing judge gave insufficient weight to the seriousness and aggravating features of the offending, gave excessive weight to mitigation, and counted the same mitigating factors twice. R.C. opposed the application.
The appeal court found no error in the original 15-year headline sentence for the rape offences. It said the offending’s duration, breach of trust, the complainant’s age, the nature of the assaults and their impact justified a headline sentence in the upper half of the range for more serious cases. It also said the sentencing judge could not be criticised for not referring to evidence that R.C. had used a gun to intimidate the complainant, because that evidence was not before him at sentencing.
The court concluded, however, that the original combined reduction and partial suspension gave excessive weight to R.C.’s age and health, leaving a sentence substantially outside the norm. It quashed the original sentence. It rejected the DPP’s separate claim of double counting, finding that the reduction and suspension had been applied together as one measure.
On resentencing, the court set a 14-year headline sentence for the rape offences, reduced it by one year for other mitigating factors, then suspended the final four years of the resulting 13-year term to reflect R.C.’s age and health. It said the suspension conditions remain the same. The judgment separately records an original sentence of five years for the sexual assaults, concurrent with the rape sentence; it does not state a separate replacement sentence for those counts.