The Court of Appeal has suspended the unserved balance of a man’s prison sentence for raping and sexually assaulting his first cousin when she was a child, after finding that the original sentence did not sufficiently account for his age during most of the offending and the credit due for his guilty pleas.
The court delivered its decision on 4 March 2021 on an appeal against sentence severity. The appellant, identified in the judgment only as T.D., had pleaded guilty in 2016 to two rape counts and seven sexual assault counts. The offences occurred between April 2004 and April 2008, when the victim was aged eight to 12 and the appellant was about 14 to 18.
The sentencing court imposed concurrent terms: eight years on each rape count, with the final year suspended, and three years on each sexual assault count. The Court of Appeal said the appeal focused on the rape sentences. The appellant argued that the nine-year headline sentence was too high given that he was a minor for all but 11 days of the offending period, and that a one-year reduction for his guilty pleas was too small.
The appeal court accepted that the offending was serious and that its effects on the victim remained ongoing. It said the sequence of escalating conduct and the age difference could aggravate the offences, but the appellant’s youth and likely immaturity reduced his culpability to some extent. It found that the sentencing judge had erred by selecting a headline sentence of the kind that could apply if the offences had been committed by an adult, without giving sufficient weight to the appellant’s minority.
The court also found the guilty plea discount, which was just under 13%, too low. The pleas came about a month before the scheduled trial, so the appellant was not entitled to the additional credit associated with an early plea in a sexual-offence case. But the court said the pleas spared the victim from testifying and the trial from the associated cost and court time. It also considered his cooperation with the investigation, mental health difficulties and limited support network when assessing his temporary hesitation about pleading guilty.
Rather than replace the sentence with a new one, the Court of Appeal varied it by suspending the unserved balance from noon on 8 March 2021. The suspension was subject to the same conditions attached to the suspended portion of the original sentence. The judgment said the appellant was due for release on 14 July 2021 under the sentence as it then stood.