The Court of Appeal has dismissed F.C.’s appeal against a five-year sentence imposed after a jury convicted him of six counts of sexual assault. The sentence suspended its final 15 months for two years, leaving an effective custodial term of three years and nine months.
In a judgment delivered on 5 February 2018, the court said the sentence was not an error of principle. It upheld the sentencing judge’s decision to impose a global sentence for the offences, taking account of totality and proportionality.
F.C. had already unsuccessfully appealed his conviction. The jury convicted him at the Central Criminal Court on 15 January 2016, following a five-day trial. He was sentenced on 11 March 2016.
The offences occurred between May and September 2012, when F.C. was 50 and the complainant, W.H., was 14. The judgment said he sexually assaulted her during visits to her grandfather’s house while other family members were at a Sunday market in Lifford, Co Donegal. The assaults included kissing, genital touching, rubbing against her in a sexual manner and digital penetration.
F.C.’s sentence appeal argued that the sentencing judge had not given sufficient weight to mitigating factors, including his lack of previous convictions, age, the way he conducted his defence, and the consequences of conviction for him and his family. The appeal was formally limited to mitigation, though oral submissions also challenged how the sentence had been calculated and structured, including the treatment of the counts as consecutive.
The Court of Appeal said the sentencing judge’s approach may have been unusual but was careful and considered. The judge imposed five years on the most serious count, taking the other offences into account, and suspended the final 15 months. The appeal court said the offending was very serious, involved a child in relation to whom F.C. was in a position of trust, and had caused the complainant trauma and distress likely to affect her for years.
The court dismissed the sentence appeal. It did not alter the conviction or sentence.